Lessons from the Labyrinth

The bedroom I stayed in at Susan's overlooks her Cretan labyrinth. There's a division within the labyrinth community where some people insist it be called a Classical labyrinth. Whatever. Potato-potahto. Funny how we can get our knickers in a twist over names. Reminds me of a 7th Day Adventist woman who was hellbent on making sure that I knew the REAL sabbath was on Saturday, NOT Sunday. Really? This is what you argue about? Anyway, back to the labyrinth: Susan has had her Chartres Cathedral labyrinth for about 12 years. Her Cretan/Classical one was a more recent addition. The first time I walked it, it seemed tiny. Tiny. I was comparing it to mine-at-the-time in Martinsburg, WV which was a bit larger. I had not walked Susan's since I'd left WV. So here it was a year & 1/2 later and I walk it again. It's HUGE compared to my little labyrinth now. It's all perspective, innit? What do you compare things to?

View from my bedroom window.

Chartres Cathedral labyrinth. Part of it, anyway.

First thing Saturday a.m. Susan & I walked the Chartres labyrinth. I didn't get a picture of the whole thing--it's about 100 feet across, I think. She said if I went down the hill and into the woods, I'd get a good shot. I wasn't that motivated in the wet, dewy grass to do that. Anyway, as I was walking through, I thought about how it was fun because I didn't know where I was in the labyrinth or how much more there was to go before I got to the center. Plus it's just so HUGE. If I stopped & turned to take a picture, I wasn't sure which way I needed to go if I'd not paid attention to the direction Susan was walking. In a word, it was unpredictable. What was funny about that was that 2 minutes prior to that realization, I had been saying that I wanted my life to be essentially . . . more predictable. Hmmmm . . . .