Six months in a global pandemic can mess you up. Or maybe it’s just me. (Please tell me it’s not just me.) Most days, I feel like I’m going around in circles. Which day is it? What am I doing again? The days run together, and I feel lost and disconnected and disoriented. My emotions run in circles, too. Grief, then anxiety, then sadness. Then joy and contentment break in for a moment, like sun peaking out from behind clouds. Then grief again, and the cycle repeats. It’s like a very emotional Groundhog’s Day.
And then finally, because it still takes so much longer than it should, I remember. I remember to get out of my house and out of my head. I return to the prayer labyrinth by the river. This place is familiar, sacred space to me. On the grounds of this Jesuit spiritual center, I have a history of holy moments with God.
Here I begin to walk in a new circle.
Walking a prayer labyrinth, in and out, around, toward the center, then away, slowly quiets me. It moves me out of my own very loud thoughts into the quiet of one step after the other. Here I abandon all thought of making sense of things or producing significant results. In this maze, it isn’t about getting to the center or finding the way out. It is simply about following the path set before me and being present to the moment.
Somehow (I can’t tell you how), walking in circles, I find myself again. And in the stillness I find God.
Last week, as I walked and prayed and listened, these words fell into my heart.
“Release desperation.”
The words were strong and clear.
I wasn’t aware I’d been feeling desperate until I heard these words. The words read my heart and told me what I didn’t know yet about myself.
I was grasping for meaning. For order. For normalcy. Wondering what my life would mean and be in the midst of so much chaotic change in a traumatized world. What does a ministry that’s based on meeting with people in person do when you can’t meet with people? And how does an author sell books when speaking events are cancelled and postponed? The calendar that gives my life form and meaning was strangely empty. And I was desperately working to find a way to fill that emptiness. Because I’d forgotten that my life is not defined or valued by the doing. I forget this all the time.
“Release desperation.”
As I walked in circles, I pondered. What if it isn’t up to me to make the meaning? What if I can rest and trust and wait for what unfolds? What if something new is opening in this time, in me and in the world, and I just can’t see it yet?
As I breathed my “yes” to the invitation to release, peace settled again in my mind and heart and body. And I remembered. I am loved and held. And my life is in the being. Being present to God, to myself, to others. Rooted in love. All the doing that means anything at all comes from this place.
The chaos quieted and clarity came. Walking in circles.
THE PRACTICE OF WALKING IN CIRCLES
The labyrinth is a walking prayer. In early and medieval Christianity, prayer labyrinths were commonly used as a meditative practice. Pilgrims would walk through concentric circles to the labyrinth’s center on a symbolic journey to Jerusalem. Their time in the labyrinth was often used to name their worries, center their thoughts, and give their burdens to God.
Find a labyrinth near you: https://labyrinthlocator.com/
Let your fingers do the walking: https://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/how-to-use-a-printable-prayer-labyrinth