Labyrinth #119: A Conversation about Eternity

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 arrived at Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA for my second labyrinth of the day.

I was thinking about all I’d experienced, learned, and written during my “Ponder Anew” retreat this past fortnight. There’s a lot of unfinished essays, scraps of paper, connected dots, and half-written ideas. All of these things are connected in one way or another to some ideas I’ve had over my life about how God and eternity work, and I have the vague idea that it could one day form a coherent project, and may even be something of an “opus” of my life’s work. (Or maybe it’s just scribbled nonsense — I really don’t know.)

And I wondered if I should try to talk about what it all is, or just keep it to myself for now, until I can get more work done on it. So I approached the labyrinth, a 7-circuit classical design, with inlaid bricks for both path and walls. I entered with this question:

Is all the stuff I’ve learned and written as part of “Ponder Anew” worth sharing with people at this point? If so, how?

“Yes, I should!” is what I heard. However, I should view it as a conversation, not as just information I dump out. I can share some of the ideas I’ve been having, but as questions to ponder together. I need to “workshop” them.

I can have one-on-one conversations with people about them.

I can blog about them, but only if I work very hard to make sure there’s a mechanism in place for conversation, and make sure that I encourage and give people a reason to reply.

I want to give this some thought, because I’m not sure what the best platform is for that. It might not be this blog.

Readers, any thoughts on how to do this best? Does anybody know of a social media platform I might explore? Thanks for any suggestions!

3 responses to “Labyrinth #119: A Conversation about Eternity”

Mrs. Whozeewhatsis

Jan 12, 2026 at 1:27 am

Platforms I’m familiar with: Twitter, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, Hive, Facebook, and Tumblr. Platforms I’m aware of but don’t know: Pillowfort and Dreamwidth. When Tumblr got shaky, a lot of folks went to Pillowfort and more recently Dreamwidth, but I know nothing about them. There’s also Discord, but I don’t think that’s quite what you want. Discord is more insular, like the old chat rooms.

Tumblr is like WordPress, but has a different type of person there. We’re weird, we’re mostly creative types, hyper liberal (at least in my corner), and we love what we love with abandon. It’s the perfect place for fandom, and if you got entrenched there after a while, you could have the kinds of discussions you’re looking for there. The best part is that there’s no character limit to responses. And if you want to take a conversation into private space, there’s that, too. I keep starting to say that I don’t know if you’d find anyone who wants to discuss Life, the Universe, and Everything: Religious Edition, but the more I think about it, I bet there are. Just be prepared for the Supernatural fandom to come into pretty much any conversation involving the Judeo-Christian world with a gif that will make little sense if you’ve never watched the show. We have a gif for everything. We even have a gif about having a gif for everything. Where WordPress feels a bit commercial, Tumblr is anti-commercial. Tumblr has been sold a few times since I started 11 years ago, and each time the Tumblrinas celebrate the fact that corporate continues to fail to monetize us. Yet, we survive and reblog cat videos alongside serious essays on virtually any subject.

Twitter is … toxic… these days, but somehow it’s still where I get most of my fandom news. I want to leave, but haven’t been able to get the same up-to-the-minute updates on my hyperspecific interests anywhere else. Instagram is nicer, but you need photos or videos for each post, and responses are short. No real space for a back-and-forth. Threads is Twitter, only very liberal-minded, less toxic, and generally more supportive instead of hateful. Still have to deal with short responses, though. Threads will crosspost for you to Facebook (and possibly IG, but I’m not sure), though, so you can post once and reach all three. I know you can post to IG and it will crosspost to Threads and FB, because I do that a lot. BlueSky and Hive are also basically Twitter alternatives with less negativity.

If you don’t want to branch out to a new platform, then I’d stick with Facebook. And sadly, I’d suggest making reels to expand your audience. I know nothing about video editing, but I bet your kids do, and they’ll be able to teach you how to make reels. FB gives you no character limits, and no limits on the type of person you might reach. You might get deeper, more intellectual discussions on Tumblr, but you’ll reach more people faster on Facebook, especially since you’re already there.

Hope this helps and I didn’t tell you a bunch of stuff you already knew! ♥

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1. michael j scholtes
  
  Jan 16, 2026 at 11:22 am
  
  That’s really helpful! Thanks for taking the time to write such a
  detailed comment!
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  1. Mrs. Whozeewhatsis
    
    Jan 16, 2026 at 4:57 pm
    
    And I completely forgot all about TikTok. 🤣
    
    LikeLike