World Labyrinth Day 2024

Yesterday was World Labyrinth Day, a day when we were encouraged to walk our local labyrinths at 1 p.m. local time in hopes of unleashing a "a rolling wave of peaceful energy."  A few weeks ago, I thought about organizing something, but my various semester endings submerged me, and before I knew it, it was Saturday.  

So, even though it was too late to invite others to walk with me, it wasn't too late to walk it myself.  So up the hill I headed to the Lutheridge labyrinth, created on an old tennis court where my mother played tennis when she was a counselor in the 1950's.

I thought there might be others, but no, I was on my own.  But that was O.K. too.  It was cloudy, the kind of cloudy that means rain is coming soon.  But that, too, was O.K.  I walked, thinking about labyrinths I've walked, people who have walked them with me, and the times I've walked them alone.  

As I walked home, I thought about the first time I read about labyrinths and yearned to walk one.  It was probably 2000 or 2001.  One of the earliest books was Nora Gallagher's Things Seen and Unseen.  Back in the early years of this century, I wasn't able to find as many labyrinths; there was only one in Broward county, at the local U.U. church.  It was a beautiful outdoor labyrinth, but I didn't walk it much, because it took me over half an hour to drive there.

Now I have a labyrinth in my own neighborhood, and in the past year, yesterday was the first time I've walked it.  In the coming year, I'm going to walk it more often.  What a gift it is to have a local labyrinth!