LABYRINTHINE

My back continues to recover slowly and today I walked 6000 steps.  Hurrah!  Not all were comfortable steps, but I did it, and am very encouraged.  Part of the walk was to see a much-loved old friend for lunch, and on the way home, I passed the labyrinth at the Harvard Divinity School and decided I could manage to walk it today.  And I did.  Here is a photo of the labyrinth:

It was deserted on this cool, sunny day.  Just the way I like it. 

I haven't walked it in quite a while, and today I was reminded how narrow the pathway is in this particular labyrinth.  It's almost not wide enough for two feet, and negotiating the turns while maintaining balance can be a challenge.  Also, it seemed that I just got going in one direction when another turn would come up.

As I was walking it/working it, I was thinking about the twists and turns in life, how hard some of them can be, and what a perfect symbol of this is captured in this labyrinth.  I had to greatly slow down in order to make any of the turns, another striking metaphor. 

Even when two labyrinths are laid out in the same pattern, the spacing of each is different and so walking each one is different. 

Similar to the way our lives work.

"A labyrinth has one entrance -- one way in and one way out. When we walk the path, we go around short curves and long curves; sometimes we are out on the edge, sometimes we circle around the center. We are never really lost, but we can never quite see where we are going." 

--Alex Pattakos in this Huffington Post piece.

  Finally, here's a scribbled Tangled Labyrinth I did at one of Sadelle Wiltshire's wonderful Tangled Labyrinth workshops.  Clearly this was in the nature of a quick scribble rather than a thoughtful tangle, and yet...I like it because it reminds me so much of the human brain.

Check out Sadelle's fabulous tangled labyrinth works here.  She is a CZT and a Veriditas-trained Labyrinth Facilitator, and a gifted artist and teacher.  You'll enjoy studying her examples.  Her teaching schedule is here at The Tangled Labyrinth.  And don't miss reading the interesting comment she made (in the comments section)--feel free to add your own reaction to this post if you have one, or have experience with labyrinths.

Labyrinths...Zentangle®...both a form of moving meditation.   Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

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