This is a short story that Subaruman wrote back in 2005. I submitted it to a writing contest on the Labyrinth Society website, http://www.labyrinthsociety.org/ . Check 'em out if you want to know more about Labyrinths. If I may toot my own horn, it did win a couple hundred bucks as the Grand Prize winning entry.
Out of Place
What a perfectly strange place for a labyrinth, among the sick and the dying. I’ve always pictured them at retreat centers far deep into the forest maybe in North Carolina or better yet among the mysterious green hills of Ireland, but not in Dallas, Texas. She is awkward; stuck in the middle of a massive healthcare complex surrounded by stale high-rise medical offices and patient rooms. The Eastern Redbuds scattered about the labyrinth and the trickling waterfall almost make you feel as if you’re not in Downtown Dallas-- that you’re not here to see a brother who is receiving his final dose of chemotherapy, or that you’re not here exhausted from spending each day with your spouse of 45 years who, in all likelihood, will never leave this hospital.
It is strange to me that the architects of this particular labyrinth attempted to recreate a calming space for retreat. The tension of what the designers had in mind and the deep sorrow I feel makes me chuckle silently. Did they really think that any of us here could truly escape? Within this space, the reality always overwhelms the serenity the labyrinth offers. Still, I will walk the labyrinth today because I can make no sense of my reason for taking the first or the last step inside this space. All the ailing ones, their families, and the hospital staff curiously looking down from their glassed-in perches intensify this feeling. Their confused looks tell me they see no reason in my walking either. And therein lies the conundrum. Labyrinths do much good when they are “out-of-place.” They are wonderful additions to retreat centers and churches but they are badly needed where concrete is the main element and where anxiety hangs in the air like a morning fog.
I take a deep breath and consume the unseasonably cold air. It is overcast and windy. No one is walking the stones with me. Those who are present are sitting on benches that face the path. They don’t seem curious at all. They carry heavy loads and have come here seeking silence and an opportunity to pray to a God they are not sure really exists. “Their pain is not your pain,” I learned in my training. Easier said than done I have learned since. Today I walk just to walk—to concentrate on my steps—the sounds my feet make on the rough rocks. I follow the path to center myself not only so I can go care for these many people tomorrow. I follow the path slowly to the center and back out again so I, if only for a moment, can lay aside reason and doubt. I will know that pain and suffering is not all encompassing. There is still a world outside this hospital and outside of me that simply and magnificently . . . is. The sparrows fly briskly from limb to limb and know no difference between play and foraging for food. They are unaware of my grief and the heavier anticipated loss that inflict so many others that surround this labyrinth.
Ah, I see someone has joined me on this unending path. She staggers for a moment as if she doesn’t know at what speed or direction to begin her brief journey. “Good for her,” I think. Good for her that she is walking. Good for her that she has read no books or essays on the healing elements of the labyrinth. I’m sure she has yet to put meaning to her steps. Good for her. I wonder, “Is she as glad as I am that there are no religious symbols in this space?” I don’t walk today to add to my faith. I don’t walk today as religious practice. I walk to reconnect with my spirit that asks for nothing. She passes me on the path to my left. Both our feet drag the stone. I become conscious of my own heavy load I carry so I begin to lift my feet and really feel my ankle bone roll my foot from outside heel to inside toe and again. How often I walk flat-footed around this hospital with stale air in my lungs. I breathe in and out and walk as my feet and legs were created to walk.
We pass again and I notice her feet are no longer dragging. She still looks down; head covered from the cool wind by her lime green fleece hood, hair billowing down on both sides of her solemn face hiding all but her nose from the little sunlight the clouds have given reprieve. Her hospital gown sneaks out beneath her jacket, her plastic I.D. band hanging loosely on her bruised and dangling arms.
I reach the center where I always seem to pause and think of St. Isaac the Syrian’s counsel, “Dive down into your self, and there you will find the steps by which you might ascend.” I move on and again notice the other walker. Should I even be noticing? “Remember,” I say to myself, “you have come to walk to get away from the storms that whirl inside those patient’s rooms. Leave your pastoral identity behind. . . just for a moment.” But she stops and shifts her feet as if she might turn around and go back the way she came. She lifts her head for a moment and faces the sky with intent and begins again her walk.
