MY WIFE AND I took a little trip up the coast this last weekend to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary.
I had an image of small children, chasing each other through the complex twists and turns, shouting and laughing and trailing balloons.
I hesitated before typing the word "celebrate" in that sentence because everyone—from colleagues at work to the waiter at the restaurant on Friday night—immediately respond by saying "Congratulations!"
Why did the waiter ask what we were celebrating, anyway?
It was probably because I was the only man in the restaurant wearing a sports coat.
I always have the same response to that response.
I always wonder what we are being congratulated on—our ability to tolerate each other for all those years?
The truth is that when you have found your soul mate, it isn't exactly torture to get to eat and sleep and plan and dream and work together for ten or twenty or thirty or forty years.
Or, I'm assuming, for sixty or eighty.
But congratulations are one thing, and celebration is another.
Yes, celebrate is the right word.
The resort we stayed at had a labyrinth on its property: an elaborate maze of paths marked out by rows of stones, which you can walk—entering at a point on the circumference, then winding your way through countless twists and turns until you reach the center, then winding your way back.
I strolled across the road to find it and walk it while my wife was having a massage.
It rested in a clearing in the middle of a larger meditation garden, dappled with sunlight and shade from the surrounding trees.
I like labyrinths, partly because they are so much a part of the common human spiritual tradition.
The sign posted at the entrance to this labyrinth explained that the oldest labyrinth was to be found in America: in Galesteo, New Mexico, constructed 3500 years ago.
It also said that the most famous labyrinth was the one at Notre Dame de Chartres Cathedral in France, and that the one in front of me had been modeled on that one.
Finally, it said that there was no "right" or "wrong" way to walk a labyrinth, and I smiled, both because I agreed with the wisdom of the remark, and then because of the picture it brought to my mind unbidden.
I had an image of small children, chasing each other through the complex twists and turns, shouting and laughing and trailing balloons.
But then the sign added:
"We encourage you to take some time to walk our labyrinth and enjoy our meditation garden."
I took quite a little time to digest that last sentence.
At first glance, it seemed to be instructions, hinting at at least one aspect of a "right" way to walk a labyrinth—take your time, don't rush it.
Was this a self-contradiction?
Were there, in some sense, rules for walking labyrinths?
I finally decided that the sign was merely suggesting that I stop long enough to actually walk the labyrinth or enjoy the garden, and wasn't directing me as to how.
I stepped onto the path, walking slowly, meditatively.
I was completely alone.
The ghosts of children and trailing balloons crossed the path of my imagination again, and I thought of how similar labyrinths were to the games we played as kids.
There is no final goal to a labyrinth, anymore than there is to a game of tag or of hide and seek.
They are all activities which only justify themselves—all about the process and nothing about a product.
Nobody wins a game of tag: you become it and you proceed to make someone else it.
Nobody wins a game of hide and seek.
There is no final goal of the game.
A labyrinth may appear to have a goal, at the center, to those who haven't walked one, but if you have walked one then you know that the center is only the half-way point: the point at which you begin the return journey.
And when that is complete you find yourself exactly where you began.
One thing that always strikes me about a labyrinth is that it's a place to get lost in.
Obviously, I didn't get lost in the normal sense of the word—I was never more than five paces from the edge.
To be continued...
