40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#34

34. There's always time to stop and smell the roses.


Walking a labyrinth must never become jogging a labyrinth, or running a labyrinth. It's a slow process; it's meant to be. You move along quietly, putting one foot in front of the other, minding the path and the turns, (especially if maintenance has been neglected). It's easy to get so caught up in an introspective state that you don't even notice your surroundings at all.

Sometimes that can be a good thing. There may be some essential inward work going on which requires all your attention. The labyrinth and its paths may be only a sort of ordering tool--something to keep you moving but dictate those movements so you don't have to think about them, let alone make decisions. There is nothing to distract you from what God is doing inside you.

It's also possible to have the opposite experience--to look around, enjoy the sights and smells, and turn the whole journey into a sightseeing trip while no interior work at all gets done. Sometimes, this can be a good thing, too. I've noticed that it's the way children always walk the labyrinths. We don't need to forever have our noses buried in our belly buttons. It can be a prayer in itself, just walking along, joyfully taking in the sky, the breezes, the sights of grass or blossom or leaf, the progress of fruits.

It's not such a good thing if it makes you lose the path entirely. Still, as long as you're inside the labyrinth, you're never too far from the path, and will be able to find it again, though figuring out the direction you were going might take a bit longer. It's always a tricky operation, guiding children in the right path without stifling their creative little souls (God made them that way), encouraging them to explore without trampling the young blueberries and to try fruit without gashing themselves on thorns, and teaching them, not just to stay on the path, but to know it well enough that they'll be able to stay on it by themselves when you are no longer at hand to guide them.

Having them around will remind you that there is always time to stop and smell the roses. Even in the midst of whatever inner crisis you are undergoing, looking up and discovering a rosebud or a butterfly or a little, hard, green grape beginning to fatten will give your soul relief and remind you that God is only stirring around in your insides for the purposes of creation and re-creation. Conversely, when you are wandering happily along noticing all the blossoms and grass and breezes, the discovery that the raspberries are reaching out long, thorny arms to snag you again will remind you that there is also work to be done, that even when life is a bowl of cherries, somebody has to plant, tend, and harvest those cherries, and each one has another seed of life inside it.