The Labyrinth

Yesterday, while talking to a friend who lives in East Texas, our conversation had moved around the map. It usually does with us. We're both avid readers, above average intelligence, and we like to think and talk about a variety of things. While talking about spirituality, and along with that the work of a well-known Franciscan Friar centered here in Albuquerque, I asked Mildred if she had walked the labyrinth. Her answer reduced to its simplest element, "No".

As we continued to dart from one subject to another: collecting versus hoarding, modern furniture design, gardening, matters of health, and the list goes on, I was doing one-handed searches on Google, forwarding links on the Internet to her. One was an article from the religion blog on the CNN website where the writer, well known in journalistic circles, talked about her own experience with the labyrinth.  A woman of no small means, after a deep experience on the labyrinth at a spa retreat, she had had constructed on her property a large labyrinth based on the 13th century one at Chartres Cathedral in France. In the article, which is accompanied by a video clip where she talks about what the labyrinth means to her, the writer offers that walking the labyrinth is a good way to focus and problem solve. Having read the article and watched the video clip several months ago, I had forgotten the substance of what she had said, and seeing it once again, I reflected on the feelings I get while walking the labyrinth. I don't think of it as a conscious problem-solving tool. Instead, I draw from it an almost-perfect sense of calm that comes from simply moving slowly into the labyrinth center, pausing for a while, and then moving slowly back out, all along allowing my mind to rest as much as it will.

My first experience walking the labyrinth was in rural central Texas several years ago. At the time, our mother was in failing health, and a friend, knowing that I was struggling with everything relating to Mother's decline, offered to take me to this private retreat site, where a labyrinth nested in large Live Oak trees is open to the public. On that first experience, I found the calm I have talked about here. And that same experience has been true the many times I have walked the labyrinth over the last nine years. As a contemplative tool, I don't think that you can prescribe how walking the labyrinth is supposed to affect someone. I know two Episcopal priests who do not like how they feel when walking the labyrinth path. The experience is unsettling to them. Is it a control issue? I don't know. I do know this: go without expectation, allow yourself to proceed slowly, and give yourself up to the moment. That's what I did this morning at the Sisters of Canossian in the south valley of Albuquerque. My conversation with Mildred yesterday reminded me that I had been missing this experience. I just had to take time to have it.

The Internet has much information on the labyrinth, including its historical roots, books by so-called experts, and even a labyrinth locator. While on the phone with Mildred, I found links to labyrinths in the big city of Dallas and even in a tiny town only 10 miles from her home in Tyler. "Go," I said.