Focus on the task and be in the moment. This is what I told myself when I ventured to walk the prayer labyrinth at the Scarritt Bennett Center as my mind raced with frustration and worry. I reminded myself that the steps I was taking, the curves I was bending, the path I was following, were all helps to guide me on the journey to wholeness and peace.
Allow me to paint a mental picture of how the journey can unfold should you choose to engage in some time with a labyrinth.
Take a physical or imaginary walk around a prayer labyrinth. When you focus on the next step, let your breath guide your pace as you ease into the natural walking ebb and flow, shift and sway, side to side with each step one step at a time. Consider the way the body moves its center of gravity just enough to allow forward motion. In fact, let yourself be so focused on coming into the cycle of balance of movement at the pace of calming peace that you find yourself arriving at the center of the labyrinth to be a sort of surprise. Sure enough, one step, one bend along the path at a time, you will get there. Such is life.
JOURNEY TOWARD DESIRE
While you are on this journey, allow your mind to see the many goals and desires that await you when it is time to call this moment of meditation done. Then, pick one to spend time with. Imagine that point of desire to be like the center on the journey of the labyrinth. Imagine the completeness, the job well done, the painting done and claimed good like God in creating the waters and the sky. However, rather than being focused on and driven by that goal or end with all the anticipation, desire, worry, or anxiety that often comes with over-focusing on goals, instead consider the steps you will need to take to get there. These steps are the path, and you can only take them one step at a time. Imagine the path, the design, the plans laid before you, the way these steps will lead, and at a measured ease and in pace with growing calm assurance, walk the labyrinth of your mind step-by-step through the journey of your hopes with that goal waiting patiently for you to arrive at the center.
THE BEAUTY AND POWER OF THE PROCESS
Live into and love each step of your journey. Let them serve the purposes that each is meant to serve. Value the practice and process even as the ebbs and flows and shifts of weight require of you what they require. Some steps will be easy, some difficult, while others uneven along the path. Yet, this is the microcosm of a life centered in prayer on a path of divine design. An experience lived one step at a time in full trust that no matter what happens along the way “all manner of things shall be well,” as Julia Norwich put it.
ROADBLOCKS
Surely something, someone, or some situation will come along your path. It may strike you as a barrier too heavy, too awkward, too uncomfortable, too vulnerable, or otherwise too much to conceivably pass through or go around. Yet, in reality, the labyrinth is not an impermeable fortress of walls and barriers and unbreakable paths. It is a guide. It is a thing of boundaries to aid in centering of heart and mind. It is set in place once laid, yes, but it is you who is the creative force empowered by God to both shape the path toward God’s preferred vision and walk it in whatever way it needs to be walked. Nothing can prevent you from being faithful to God at work in each step that you take even if that step is outside of the lines that had been drawn.
Remember you can walk around, create a new route that overlays your best laid plans and return to the preferred flow and path at any time. This fluidity in practice reflects our lives as those created in the image of God, who teaches us to take one step at a time towards divine goals rather than trusting in instant gratifications. It is the way we step that matters most, trusting and at peace. The path we take is simply our path to give shape and boundaries to our efforts. While porous and breakable these are helpful boundaries none the less.
LIFE WITHOUT THE PATH
God knows that when left to go without some direction, some boundaries, some way to go about this life, that we will wander and wallow in our imperfections, brokenness, and aimless ways. We may even go so far as living someone else’s life in some other way and thus miss out on the gifts that await us on our unique and often imperfect journey. Just think of a time when deviation from a well-laid plan turned out to be the best way and revealed the most amazing opportunity from a new idea or to connection with a new forever friend.
GO AND JOURNEY YOUR JOURNEY
It is my prayer that you decide to take the journey, to pause daily and walk the walk of the labyrinth. There is no wrong way. I have described how one’s mind might consider and welcome the journey. I pray you discover and learn even more ways to benefit from this beautiful gift and practice of meditation and prayer one step at a time.
Side Note: Know that we are nothing like the computers and devices of our time that do tasks with efficiency and perfection with great volume and without fanfare. We are beings empowered to thrive and live one thing, one step, at a time. May you receive the gift and grace of such focused living and find the journey of the labyrinth a way to come back to the paths God has in mind for you to live now and in the days to come.
Author: Linda Furtado
Photo of the labyrinth at Scarritt Bennett
Photographer: Linda Furtado
Linda Furtado is the Director of Spirituality and Arts at Scarritt Bennett Center and leads our Soul Work program. For more information, please email lfurtado@scarrittbennett.org.