Connecting Around the Labyrinth

When I ask people if they have walked a labyrinth or know what one is, most usually think I'm talking about a maze. Like the one that Harry Potter fought his way out of in "The Goblet of Fire," or the cornfield variety whose puzzling twists and deadends have caused more than one lost walker to call 911. I explain, as someone did for me as a labyrinth novice, that a labyrinth is trustworthy - not deceitful. It is one path, the same path, that leads the walker to the center and back out. With the path certain, the walker can free his/her mind to meditate, ponder, question, notice.

Imagine my excitement this weekend as I rubbed elbows with over 100 people whose every other word seemed to be labyrinth!

Opening ceremony of the 16th Annual Gathering of The Labyrinth Society at
the Duncan Center in Del Ray, Florida

Not only were they talking about labyrinths but making them, from the contemplative to whimsical!

Peace Labyrinth
(designed by Lisa Moriarty; painted by Steve Selpal)

Pinecone Labyrinth
(created by Tony Christie and Ole Jensen)

Flower Labyrinth
(created by Tom Vetter)

Flamingo Labyrinth, of course!
It's Florida.
(created by Lars Howlett)

Connection was my intention for my first labyrinth Gathering.
Connection with others for whom the labyrinth holds unique significance, personally and within community.
Deeper connection to self on my continuing path of discovery.
RE-connection was an added bonus!

Catherine walking her backyard labyrinth during my
visit - April 19, 2013

Catherine Anderson, whose labyrinth in Charlotte, North Carolina was the 18th I visited on my 50-state labyrinth journey, was a fellow participant! The chances that I would select her labyrinth to visit in North Carolina, then meet her again one and a half years later in Florida, speaks to the connecting power of the labyrinth.

Sharing a peace labyrinth at the Gathering
(designed by Lisa Moriarty)

The challenge after any conference or retreat which transports you from the "ordinary" into a realm of possibility and inspiration, is to somehow fit your experiences into the rhythm of daily life. A quote by one of the presenters, Gary Boelhower, gives me a direction…

"The actualization of a journey is in the revisiting." 

As I unpack my suitcase this morning, I move forward with the next step -- Reflection.

"Voices of Millions" at Ellis Island

It's been a week since my friend, Marian, and I visited Ellis Island, and I am still haunted by it. Haunted in the same way that images of Titanic's vacant decks and abandoned staterooms beg that their stories  be told. In the same way that the stillness of a Civil War battlefield, now peaceful, holds thousands of stories within its silence.

There are 12 million stories in the halls of Ellis Island, 12 million! Immigrants - some alone, others with friends or family - who passed through the Great Hall from 1892-1954.  Each with a story.

Perhaps it was the artifacts on the 3rd floor of the Immigration Museum that triggered my  imagination. Encased in glass, preserved exactly as they were found before restoration began in 1999.

 




Who lay in the hospital bed?
 Was she frightened, separated from her family,
 suffering from tuberculosis?

Who sat in the chair - stamping papers, asking questions?
Did the faces across the desk follow him home at night, or blur into oneness?

Perhaps it was the windows, now smartly shaded, where views of Manhattan meant a new home to one, a dream denied to another.

Or perhaps it was the faces.

Eleni Mylonas, photographer/artist roamed the abandoned remains of Ellis Island for three months in 1983.  "I wandered around in silence, letting myself be guided by unknown forces compelling me to explore unlikely desolate corners of the endless mass," she wrote. One of her photographs hangs on the 3rd floor of the Immigration Museum.

Ellis Island, now empty of the immigrants who came and went,  continues to be alive with their dreams. Our country is alive with their ancestors, approximately 100 million of them.

As Eleni Mylonas described it, "….the voices of the millions of people who came through here, building a temple with their highest joys and deepest sorrows."  

Perspective

I awakened to rain.

Pudgy downpours

squeezed through gutters.

Lively droplets

puddled in mud.     

Birds' bath

gushed.

Flower pots 

weeped.

Flash!

Flood Warning

I poured a cup of tea and sat on the window seat at our Arkansas home. It would be a cozy inside day.  Perfect! I needed to tweak my book proposal for Labyrinth Journey ~ Fifty States, Fifty-One Stories and email it to a publisher.

No need to rush here, there.
No distractions to rake, weed.
The weather was my ally as I pulled chair to desk and opened my computer.

Yet at the same time, son Jason sat at the Little Rock airport. Flight to Corpus Christi delayed, then cancelled.

No luck re-booking for tomorrow.
No opportunity to attend the anticipated conference.

