Labyrinth 108: Fighting the Waves I

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 was traveling through the Delmarva Peninsula walking labyrinths. My family was spending a few days on vacation at Chincoteague, and I took a day by myself to explore some of these holy sites. I had left the rental cottage without a plan in mind, but through the first two labyrinths I walked, I discerned that I was interested in exploring my own childhood in terms of Chincoteague, and in particular in terms of something I do whenever I am visiting the ocean. Whenever I’m at the beach, I have little desire to sit in the sun and relax. And I have little desire to go and swim in the sea, or look for seashells. All I want to do is walk out in the ocean, further and further until I’m in water that covers most of my torso, and then “fight the waves.” I try to position myself about where the waves begin to crash, and I stand there, trying to keep my ground while the water crashes over me. My goal is to not get knocked down. Usually I push myself to the point where the waves do clobber me sometimes, but I get back up and challenge them again.

I’m pretty sure that this started way back in my childhood, the first time my parents took my sister and me to Chincoteague, and we spent some time on the beach on Assateague Island. So now that I’m here, on this trip, maybe it’s time to explore within a labyrinth just why I do this. What is this all about?

I arrived at my third labyrinth of the day, at St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church in Salisbury, Maryland. This labyrinth is a 5-circuit medieval design, on concrete. The walls are painted red on the concrete.

The question I asked as I entered the labyrinth was, What is the “fighting the waves” all about? Here’s the insight I received during my walk:

I tend to try not to cause waves. I tend to try to go with the flow. Hence my decision to go to the first college I visited, without looking further. Hence the way I try not to respond to anything on social media. And so forth. But let’s be honest – I do push the boundaries sometimes. I do cause waves sometimes, and sometimes I try to. But whenever I do, I almost always feel so guilty afterward. I so often wish I hadn’t done what I did, that I hadn’t affected anybody.

But with the ocean, it’s different. It completely swamps and overwhelms and dwarfs me, which means that nothing I do can have any real impact on it. Doesn’t matter how much I stand or fight, I will never move the ocean one millimeter. And that makes it safe.

Whoa. Did I really write that? “And that makes it safe.” Yeah, I did. And I know what I meant by that. “Safe” means that I can’t hurt someone. Yes, the ocean can certainly hurt me, but that’s beside the point. It’s safe, not because it can’t hurt me, but because I can’t hurt it. Just me and the ocean, me and the water. Truth is, the ocean is going to win every time. But I can play.

It’s like a video game in a way, it that what I do at the ocean means nothing really. And it’s fun too.