Labyrinth

I attended a retreat yesterday offered by Cassie Premo Steele (www.cassiepremosteele.blogspot.com).  The beautiful day burgeoned with offerings for reflection.  One of the experiences included walking a labyrinth.  I was affected by the time I spent following the winding path.

Wikipedia expounded on labyrinth.  In Greek mythology the Labyrinth was designed to hold the Minotaur and keep him from escaping.  This lends itself to the colloquial English labyrinth being synonymous with maze.  But contemporary scholars (and my experience) make a distinction – maze refers to a complex branching (multicursal) puzzle with choices of path and direction while a single path (unicursal) labyrinth has only one, non-branching path which leads to the center.  A labyrinth in this sense has an unambiguous route to the center and back and is not designed to be difficult to navigate.  Wikipedia points out that labyrinths appeared as designs on pottery, basketry, and body art, etched on cave walls and tiled into church floors where people were invited to walk their winding course.  Its ancient pattern is found on Cretan coins, on the ground in South America and Scandinavia, in the Native American Hopi culture and in gothic Cathedrals.

I found a medieval style labyrinth illustration similar to the one I actually traveled. 

My labyrinth experience reminded me of the sureness of putting one foot in front of the other.  The twists and turns sometimes felt disorienting and the thought of being lost was frequent.  Because I knew the journey was headed to a guaranteed center I kept going.  Because of that knowledge I was confident in the destination even if I couldn’t make sense of the tangled trail bending back over space and through places I had already walked.  Sometimes I wondered how long the path could possibly be!  At one point a blooming honeysuckle branch hung over the edge of a fence and I was able to stretch my nose up, drink its delicious scent and stride on.  For variety I used old marching band skills to make the turns by stepping backward and pivoting; the twirls felt like dancing.  Eventually, after what seemed a long time for such a small circle, I reached the center.  There I was invited to stop, or not, and then set forth again back through the labyrinth and out the same way I had entered. 

How much more analogy for life could I ask for?  Beginnings and ends which turn out to be new beginnings seem life’s greatest constant.  A labyrinth is a special pattern.  You cannot get lost.  Is life like this?  When I think I am lost perhaps it is a time when I am bending back to travel again a space I’ve been through before to learn what I didn’t or what I have forgotten and need to relearn.  Honoring our pace, skipping, dancing, strolling, standing – projecting no right or wrong way to move is a challenge as is agreeing not to stop moving forward.