Waxing Contemplative-Loopy-Poetic with the Labyrinth

So parts of the Christian faith tradition can seem pretty weird. If you start reading the mystics or even some of the just generally contemplative-type people, they talk about candles and incense and dreams and visions and hearing voices and hurting themselves in order to experience more of God. It can get a little loopy.

I appreciate those folks...from a safe distance. And I'm particularly grateful for the contemplatives who call me to rest in Christ, trust in Christ, deepen my life-roots into Christ through prayer and meditation.

Yesterday I joined about a dozen IV staff workers at a day of retreat at a local retreat center. I've been to this retreat center several times. And on the grounds, they have a labyrinth.

It's a really simple prayer labyrinth. With the path laid out in stones and gravel. I've walked it just about every time I've gone and never really been able to enter into the experience the way that I think you're supposed to.

But yesterday was a little different. I was able to more fully enter into the experience of moving towards the center and then coming back out again.

And after I emerged from the labyrinth experience, I wrote a little hack-job of a poem that I thought I'd share with you all, if you can suffer my poor attempt.

The Labyrinth

I start out
full of energy and certainty.

This path will be clear, the direction obvious
confident that I will reach the center
(perhaps in record time)

But the path doesn't seem to know
the most efficient route.

And I am sometimes closer
and then the path turns
and I appear to be much farther out.

I start to wonder where my confident energy has gone
and I wonder where the path will take me next
and I wonder if I'm getting any closer to the goal
and I wonder at how different this path leads than it would if I were the one mapping it out
and I wonder at the unexpected turns
and I wonder at the inefficiency of it all
and I wonder at how brash I seemed at the start
and I wonder if there is any true confidence that might be found to replace it
and I wonder as I'm unexpectedly at the farthest edge
if there is any hope of true proximity to the center

And then a gentle unexpected turn.
And what seemed so far away is suddenly very close

I am only just sufficiently humbled to not cut across to the middle
and to know that this closeness, too, might pass

But I am discovering a deeper certitude
to replace my prior confidence.

I am discovering faith.
Not path-faith, as if these rocks and pebbles were animate and sovereign

Faith in the one who has laid out this path
and scripted these steps

And so I walk.
And a turn that seems to take me away from my goal
I now trust is carrying me further up and further in

Until at last I reach the center.
A simple marble bench.

Where many before me have sat and met with the Lord of the path.

Had the bench been there at the beginning
my prayers would have been bold, certain, animated, loud

But after this journey, all I know to do is offer myself,
my life, my days, to the path-Lord
and sit in humbled reflection and silence

I nod off and jerk awake with a nod. I take a deep breath
stand up. and go back the way I came.

This path is a good gift and I recognize it more freely backwards
even with its' inefficiencies and unnecessary turns
that strip me of myself in order that I might worship one who is much greater.

I walk it by faith
until I am released into
the labyrinth of the rest of my journey

In order that I might learn to walk in that way
as I have learned to walk in this.