I enjoy walking labyrinths. Labyrinths are maze-like structures that have been used as spiritual tools for centuries. There are many of them around, and I am in the habit of trying to visit a lot of them. For more information about labyrinths, check out The Labyrinth Society. Find where labyrinths are in your area at the Worldwide Labyrinth Locator.

This labyrinth is located at the (Roman Catholic) Church of St. Anne in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. It’s an 11-circuit Chartres-style labyrinth in a courtyard, made of inlaid bricks of one color for the walls, and another for the path.

I drove there on December 30, 2023, and I had the New Year on my mind. I was thinking about my writing, and other projects I’m working on, and what I could or should focus on in the new year. So the question I carried with me into the labyrinth was:

What is my watchword for 2024?

A watchword is defined by Merriam-Webster as a “guiding principle,” or a “word or motto that embodies a principle or guide to action of an individual or group.” Having a watchword for the year is an idea I got from the Moravian Church, where they often take a verse of scripture as a guiding principle for a week, a month, a year. So I thought perhaps having a watchword of some sort would be a helpful tool for me as I move into 2024. I thought that once I walked into the labyrinth, I’d hear loud and clear a Bible verse that would speak to me.

I didn’t. As I walked in, I tried to come up with Bible passages. The only thing that popped into my head was, “Unto us a child is born,” and that was just because I’d heard it so many times in recent weeks. I tried pondering a recent episode of Doctor Who that seemed to speak to me on a really deep level, wondering if that might guide me to a watchword. Nothing.

I reached the center, and I was feeling as though I’d failed, that the labyrinth had uncharacteristically failed me. Then I got a text message. I checked my phone, and it said something like this: “As a pastor, what do you do when Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door? I usually listen politely, thank them, and take their literature.”

Huh.

Listen.

Could that be it? Listen? I wondered about that word. As I walked out, I tried to listen rather than think. I heard a wind chime sound right next to me. I turned, and there was a wind chime that read, “Cardinals appear when angels are near.” Am I to listen for angels?

I heard a car. I heard the wind. I wondered if I should explore scriptural verses with the word listen, or if I should try to listen today and each day, and write about what I hear.

When I exited the labyrinth, I wondered if the church itself were unlocked. It was, and I walked in. I wandered into the sanctuary, and found it to be huge, beautiful, dimly lit, and holy. I walked around, imagining what I could do with a space like this if I were the pastor of a congregation that met here. Then I heard the sound of people talking, and I quickly exited the sanctuary and the building. I’m not sure why — I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The door was unlocked. I guess I just didn’t feel like talking to people. I suppose I wanted to listen to inanimate objects, but not listen to people. Odd. Or maybe not odd.

From there, I wanted to walk another labyrinth, and explore more what this listening might mean. There was another one marked on my map not far. I drove there, and found no sign of a labyrinth — as I looked through my map and the Labyrinth Locator, I perceived that I’d marked it wrong on my map. It was actually at a similarly named church ten miles away.

It was getting late, and I didn’t want to travel an extra twenty round-trip miles, so instead I found another labyrinth on my map that was more or less on the way home. That one, however, was severely deteriorating, and it didn’t seem walkable. But it wasn’t a loss. Between that one and the one before, I supposed that the message was that I wasn’t going to find answers to what listen means at another labyrinth. I had to look elsewhere.

So I drove home, and made plans for how I might explore it the next morning.

The next morning was Sunday, and I spent my devotion time looking through all the times the word listen appears in the Bible. I had the day off from my church, so I attended an Episcopal Church nearby. I tried to listen to the words throughout worship, and the words that spoke most to me were from the Gospel reading the priest read, John 1:1-18:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1:5, New Revised Standard Version

I pondered that. It’s really the watchword for my life. The whole point of talking about faith and mental illness is to share the idea that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” I’ve been exploring Christian mysticism a lot in the last few months, and the deepest meaning I’ve found in it so far is that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” The whole message of Darkwater is that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

I mean, for crying out loud, the only reason I’m alive today is because when I was seventeen and up the tree planning to kill myself, I literally saw a light shining in the darkness. And the darkness did not overcome that light.

So…yeah. I guess that can be my watchword for 2024. I’ll keep listening, but for now, that’s it.