The journey stretches out with a beat of a heart - The mystery we call Labyrinth

Chartres Cathedral, about 1750, Jean Baptiste Rigaud

A wonderful poem by William Stafford, from Smokes’ Way (1983) puts into words the experience of walking a labyrinth.

When God watches you walk, you are/

neither straight nor crooked. The journey stretches out, and all of its reasons/ beat like a heart. Coming back, no triumph, no regret, you fold into the curves,/

left, right, and arrive. You touch the door. The road straightens behind you./

It is now. It has all come true.

Gil Bailie elaborates further on the poem: "Our lives meander all over taking different turns, running into dead ends and reverses and suddenly, with God’s grace we arrive at where we are going. We touch the door and the path straightens out behind us. I have a friend who says that if I met myself back when I was 20, he would not recognize me, but I would recognize him. Well, the door for us is the Cross and the scriptures straighten behind us. When we touch that, then we go back and read it again. We read it for the second time and we say: Christ is the answer and the Cross is the cure.  Now we can see what is happening in this story." 

And now, as Simone Weil reveals, we take our place at the mouth of the labyrinth:

"The beauty of the world is at the mouth of the labyrinth. The unwary individual who on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out, with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really going forward or merely turning round on the same spot. But this affliction is as nothing compared with the danger threatening him. For if he does not lose courage, if he goes on walking, it is absolutely certain that he will finally arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God. Afterward he will stay near the entrance so that he can gently push all those who come near into the opening" (1951, Waiting for God, pp. 163-164).

The eleven circuit Bon Secours Labyrinth is the focal point of a one-acre sacred space surrounded by tall shade trees, plants, flowers and meditation benches.

My first experience with a labyrinth was here at the Bon Secours Center during a Shalem Institute "Soul of the Executive" program in October 2000. During the first residency, a 6 day retreat, I walked the labyrinth 4 times, each time coming away a bit disoriented as my memories were being stirred and quieted at the same time. Each leaving of the center of the labyrinth I sensed a fear, as in a loss of balance with an unsettling peace, not one I had been accustom. 

Over time and with spiritual direction I came to realize that this dis-ease was "me" being displaced at the center of the universe - of the labyrinth if you will. A major part of this disorientation was that my memories were being transformed, so as they were no longer "my" memories but Christ's in which I shared. I admit that It seems all so scary as I came to understand what St Paul proclaimed, "It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). The re-visualizing of my memories is nothing short of this "I" that clung to a false security formed by this world - putting "me" at the center, to the constitution of a new "I" in Christ, now alive through His life, death and resurrection at the center.

So as Simone Weil describes, I too, after exiting the labyrinth, found myself near its entrance ready to nudge the next passerby into the mystery.