The same weather, not so perfect.

Such a lesson in perspective, isn't it?
Not a new lesson; nothing I don't already know.
But a reminder.
To appreciate
To be aware
To gingerly hold both
in the palm of my hand.










 

A Mindful Weekend

Books seem to magically appear in my life when I need them the most, but I may not know it at the time. A book may even sit on the shelf for months, until my life catches up with what its pages are waiting to share. It was because of a book that I spent the past weekend at Copper Beech Institute in West Hartford, Connecticut at a mindfulness retreat.

The book, of course, came along on the train ride from Grand Central Station to Waterbury, Connecticut, then in friend Marian's car on to Copper Beech. I'm not sure which of us was more excited, although I kept hearing muffled giggles from the zippered compartment of my suitcase.
The book's author, Sharon Salzberg, was the featured speaker at the retreat. Book and author were to be reunited, and I was going to meet the author whose words course through my mindfulness meditations each morning. It was a toss-up.

The Force of Kindness, Change Your Life with Love and Compassion

 Kindness as a Force sounded like a misnomer when I first picked up the book seven years ago. A force is strong, heavy, powerful. Kindness is well, kind. Gentle. It doesn't bowl you over like an 80 MPH wind, but sits beside you and helps you hang on. It stays and picks up the pieces afterwards. A force, perhaps, with a quieter nature.

The well-loved book - read three times, underlined, starred, decorated with blue post-it notes - continues to push me along a path of compassion toward self and others. It introduced me to lovingkindness meditation and, along with Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, encouraged me to live in the present moment. It prepared me for a longer path, a journey of labyrinths, where self-discovery and insight spiral through other walkers I meet along the way.

With a hundred or so men and women this weekend, I practiced sitting meditation, walking meditation, lovingkindness meditation. I stretched my body in gentle yoga. I walked a peaceful labyrinth in the early morning as the sun was topping a circle of trees.

   

I was kind to myself. The place where all kindness must begin.

As I handed Sharon my book to sign, I had a gushy speech, filled with flowery words of author admiration, all prepared to deliver. But when it came to the moment, I said simply,

"Thank you. Your words have made a difference in my life."

The book could hardly contain its excitement as Sharon's pen touched the paper.

We both carry her words inside us with a smile.

  

  

 

The Most Important Words in Today's NY Times

I love our Sunday morning routines, especially on a day as lovely as today! Blue skies, fluffy clouds, cooler temperatures minus the humidity. We're out the door by 7:30, down the 49 floors from our apartment, out the revolving doors, onto Washington Boulevard. Monday-Friday one of Jersey City's busiest streets. But today, quiet, peacefully quiet. One car slows down our jaywalk across two intersections, passed a shaded park lined with red and white periwinkles and remnants of roses, stubbornly hanging on for dear life.

Five minutes later, we're at Starbucks.
A couple of classic oatmeals, blueberry scone, grandé coffee for Drew, tall-vanilla-nonfat-decaf latte for me, or a "What's the use?" as one baffled barista once dubbed my order.
And a New York Times.

A thick Sunday New York Times. An even thicker New York Times stuffed with two added inserts, The New Season of fall movies AND The New Season of theater, classical and dance. At least two hours of reading enjoyment!

We find a bench, dappled with a sunshine/shade pattern, and put the paper aside. The view grabs our attention, more than any headline could.


   

Boats at Newport Marina

The Hudson

Downtown Manhattan skyline

One World Trade Center



Adjectives only get in the way.





I sift through each section, read, set aside. Drew does the same as we exchange the front page for "Travel" for "The Sunday Review."

Then I start my own piles - "Keep" and "Save." There's always something in "Save" that has caught my eye, that I will bring home and clip. Yes, I'm a newspaper clipper! Each week, anywhere from five to ten items end up on my bulletin board, "Things To Do in NYC" file, in an envelope to a friend or family member, my journal, or on the refrigerator door. I never question why they appeal to me. They just do, and they usually affect my life in a positive way.

Here is this week's collection…..

-article ("Liking Work Really Matters") by Paul A. O'Keefe which cites research for what seems common sense. "Being interested in a task is essential to being good at it." Why do we often forget this?
-bits and pieces from the bestseller lists with interesting books highlighted in yellow
- article about Glenn Close who will be appearing in "A Delicate Balance" on Broadway. The dates of the play go on my calendar and the article to our daughter, Katherine, who assisted Ms. Close recently at the Apple store in Portland, Maine, where she came in for help with her computer.
-an advertisement for the movie "My Old Lady," which starts Wednesday - looks delightful

And a quote - the most important find in my two hours of reading, by Steven Sotloff,
the second journalist killed by ISIS.

