40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#30

30. It takes as long to return to the Real World as to find the Quiet Center.


In my labyrinth (and most others, too) there are no walls, so you really could walk straight across all paths to reach the center in seconds, but why would you? The journey is the point! Leaving, it's even more of a temptation--you've had your contemplative journey, pondered insights near the tree in the center, and now you can simply step to the entrance path that leads so near (before its first unexpected left turn--see #4) and walk back out through the trellis.

By so doing, one would miss the entire raison d'etre of a labyrinth, of course. It's meant to be a symbol of a journey we have no power to take shortcuts in--life itself. (We can end it entirely, but we can't take shortcuts in it.) We speak of things such as "wandering from the path," "going the wrong direction," and even "sitting down and crying," but in fact, our life is composed of time, and time moves only in one direction and reigns as absolutely as any despot. No matter what you choose to do with the next minute, at the end of it you'll be exactly one minute older, which is to say, one minute further from the moment of your birth, and one minute nearer to the moment of your death.

So my attempt to avoid certain pitfalls in the Labyrinth of my Life, (meant, with all my heart, to be not denial, but avoidance of evil, let me add!) kept me circling for years around those same pitfalls, never able to get any closer to my goal. Then again, the Labyrinth of Life is more like a spiral, leading in and out from the center over and over, but on a higher (or lower) plane each time. So I also sometimes tried to rush back out to "the world" to share awesome insights God had granted at my latest visit to the center, without taking the time to stew those insights thoroughly into my own soul first.

The journey is the point. The journey is the point. Daily,(at least) as I write these small essays, I visit the center and sit with God awhile. I begin to write my thoughts, and then, following the Holy Spirit's guidance as well as I know how, I delete, and retype, and put words back in and take them out again, and reword, and reword. . . this particular one has had nearly as many paragraphs removed as you see now. . . and eventually hit Publish Post and send out another small insight into the odd world known as Blog, where I hope some are sharing and gaining from it and adding and taking away from it into their own lives' labyrinths. On the days when I rush, and barely edit, it's likely that there's less Truth Germ present.

This is just a tiny picture. In much larger and more important ways, there have been life-threatening quests to the Center, dazzling insights there, and much more time steeping than seems necessary to me, in my hurry to share these awesome things (awesome to me because they fit me--I get that).

Take your time. In the light of eternity, you have plenty.