On a retreat, one of the first things I did in my guest house room was open the shades all the way to the top. I wanted to be as close to the trees and the sky as I could. Surrounded by trees, there was no need for privacy shades.
Books are another form of open windows, and I opened the cover of Rebecca Solnit’s Faraway Nearby. The title is apt as reading can take us faraway, but it also feels nearby as we enter someone else’s world through our imagination. This particular book is structured like a labyrinth, with the chapters winding their way to the center and then following the same thread, complete with the same chapter titles on the way out. In one section Solnit riffs on how ancient anatomists described the inner ear as a labyrinth: “The name suggests that if the labyrinth is the passage through which sound enters the mind, then we ourselves bodily enter labyrinths as though we were sounds on the way to being heard by some great unknown presence.”
That sentence bowled me over. As I walked the labyrinth at Prairiewoods the next morning, I thought of myself as a sound wave moving toward a great unknown presence, and I knew that even if I didn’t say a word, I would still be heard.
—Carol Tyx
image by Annette McGinley
Tomorrow, May 6, is World Labyrinth Day. Join us as we Walk As One at 1 tomorrow on the outdoor labyrinth at Prairiewoods.