I have walked many labyrinths in the last 16 years, but today was my first experience leading a blind and deaf person on the labyrinth path. My colleague, Michael Robin, learned that I would be leading labyrinth walks during our staff summit week and asked Mia Basic in Human Resources if she would set up a time with me so that I could help him experience a labyrinth. Today was the day.

I have a wooden labyrinth that is lap-sized and the path is cut into the wood in grooves. I first let him explore that to get a sense of what we would be doing.  His finger traced the entire path and I had a sense that he, used to using tactile stimulation to make sense of his environment, had a better sense than a sighted person about the path ahead.

He walked the circuitous path behind me, with his hand on my shoulder. We made our slow and careful way around all of the twists and turns until we came to the center. We stood there quietly for a few moments and then returned by the same path. His interpreter, Sarah, walking quietly a ways behind us, said that his face was lit up with a big grin the whole way.

I spent much of the walk to the center imagining what Michael was experiencing and thinking. Most of the path’s turns are 180 degrees. I imagined it must feel a bit like walking a bowl of spaghetti, having no sense of the way ahead. But when we got to the center and stood quietly, I realized that in the truest sense of my life, I am just like Michael, walking the path of my life with no visual road map of the way forward but trusting that in all of my life’s many turnings, I am walking a path that honors the work I have been given to do and the relationships that are mine to nurture.

Michael wasn’t the only one with a big grin on his face today.  Today I am grateful for the privilege of sharing this good work with so many Chapman staff and faculty.