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PART THREE gives you specific ways to use the labyrinth for spiritual growth, healing work, creativity enhancement, goal setting, and ritual and celebration.

All of these chapters, all of their suggestions and exercises, are only turns in the path. What I hope for you is that whichever ones you choose will lead, like the labyrinth’s circuits, to the center: more love, more grace, more Spirit to support and guide your own path in life, wherever that path may lead.

Come with me now. Let us begin the journey.

CHAPTER TWO

Walking the Walk

I write this chapter on a summer afternoon in the cool dappled shade of a huge cedar near my favorite labyrinth at Harmony Hill, a retreat center on Hood Canal about two hours from my Seattle home. I’m here this weekend as a writer for personal writing time rather than in my usual role as program coordinator or retreat leader.

A meditation retreat is beginning this afternoon, and as people arrive they head to the labyrinth for a walk before the program begins. I watch people as I write, observing how each person uniquely approaches, and walks, the labyrinth.

The retreat leader shows up barefoot in the heat. He pauses a moment in thought or prayer at the labyrinth entrance, then walks slowly and reflectively to the center. Once there he sits down on a small bench, his back resting against the redwood tree growing in the center. Although his eyes are open, his gaze is obviously turned inward.

A middle-aged woman heads energetically into the labyrinth without pausing at the entrance, taking the circuits in great deliberate strides. Once at the center, though, she stops and closes her eyes. Her face and body soften and relax. Going out her gait is slower; I watch her stop and gaze at the marigolds and loosestrife blooming around the perimeter of the labyrinth.

A Chartres labyrinth with a redwood tree in the center, Harmony Hill, Washington.

A tall man in his twenties wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt lopes up to the labyrinth. At the entrance he cocks his head to one side briefly, peers up into the branches of the redwood, shrugs his shoulders, and steps in as if beginning an adventure. When almost to the center, he breaks into a great grin that keeps returning to light up his face all the way through the rest of the walk.

I am amazed, once again, at how accurately our individual personalities, and our states of mind and heart, are reflected in the way we actually walk the labyrinth.

MY OWN WALK

My first labyrinth walk, in a temporary rope labyrinth at a weekend workshop, was uneventful. I secretly wondered if I was walking the labyrinth correctly, figuring that if I did it “right” some astounding revelation would shake me to my core. It didn’t happen.

I envied others their powerful experiences in the labyrinth, including my friend Debra who had life-changing insights the first time she walked. My first walks reminded me of my first awkward attempts at meditation when it seemed as if all I did was try to figure out if I was meditating correctly.

Looking back on those early walks, I know now that I was simply trying too hard. Instead of allowing the labyrinth to teach and lead me, I was struggling to do it “right.” I tried harder and harder each walk to get “it,” not knowing what “it” was, but knowing I was missing something, feeling increasingly frustrated.

An invitation to build a backyard labyrinth for friends proved to be the first meaningful step in my own labyrinth journey. One fall weekend we hauled river rocks into the ancient spiral pattern of the labyrinth, laying down moss between the smooth gray stones. By Sunday evening we had created a seven-circuit Cretan labyrinth that seemed to emerge softly from the earth. We placed luminarias—candles set in sand inside small paper bags—around the labyrinth.

Worn out from two days of lifting stones, I decided to enjoy the view from the deck while others initiated the labyrinth with a first walk. Later when all was quiet in the garden, I stepped into the labyrinth and began walking quickly. How fast can I do