labyrinth poems.

this afternoon, my traveling poetry class sat under the shade of a young tree, maybe an ornamental pear, after walking the labyrinth at ursinus college. 

we all wrote poems we didn't quite expect, compared to our original intentions before we began to craft them, and ones mostly unlike what you'll find upon googling labyrinth poems. you can see some eye-scenes of a few of them below (followed by what-is-a-labyrinth words).

i hope my students may visit the labyrinth and other ones around the region again on their own in the future, for slower walks of their own kind, as these are valuable places to walk and sit in the middle of in the stressful blur of living today. and so few people know and understand their purpose and value (at least within my circles of chatting, i've noticed), so i hope to nudge others to develop a penchant for labyrinths, too, as talk of them comes up in conversations.

thankfully, a site called www.labyrinthlocator.com is a great resource as a start for finding local labyrinths, but it does not list all existing labyrinths. so sometimes it's helpful to ask around to find out who in your days may know of more around the area, and a new one is now a part of one of my student's churches, too, so that is a nice perk for the future as another local labyrinth. it is at first presbyterian church in pottstown. i can't wait to visit it. this new labyrinth is apparently made from poured concrete. materials used and style of design often vary, and that's one nice aspect of labyrinths. they have the same shared idea of origin but can look a variety of different ways.

and thank you to arline christ for the photographs of us walking, since she'd walked the labyrinth yesterday during an early trip there.

and here is a re-posting of my excerpt in the original post to promote this class, just so anyone who doesn't know much about labyrinths can read about them here.

labyrinth-speak

a labyrinth is sometimes confused with a maze, which can be a stressful challenge for the brain; instead, a labyrinth is a set of paths usually in a circle, geared toward helping people find footfalls that relax and bring them to a more pensive yet peaceful place.

“it’s not a maze where the intention is to get you lost,” said dave bushnell, pastor of epler’s church of christ in leesport. “it leads you to a center point for meditation.”

and it doesn’t necessarily have to be precise meditation; those who venture to labyrinths can sit and have their own quiet and use the opportunity for time away in whatever way they need.

“you walk out the way you came in, but in reverse,” bushnell said. “it’s great to see children in it. and some people walk straight to the middle because they can’t walk the full length.”

bushnell noted that he’s seen regional nurses taking slow walks through the labyrinth as they are thinking caringly about their patients who can’t easily visit the reflective resource of a spot on their own.

and there is no right or wrong way to walk through a labyrinth. some will move at faster paces, but slower ones are usually helpful for the busier minds of so many today who never get much of a chance to slow down because of so much on their proverbial plates in life.

“as you follow the path to the center, you let go of things as you walk, and you’re leaving the world and entering a space,” he said.

this sense of letting go is a lot of why people who visit the labyrinth from across the berks county community find so much relief while inching their way to the benches at the center.

“it’s pretty countercultural to walk around in a circle,” bushnell pointed out about how this endeavor is out of the norm but a benefit to the heart and mind.

labyrinths are incredibly historical, too. they can be traced to more than 4,000 years ago; the most ancient one officially on record is a cretan classical seven-circuit labyrinth from more than 3,500 years ago.

a good number of the labyrinths that are searchable across the globe on www.labyrinthlocator.com (where labyrinths can be discovered by zip code) are modeled after this ancient labyrinth.