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 nine 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.

A few weeks ago, I was walking a bunch of labyrinths in Westchester County, New York. My seventh labyrinth of the day was at First Presbyterian Church of Yorktown, in Yorktown Heights. Their labyrinth is a five-circuit medieval design, with grass path and inlaid brick walls. However, the grass had grown and the leaves had fallen, and it was nearly impossible to see the labyrinth at all!

As I was driving toward this labyrinth, I was getting very tired. It was such an unseasonably hot day, and my sleep the night before wasn’t perfect. I had run out of coffee, and I needed some desperately. I found a convenience store called Millwood Market, which carried a bunch of blends of coffee. One was marked “dark roast,” and was called “Admiral’s Blend.” I decided to give it a try. As I got back on the highway, I took my first sip. I almost drove off the road. This was one of the darkest and best cups of coffee I’d ever had. It was so dark and deep, like the kind of chocolate with percent signs on the package. The coffee went straight into my brain, awaking me both through caffeine and sublime flavor, and invited me to ask this question to the labyrinth:

Where is there depth in my life? Where do the waters run deep right now?

The answer was simple, yet the walk itself was challenging. The walls of the labyrinth were nearly invisible to me. The bricks were well-hidden beneath grass and leaves. The first time I tried to walk it, I ended up back at the entrance instead of the center. I tried again, and I felt like I was just walking in circles again. (I suppose one might call all that I do at labyrinths “walking in circles,” but this was even more so.) I thought about just quitting and heading back to the entrance. But instead I said, “No, this is okay. It’s the journey, not the destination.” I kept going, and somehow found my way to the center, dragging my foot along the brick walls. I was feeling my way to the center more than seeing it.

All the while I thought about how the deepest water in my life is my faith. That’s where the deepest deep is. My faith isn’t always strong, or even orthodox, and it certainly doesn’t lead me to an especially holy or moral life, but it is always, always deep. Nothing runs deeper. These darkwaters are bottomless. As I walked in circles, circles upon circles, I thought of how I don’t know if I’ll even find my destination, but I will always keep walking on the path. That’s the way my faith is, always trusting just enough to keep moving, never knowing for sure, but always finding my way back.

And I found this cool mushroom too.