The Forest Labyrinth

Solstice Greetings!

If you’re interested in the specifics, the exact time (here in northern Grey County) we arrive at the point of Solstice today is 10:29PM. While this is indeed the shortest day (8h 49m), sunset has in fact been occurring a tiny bit earlier each day for just over a week!  Sunrise, on the other hand, will continue inching later until January 3^rd (8:01AM) after which it begins tip-toeing earlier.

This is all due to some kind of anomaly I don’t really understand enough to attempt explaining (not that that always stops me haha) but it’s a kind of interesting factoid. And always useful if you’re stuck for festive season small talk.

I was out walking the Forest Labyrinth this morning and had an insight on labyrinths vs mazes and the parallels with living life in this busy modern world. More on that below, but first a couple updates.

Labyrinth Happenings

If you’ve been on forestlabyrinth.ca in the past two months, you will have noticed the labyrinth is temporarily closed. This is due to forestry work which was undertaken to thin out the White Pine plantation by about a third in order to help it thrive and diversify. The labyrinth area was an excluded buffer zone and not directly impacted, however the heavy equipment did affect the central path from parking to labyrinth causing it to be uneven, mushy, and not steady underfoot in places. Once there is some solid ground freezing, it will reopen for winter visits. If snow gets deep, the Forest Labyrinth was sized and designed to be walked in snowshoes—a truly Canadian labyrinth experience—and I even have loaners if you need ‘em.

The closure made no difference to the annual tradition of forwarding labyrinth visitor donations, and this year $200 went onwards to Chapman House Hospice and M’Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre in Owen Sound. Since the labyrinth opened in 2019, a total of $1,400 has been sent to these two organizations, thanks kindly to labyrinth visitors for their gestures of gratitude.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of events at the labyrinth in the past year. On some self-reflection, not just with the labyrinth but other endeavours more broadly, I think that my strengths lie in creating special space+place for people. When I began living up here full-time in 2018, I imagined myself developing some kind of community-building role, but as much as I value such work the reality is this is just not a strength of who and how I am. What has been successful and had impact are the different ways that I create a unique “containers” for people to nourish their personal and spiritual development in their own ways. The Forest Labyrinth is an example.

[As an aside, another example of a making a “container” for people to do their development work is the Personal Day Retreat I do through SoulTrail. And if you’re still looking for something special to gift a loved one I am once again offering a promo on Day Retreat Gift Certificates (save $20-80, ends Dec 24), see details at SoulTrail.ca. Or treat yourself!]

Modern Living: Maze or Labyrinth?

Being a labyrinth enthusiast, you are aware it is a different device than a maze. A labyrinth has only one path. Unlike a maze, there are no alternates, no dead ends, no trickery or deception. There are always turns, though the distance between them varies through the labyrinth, but the path always leads you to centre and (with rare exceptions) back out the same way.

Being a linear and singular path, walking a labyrinth requires no problem-solving or decision-making. The rational brain is relieved of responsibility, leaving the intuitive self freed up to express itself, and the senses opened up to the present moment.  A labyrinth does cultivate focus, but doesn’t require thinking. This is no doubt why labyrinth walks are relaxing, peaceful and often described as a walking meditation.

As I was walking in toward centre this Solstice morning, it occurred to me that living the version of modern life full of distractions (in particular phones, tech, the internet, and all that is connected to it) is kind of like being in a maze: options, possibilities, diversions and dead-ends. The distraction is constant and continual, and thus exhausting. In this maze we can never stop analyzing and thinking. And what’s more the maze is also a rabbit hole with no limits, the deeper in we go the more likely we lose our perspective.

Mazes can be fun, and challenging, and enjoyable. But they’re neither peaceful nor relaxing. I imagined a version of modern life that, with some mindful awareness and forethought, can be lived more like a labyrinth than a maze. With a bit of discipline and a lot of practice, daily life can be approached in a more linear way, so we feel we’re calmly moving forward on a singular path instead having our attention and so-called multitasking always shifting.

Personally, I’m a big fan of switching off, and one of the ways I do that is turn on my home WiFi when I need it. So, I write this on my laptop which has no connection. No email is going to arrive, no pop-up notifications, no internet to search or surf or browse.

That’s just one strategy. As I walked stood at Centre this morning, I was receiving lots of notions about how to live day-to-day life more like a labyrinth than a maze. It’s not a disconnected mental exercise to figure out what that could look like for you… get out to a labyrinth and walk it, experience it, and the ideas will flow.

Warm wishes from me here to you there,