It strikes me that possibly we are walking the labyrinth for different reasons. I entered to escape reason and doubt and symbols. She entered, perhaps quite by accident, to embrace her reality however laiden with saddness and worry it might be. She may be searching for symbols to give meaning to her pain. Or maybe she longs for reason to rescue her from her feeling of helplessness. Perhaps when we both leave this inward/outward path we will both arrive at a similar place. We will be able to walk back into that Cancer Center. She will face her doctor and her illness with a new hope and that rediscovered knowledge that there is much beauty in this world within and without her. I will also have a fresh look on the pain I encounter through my helping others. I’ll think of the redbuds, the sparrows, and the dead stones that scraped the leather souls of my shoes. There is an other world. One that is beyond what I encounter so deeply on a daily basis. One that is bigger but not beyond our senses.
As always, I walk the outward journey faster than the inward journey. Even when I attempt to slow my pace, I feel as if I’m being flung out of the labyrinth. Like an unstable far away moon that can no longer maitain its orbit, I’m spunout as if I’d slowly tethered myself to its center only to be released at a quicker pace. I feel my heart rate increase and a new energy swelling within my once heavy body.
I complete my outward path. I desire to turn around and look back at the other walker, even to offer her some of my ‘wisdom.’ Has she stopped and walked off deaming this excersise unneccasary or has she dropped to her knees to beg God to change her stark yet blurred reality? Instead I walk down the donor-etched brick steps and enter the revolving door of the Cancer Center. I’ll let the labyrith help her. She helped me, surely unaware, bring new meaning to my labyrith walk. I will leave her to complete her journey if she completes it at all. She has for a breif moment focused through her barely porus grief on following this path that is not there to challenge her to figure out God’s will, or struggle with its elusiveness, or even dare her to conquer her illness. The labyrinth is not even there for her to complete. She has been courageous enough to jouney inward and then outward though both paths can be difficult, full of as many thorns as opening buds. She has left the lovely cirlcle of the healthy and joined the fringes of the ill—those displaced figures looking to regain their wholeness. Possibly she’ll reconnect, not necessarily with the healthy masses, but with her innerspirit that is unscathed by disease and is outside of this temporal world and dense with beauty. She surely has been given enough trinkets, advice, and trite words. At this moment, thank God, she has no guided meditation, no mentor, no instruction booklet. Still, she walks. Good for her.
What a perfectly strange place for a labyrinth, among the sick and the dying. I’ve always pictured them at retreat centers far deep into the forest maybe in North Carolina or better yet among the mysterious green hills of Ireland, but not in Dallas, Texas. She is awkward; stuck in the middle of a massive healthcare complex surrounded by stale high-rise medical offices and patient rooms. The Eastern Redbuds scattered about the labyrinth and the trickling waterfall almost make you feel as if you’re not in Downtown Dallas-- that you’re not here to see a brother who is receiving his final dose of chemotherapy, or that you’re not here exhausted from spending each day with your spouse of 45 years who, in all likelihood, will never leave this hospital.
It is strange to me that the architects of this particular labyrinth attempted to recreate a calming space for retreat. The tension of what the designers had in mind and the deep sorrow I feel makes me chuckle silently. Did they really think that any of us here could truly escape? Within this space, the reality always overwhelms the serenity the labyrinth offers. Still, I will walk the labyrinth today because I can make no sense of my reason for taking the first or the last step inside this space. All the ailing ones, their families, and the hospital staff curiously looking down from their glassed-in perches intensify this feeling. Their confused looks tell me they see no reason in my walking either. And therein lies the conundrum. Labyrinths do much good when they are “out-of-place.” They are wonderful additions to retreat centers and churches but they are badly needed where concrete is the main element and where anxiety hangs in the air like a morning fog.
I take a deep breath and consume the unseasonably cold air. It is overcast and windy. No one is walking the stones with me. Those who are present are sitting on benches that face the path. They don’t seem curious at all. They carry heavy loads and have come here seeking silence and an opportunity to pray to a God they are not sure really exists. “Their pain is not your pain,” I learned in my training. Easier said than done I have learned since. Today I walk just to walk—to concentrate on my steps—the sounds my feet make on the rough rocks. I follow the path to center myself not only so I can go care for these many people tomorrow. I follow the path slowly to the center and back out again so I, if only for a moment, can lay aside reason and doubt. I will know that pain and suffering is not all encompassing. There is still a world outside this hospital and outside of me that simply and magnificently . . . is. The sparrows fly briskly from limb to limb and know no difference between play and foraging for food. They are unaware of my grief and the heavier anticipated loss that inflict so many others that surround this labyrinth.