It goes on the refrigerator so I will read his words every day.

 Words which will endure long beyond the lives of those who ended his.  

Live your life to the fullest and fight to be happy…. 

Everyone has two lives. 

The second one begins when you realize you have only one.

  

Jane Franklin - One Woman's Story, Almost Forgotten

Have you heard of Jane Franklin? 

The picture on the cover of the book won't give you a clue. It is a portrait of her granddaughter, painted in 1765. 

No picture of Jane survives.  

The fact that she ever lived would have long been forgotten, had it not been for her older brother, known to the majority of Americans (colonists) of his time and of ours.

Benjamin Franklin. 

I happened to hear the book's author, Jill Lepore, interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air almost a year ago.   I added the title to my "To Read" list, then forgot about it until July when I was searching for a book to take on vacation. Not quite a beach read for our beach vacation to Maui, but I was purposefully looking for a book of substance - about a woman of substance.
The trip to Hawaii was the culmination of my 2-year journey to visit a labyrinth envisioned and/or built by a woman in each state.  I carried their stories with me as I traveled to meet the 50th woman, walk her labyrinth and hear her story.

The power of stories 

Only through listening to women tell their stories 

have I learned how deeply another person's story can impact my own.

All we know of Jane Franklin's story is through Benjamin's letters to her, the few surviving letters of hers to him and other family members, and her Book of Ages, where she recorded the births and deaths of her children. It is surprising that Jane, born in 1712 "when the Massachusetts poor laws required that boys be taught to write and girls to read," learned to write at all. Benjamin taught her, before he ran away from home to write his own story.

While her brother became famous, Jane lived on the edge of poverty with a husband, constantly in debt,  and a total of twelve children, eleven of whom died. She cared for her ailing parents and took in boarders to help with expenses.

                                                    She worked hard, very hard. 

She loved, lost, and lost again. 

She read whenever she could 

and wrote her letters.

No one knows where she was buried. Perhaps near the 20-foot granite obelisk erected for Benjamin in Boston's Granary Burying Ground.

At the end of her book, Jill Lepore quotes Virginia Woolf's essay, "The Art of Biography":

The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left a record of that life, worthy of biography -- the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is greatness? And what is smallness?

It is Jane herself who answers Virginia's probing questions. In her own hand. In a letter to her brother.

"I am willing to Depart out of it [life] when ever my Grat Benifactor has no farther Use for me.
I know the most Insignificant creature on Earth may be made some Use of in the Scale of Beings, may Touch some Spring."

The first page of Jane's Book of Ages

 



  

My OWN Labyrinth - Part 2

When I daydreamed of building a labyrinth in our yard, I naively imagined that we would whip it into shape in a weekend or two.

Labyrinth laborers 

preparing the ground

measuring 

marking 

hauling

setting the design

then

stepping back 

arms folded

proudly

proclaiming 

it

"Finished!"  

It is Step 2 in my 3-Step Plan. 

1. Complete visits

2. Build labyrinth

3. Write *book

But two weeks into the project, sitting on a pile of bricks, I slow down long enough to hear that voice, the one that lets me fret a bit before imparting her wisdom. Today it comes in the form of a question. 

"Have you learned nothing on this journey?" she asks. 

I detect impatience.

Of course, I know where she's headed with this line of questioning. I know...but I forget.

The path takes time to walk. 

There are lessons to be learned in the doing, the day-to-day, the creation.

Pay attention to what is before you.

Breathe.

The "army" of laborers has temporarily left. Without them I could not have begun. 

Anne Hornstein, whose labyrinth in Florida was the first I walked on my fifty-state journey,
helps me measure the center. She "happened" to be driving to Colorado and
offered to consecrate the space and help with the lay-out. 

Drew unloads 100+ bricks and pushes them,
one wheelbarrow load at a time,
to the labyrinth site (opposite side of the house.)

Our son-in-law, Ben, precisely measures
the center circle of bricks.

The labyrinth and I share the space for quiet hours, surrounded by trees, birdsong and inquisitive mosquitoes, only moderately repelled by Deep Woods Off. 

It won't be finished for several months, as I go back and forth to New York, and as other hands take turns digging trenches and laying bricks.
I take a deep breath and realize that's as it should be.

  

The labyrinth is growing, 

one brick at a time.

As am I.

 *working title of book -

  Labyrinth Journeys

 Fifty States… Fifty-One Stories