San Bai: 三拜

Finding Faith in the Modern World

San Bai: 三拜. A gesture, not for show but for surrender. More than religion and older than tradition. Just a way to say there’s something greater than me.

The First

You stand, then kneel.

Then bow low. And lower.

Forehead to the floor with palms open.

It’s not weakness or belief.

It’s trusting in something unnamed

and obeying without question.

That certainty can raise you fast,

or ruin you slow.

The Second

Faith has never been fully mine.

Maybe I envy those

who walk in it without hesitation.

But the great ones I admired—

they never bowed to fate.

They shaped it and made their way.

The preachers today are sure.

Their hands don’t shake when they pray.

The Third

And then there’s us—the quiet kind.

Not lost, not brave, not blind.

We kneel, but not all the way.

We bow, but our eyes don’t stay.

We live between the yes and no,

between the heat and snow.

Most days are too hot to see clear.

The rest too cold to feel anything at all.