Ah, I see someone has joined me on this unending path. She staggers for a moment as if she doesn’t know at what speed or direction to begin her brief journey. “Good for her,” I think. Good for her that she is walking. Good for her that she has read no books or essays on the healing elements of the labyrinth. I’m sure she has yet to put meaning to her steps. Good for her. I wonder, “Is she as glad as I am that there are no religious symbols in this space?” I don’t walk today to add to my faith. I don’t walk today as religious practice. I walk to reconnect with my spirit that asks for nothing. She passes me on the path to my left. Both our feet drag the stone. I become conscious of my own heavy load I carry so I begin to lift my feet and really feel my ankle bone roll my foot from outside heel to inside toe and again. How often I walk flat-footed around this hospital with stale air in my lungs. I breathe in and out and walk as my feet and legs were created to walk.
We pass again and I notice her feet are no longer dragging. She still looks down; head covered from the cool wind by her lime green fleece hood, hair billowing down on both sides of her solemn face hiding all but her nose from the little sunlight the clouds have given reprieve. Her hospital gown sneaks out beneath her jacket, her plastic I.D. band hanging loosely on her bruised and dangling arms.
I reach the center where I always seem to pause and think of St. Isaac the Syrian’s counsel, “Dive down into your self, and there you will find the steps by which you might ascend.” I move on and again notice the other walker. Should I even be noticing? “Remember,” I say to myself, “you have come to walk to get away from the storms that whirl inside those patient’s rooms. Leave your pastoral identity behind. . . just for a moment.” But she stops and shifts her feet as if she might turn around and go back the way she came. She lifts her head for a moment and faces the sky with intent and begins again her walk.
It strikes me that possibly we are walking the labyrinth for different reasons. I entered to escape reason and doubt and symbols. She entered, perhaps quite by accident, to embrace her reality however laiden with saddness and worry it might be. She may be searching for symbols to give meaning to her pain. Or maybe she longs for reason to rescue her from her feeling of helplessness. Perhaps when we both leave this inward/outward path we will both arrive at a similar place. We will be able to walk back into that Cancer Center. She will face her doctor and her illness with a new hope and that rediscovered knowledge that there is much beauty in this world within and without her. I will also have a fresh look on the pain I encounter through my helping others. I’ll think of the redbuds, the sparrows, and the dead stones that scraped the leather souls of my shoes. There is an other world. One that is beyond what I encounter so deeply on a daily basis. One that is bigger but not beyond our senses.
As always, I walk the outward journey faster than the inward journey. Even when I attempt to slow my pace, I feel as if I’m being flung out of the labyrinth. Like an unstable far away moon that can no longer maitain its orbit, I’m spunout as if I’d slowly tethered myself to its center only to be released at a quicker pace. I feel my heart rate increase and a new energy swelling within my once heavy body.
I complete my outward path. I desire to turn around and look back at the other walker, even to offer her some of my ‘wisdom.’ Has she stopped and walked off deaming this excersise unneccasary or has she dropped to her knees to beg God to change her stark yet blurred reality? Instead I walk down the donor-etched brick steps and enter the revolving door of the Cancer Center. I’ll let the labyrith help her. She helped me, surely unaware, bring new meaning to my labyrith walk. I will leave her to complete her journey if she completes it at all. She has for a breif moment focused through her barely porus grief on following this path that is not there to challenge her to figure out God’s will, or struggle with its elusiveness, or even dare her to conquer her illness. The labyrinth is not even there for her to complete. She has been courageous enough to jouney inward and then outward though both paths can be difficult, full of as many thorns as opening buds. She has left the lovely cirlcle of the healthy and joined the fringes of the ill—those displaced figures looking to regain their wholeness. Possibly she’ll reconnect, not necessarily with the healthy masses, but with her innerspirit that is unscathed by disease and is outside of this temporal world and dense with beauty. She surely has been given enough trinkets, advice, and trite words. At this moment, thank God, she has no guided meditation, no mentor, no instruction booklet. Still, she walks. Good for her.
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