(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a monthly series of Labyrinth Reflections from Janet Davis, who leads the online and in-person Labyrinth groups for The Abbey. The format of these posts follows the Labyrinth walk, with meditations for the Walk In, for the Center, and for the Walk Out. These monthly posts will include dates and times for the upcoming Labyrinth group gatherings; all times are listed in Central Time.)
Next in-person walk: Saturday, Nov. 9, 9 a.m. – 10 a.m., at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 2222 and Mopac, Austin, TX, back parking lot.
Next Zoom discussion: Saturday, Nov. 9, 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Walk In: Losing Our Lives by Letting Go of the Desert, of Thirst
Be thankful now for having arrived,
for the sense of having drunk from a well,
for remembering the long drought
that preceded your arrival and the years
walking in a desert landscape of surfaces
looking for a spring hidden from you so long
that even wanting to find it now had gone
from your mind until you only remembered
the hard pilgrimage that brought you here,
the thirst that caught in your throat;
the taste of a world just-missed
and the dry throat that came from a love
you remembered but had never fully wanted
for yourself, until finally after years making
the long trek to get here it was as if your whole
achievement had become nothing but thirst itself.
But the miracle had come simply
from allowing yourself to know
that you had found it, that this time
someone walking out into the clear air
from far inside you had decided not to walk
past it any more; the miracle had come
at the roadside in the kneeling to drink
and the prayer you said, and the tears you shed
and the memory you held and the realization
that in this silence you no longer had to keep
your eyes and ears averted from the place
that could save you, that you had been given
the strength to let go of the thirsty dust laden
pilgrim-self that brought you here, walking
with her bent back, her bowed head
and her careful explanations.
No, the miracle had already happened
when you stood up, shook off the dust
and walked along the road from the well,
out of the desert toward the mountain,
as if already home again, as if you deserved
what you loved all along, as if just
remembering the taste of that clear cool
spring could lift up your face and set you free.
by David Whyte
Questions
What droughts and thirsts (past or present) have shaped your life?
Are there some thirsts you find hard to give up? Some wells/springs you are tempted to turn away from? Do you fear that somehow drinking might betray the ache of your thirst? Or change who you know yourself to be?
Center
In Praise of Water
Let us bless the grace of water:
The imagination of the primeval ocean
Where the first forms of life stirred
And emerged to dress the vacant earth
With warm quilts of color.
The well whose liquid root worked
Through the long night of clay,
Trusting ahead of itself openings
That would yet yield to its yearning
Until at last it arises in the desire of light
To discover the pure quiver of itself
Flowing crystal clear and free
Through delighted emptiness….
Trusting ahead of itself openings
That would yet yield to its yearning
Until at last it arises in the desire of light
To discover the pure quiver of itself
Flowing crystal clear and free
Through delighted emptiness….
Let us bless the humility of water,
Always willing to take the shape
Of whatever otherness holds it,
The buoyancy of water
Stronger than the deadening,
Downward drag of gravity,
The innocence of water,
Flowing forth, without thought
Of what awaits it,
The refreshment of water,
Dissolving the crystals of thirst.
By John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
Questions
Notice the “quivering” of the water in the image above. It is from the ongoing flow of deep springs that flow from the deep blue and feed the headwaters of the Frio River in Leakey, Texas.
What are the deep springs in your own life? Where do you go to find them again?
What practices draw you closer to them in times of drought or thirst?
Walk Out: Saving Our Lives by Planting Ourselves by Streams
Jeremiah 17
7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
Psalms 1
1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
Questions
We often rehearse the adage “Bloom where you are planted” and forget the wisdom and responsibility that we have to “plant” ourselves where we can “bloom!” What changes would you need to make to live a more “well-watered” life?
What barriers or resistance might you meet as you seek to make those changes?
What small choices can you make this month to move you away from thirst and drought and toward refreshment?