—The Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress,
author of Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Sacred Tool

Walking the path
with nine others
is different than
walking alone,

which is how I
usually come to
the labyrinth,
solo, my preferred

way, undistracted
by others on
their journeys.
Today, though,

I find it hard to
focus on myself,
my gaze riveted on
on a woman in blue,

a bicycle with
blossoming flowers
sparkling on her chest,
walking slowly,

pausing, looking up,
other people
pausing, too, some
passing, walking

their own walks,
as we all must do.
And it takes me,
meandering into

and out of the
rhythmic turns,
some time to look
up and read her shirt:

Enjoy the journey,
it says, and I hope
she is, walking her
open-hearted walk,

perhaps finding peace
and healing, a sense
of calm, as I often do
on a labyrinth.

Only later does it hit
my distracted self that
perhaps the message
was for me, too,

delivered by bicycle,
blossoming on a sunny
Sunday morning,
opening, listening

to the heartsong
flowering within,
delivered by unseen
birds overhead.

***

With thanks to Rev. Lucy Bunch, Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento