A Goose Turd in the Labyrinth

The time the labyrinth was funny

Every time I teach The Walk, I give my cohorts an open assignment (that is, an assignment with no due date) to walk a labyrinth near them. And then I try to find one to walk, myself, during that time period. The ones I used to frequent near me aren’t so great to frequent these days for varying reasons, plus things are a little “upheaved” around here, so I hadn’t really thought about looking for one this time around.

This week, I am a guest at an Early Ministers Conference for the Northeast Synod of the PCUSA (note: I am not a Presbyterian) so I can introduce them to spiritual direction (note: It’s going well). We’re staying at an astonishing YMCA conference and retreat center, and it turns out they have a labyrinth.

At Silver Bay YMCA, New York

I found that out at 3 this afternoon and at 3:16 I was walking it.

Every time I walk a labyrinth, something different happens, and sometimes it’s not much. Usually I don’t write about it—at least not publicly—because I don’t want some student of mine to read my reflections and think of them as prescriptive. But today the labyrinth made me laugh.

Not, like, rolling on the floor laughing. And not at first. At first I thought how striking it was to have a labyrinth right on the water. The next thing I realized was that I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Chartres-cathedral-inspired labyrinth that contained all 11 circuits. This one was certainly bigger than any I’ve walked, but it was really quite compact, meaning that the walkways were about as narrow as they could possibly be and any adult still hope possibly to walk between the bricks. I could see that even if I walked this at a pretty good pace, it would take a while to reach the center.

But I was delighting in the twists and turns, and the fact that this labyrinth is fairly well kept up so there was no ambiguity about where to turn and where the boundaries were. And then I saw it.

A goose turd in the labyrinth.

The incongruity of something so earthy—and, frankly, gross—in a structure designed to integrate body and soul struck me mightily, followed by the notion of how strange it was for that to be there in such a well-kept place, and then also for there to be only one of them. There are geese around. They are abundant. How and why did only one of them make it over to this specific location to do its business…one time? It felt like a practical joke. I chuckled to myself.

I kept walking for quite a while after that and finally made it into the center. I knelt down and paused there, as I do. When I started walking again, I found myself more engaged with the “return” part of the cycle than the “release” part—and all of a sudden the labyrinth itself seemed jolly. The path winds back and forth on itself in one quadrant and then just as you think you’ll complete that quadrant before moving onto the next one, it shoots you out to the quadrant nearly diagonal to the one you were just in. When you think you’re almost out, the path suddenly draws you back around, and so you resign yourself to another few circuits and all of a sudden you’re out.

It’s not that I didn’t know labyrinths were like this. It’s just that I didn’t know it could strike me funny—like a game. Like a good-natured tease. I thought about pure-hearted, free-spirited humor, and how good that is for the soul, and what a gift from God. I like that today Jesus used the labyrinth to remind me.