MOVING FORWARD,
INCH BY IMPERCEPTIBLE INCH
A Widow Bit – Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011
By Mary Koch

            A week ago Saturday I was hiking through newly-blooming balsam root, the wild sunflower that pronounces with profuse authority: “Spring IS here!” By Tuesday I was snowshoeing on five feet of snow. It was like going back in time, retreating from spring to winter.

            I spent Holy Week at Holden Village, a remote retreat high in the Cascade Mountains above Lake Chelan. Hence, the snowshoes. I needed them to walk a labyrinth that had been etched in the snow in a large, alpine meadow.

            Walking a labyrinth in the snow takes on added dimensions. Usually one just walks a path on flat ground, spiraling tantalizingly close to the center, then away, then inward, then outward, until finally reaching ground central, and hopefully, a spiritual center. But in snow, elevation varies as the snow settles or with potholes left by previous snowshoers. As you follow the spirals round and round, you’re also going up and down.

            And there’s the dimension of sound. Most often one walks a labyrinth in reverent silence. This time every step was accompanied by loud crunches as my companion and I broke through the icy crust. Walking a labyrinth generally does not qualify as cardiovascular exercise, and I was not exactly huffing and puffing. But my leg muscles were reporting in.

            At one point I momentarily lost my way. The idea of walking a labyrinth is to lose oneself, but not to get lost. I was on the outside edge and found myself in shadows cast by the surrounding, towering pines. I could not see where or whether the white-on-white pathway turned next. I walked blindly for only a second or two before the path became apparent again, winding me back toward the center.

            I’ve walked numerous styles of labyrinths in various places and, quite frankly, have never experienced any great revelations or overwhelming sense of peace. I simply enjoy the doing of it, the motion, the symbolism, the act of praying with the body. If there is no labyrinth to walk, I enjoy tracing a course through labyrinths pictured in books, just as you might trace a route on a map with your finger. With a labyrinth, it may not seem as if you’re getting anywhere, but suddenly, there you are.

            Among my reading at Holden was Bishop Desmond Tutu’s “No Future Without Forgiveness,” a wrenching account of his work as chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Despite overwhelming testimony of unthinkably cruel and inhumane acts, Tutu emerged with hope for humankind. He quotes priest and paleontologist Teihard de Chardin: “We are sometimes inclined to think that the same things are monotonously repeated over and over again in the history of creation. That is because the season is too long by comparison with the brevity of our individual lives ...”

            Many thought winter was too long this year. But, here is spring. While we may not see it, Fr. de Chardin promises, “a new earth is being slowly engendered.”

            That is the promise of Easter. May yours be blessed.