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.

This was my second labyrinth of the day. It was a short drive from Stockton Presbyterian Church to St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in New Hope, PA. I was grateful for the quick journey, because I wanted to keep working on the same question I started at Stockton’s labyrinth.

As I pulled into St. Philip’s parking lot, I felt welcomed and happy about the banner they had out front. It read, “All are welcome and we really mean it.” Could my church consider such a banner?

Yet I found it very difficult to find the labyrinth. How strange is that? After walking around the beautiful church grounds, I finally noticed that a grassy patch of land was actually the labyrinth itself, so subtly hidden among the grass.

It’s a 7-circuit medieval design, based on the 16^th-century labyrinth in Ravenna, Italy. I asked my question: What’s the story of the “exposed nerve” I have regarding being someone’s spiritual hero? By “story,” I meant what’s behind it. Was there some event or person in my past that led me to believe that I don’t deserve compliments, that I’m unworthy? Was there a reason I developed this “protector” inside me who won’t let me feel good about myself? (If you haven’t read my last post, I encourage you to do that here, so you can better understand the context here.)

As I walked, I perceived that there was no one traumatic event or experience that gave me this powerful inner critic and dark protector. It had no grand genesis. Rather, it ran deep, deep, throughout my life. I’ve internalized these thoughts and these feelings so much that there’s no way to trace any story that caused it. This is something I’ve been working on my whole life.

I started to see a different image here. Instead of an exposed nerve, I now saw something buried, buried deep in the ground, so deep that trying to pull it out would involve so much digging and so much dirt that it may as well be inaccessible. Is this my “true self,” buried so deep below this mess I’ve put there, that I can never get to it?

I thought of one of Jesus’ parables, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition). Is that what’s buried here? Is this what I pray for each morning when I begin my prayer with, “Thank you for baptism”? Or is this me burying my talent in the ground out of fear, as Jesus refers to in Matthew 25:14-30?

And yet, if that is the “true me” underground, or if it is the “spark of God” within me, then clearly something must have shown through, if two people at my workshop yesterday told me that I am among their spiritual heroes. So even if I can’t see it, others can? Why do I not allow myself to see it? What if they’re right? What if they’ve always been right? (I’ve been telling myself people are wrong about me for a very long time.) What would it take to uncover – or is it recover – this?

Do I dig?

Or does the Darkwater, the water of baptism, the everflowing river of God’s grace and love, rush over and miraculously wash all the dirt away?

Or has that washing already taken place, many times, but each time I soon start burying it again? Am I trying to protect something, or someone? Am I trying to protect myself from believing that I make a difference? Is this really not buried nearly so deep as I think it is? And what exactly is buried? Me? My self-image? My baptism?

Is it a seed waiting to grow? Is my problem that I keep burying and unburying this seed, instead of letting it germinate? Do I spend so much time in internal reflection that I don’t let myself grow?

The image here starts to feel like it’s run its course. I’m grasping in different directions trying to interpret it. Maybe it’s time to just let the image be. Maybe I won’t solve this. Maybe it was never meant to be solved. Maybe there’s just healing, not solving, to be done. And maybe I can deal with that at the next labyrinth.

Watch for the next post.