Walking Backwards

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

All my life...
I've seemed, in retrospect,
to do things backwards...
So when I was whisked away on Wednesday on a Magical Mystery Tour by my dear friend Elizabeth, I was quite surprised to find myself stepping over the threshold of one of my favorite of all labyrinths, the beautiful outdoor terrazzo Chartres Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco...
The stones are now lovingly worn and cracked in places, where thousands of feet have walked, danced, skipped, and prayerfully and playfully walked over the years...
This place is home to me, where Kimberly, Laura, and I searched to find ourselves weekend after weekend,
for years and years...
This is the place that fourteen years ago whispered me, "go home and write..." birthing me from its spirals,
nudging me into life setting the stage for the Santa Rosa Labyrinth yet to come through me...
This past Wednesday, which was auspiciously also Kimberly's Birth Day... Elizabeth and I shared the labyrinth walk beneath the vast blue skies of San Francisco with a young woman visiting from Tawain and a gentleman who was walking the labyrinth backwards... Carrying wind chimes...
It was Elizabeth who figured out that he was moving ever so slowly backwards, to not make the chimes ring, the slight breeze upping the ante of his spiritual practice...
So when he offered me the chimes... I couldn't do it. I couldn't force myself to turn around and walk slowly backwards and not make sound. I could not restrict my movement, but walked purposely forward, letting each step ring a sound, enjoying the feeling of my feet solidly moving forward... for within these winding paths is where I've most come to grips with the rules and have-to's in my head that have dictated most of the internal and external movement of my entire life.
Elizabeth took this picture of me walking backwards, my forwards, on this beautiful February day... who knows, maybe sometime I'll try it forwards, my backwards, and I will see then what I might discover...