For at least twenty years, I have enjoyed walking labyrinths. Labyrinths are maze-like structures that have been used as spiritual tools for centuries. For the past seven years, I’ve been walking labyrinths throughout the northeastern United States, and blogging about them. To learn more about labyrinths, check out this page at the Labyrinth Society. To find labyrinths near you, try the Worldwide Labyrinth Locator.

I headed to Ridgewood, New Jersey for the second labyrinth of the day of “feeding my mind”. (Click here to read about the first one.)

The labyrinth at Christ Episcopal Church in Ridgewood was a 6-circuit Abingdon style path. Both the path and the walls were of the same inlaid brick. Much like the labyrinth I walked at Doylestown Hospital a few months ago, this labyrinth was just a little challenging to walk – it was sometimes hard to see the difference between the path and the walls.

At the last labyrinth, I discerned that I could benefit from daily journaling, at the end of each day. I wanted to know what a new evening ritual could look like for me, so the question I entered this labyrinth with was: How can I change my evening ritual to make it more helpful?

As I walked, I found this labyrinth to feel so subtle. It was hard, nearly impossible, to see the path except at the curves. On the straightaways, the path was invisible, but whenever it was time to turn, it magically appeared.

Is that a metaphor for the thoughtful life, I wondered? You can only see the path you’re on at the curves, the times of processing, the times you look back on your recent past and explore what it meant. Could the long stretched, I wondered, symbolize my experiences, and the curves my times of processing?

I wondered if maybe a good plan would be to do an examen of sorts at night. Examen is an ancient form of evening devotion originally designed by St. Ignatius. It’s a way of looking back at your day and questioning where God was. I have tried using various versions of the examen over the years, but they never stuck.

I wondered if I could create an adapted form of the examen that I could use each night now. I wondered if I could create several questions to have ready for myself each night. Questions like, What did I think about today? What did I learn today? What is unfinished from today I can think about tomorrow? Some of these questions might be more mental, some more spiritual, and that’s okay.

I wondered if I could commit fifteen or thirty minutes each evening to journal about these questions. It seemed to me I can do this, if I just decide to. My recent experience with dieting, just because I decided to, gave me some confidence in this.

I wasn’t done with this series of questions yet. On to the next labyrinth.