So many reasons to do so. My reason? Today? Location. When I can’t find myself, when I can’t find God. When it feels like I’m in a constant state of living in the upside down, the physical, somatic act of taking spiral-shaped steps towards the center - of the ground, of the earth, of myself - assists me in remembering God and myself dwelling together, knowing, and being known.
In studying the Enneagram since 1999, it is clear to me that my essential, raw materials self, is different from the personality type that I’ve constructed to survive through my ego. A friend and colleague of mine recently said that our personality type structure is our first act of self love. It’s what got us through to this day and breath. The Enneagram helps us to see clearly how we view and interact with the world presented to us. If we stay with it and linger for a while, we learn to relax that type structure and move downward towards the essence of self, a walk towards home.
Home is not some distant land that I will never reach. Home is downward, toward the center of myself, where the Divine dwells. When I visit, I see that my essential self - my raw materials, who I was when I first arrived - intersect with the Spirit of God who holds the purest intentions for whom I’m meant to be. This is the person that is known and connected to Primordial Source. Walking the Labyrinth is a visceral experience of walking inward for a visit.
One of my favorite poets is the late John O’Donohue, who offers a beautiful visual of this journey. He speaks of this inner and outer landscape as a deep ocean. We spend much of our time treading water on the waves and ripples of the surface, the outer landscape, life in all of its chaos and demands. It’s loud, energetic, full of distraction and duty; small ripples, large waves, tossing us about.
At any time, we can choose to drop down into the deep, beneath the bustle above, and sink into the silent, still, beautiful calm of the depths to hear ourselves again, hear God, place our attention on the stillness and listen to what might be there as gift.
Walking the Labyrinth is that journey we take from our outer life, however that landscape may look, towards our inner life, however we may find it. We notice that those two landscapes inform one another. Frederick Buechner describes this relationship when he says, “right solitude creates right speech and right speech creates right solitude.”
Life is lived with less dissonance when we spend time in both places. When we lose our preference for one landscape over the other, we become more receptive and more curious people. We know from some deep place that everything belongs and there is nothing to exclude. We become open containers, where love permeates both in the depths and in the shallow places, and even, in the liminal spaces in between. Walking the Labyrinth helps us become peregrinators, noticing our travel in the space between, that our connection to both ends could be what rehumanizes us in the land of dehumanization.
If you are in or near the Columbia TN area, please feel welcome to walk the Labyrinth in my side yard. All are welcome! I’m also looking for artists who might want to paint a portion of this bench with your design. It needs another layer of Kilz before we lay paint as of today. Reach out if you want to join in on the creative fun!