I went out to our labyrinth. a few days before my sabbatical began. There is a little stone cairn at the center of the labyrinth, and people leave things in it. I like that no explanation for their meaning is left with them.
 

 
The current inventory of the cairn:

• 1 purple painted rock
• 4 rusty nails, one with a note wrapped around it
• 1 guitar pick
• 2 quarters
• 1 5 peso coin
• 2 bleached snail shells
• 4 Mountain Laurel seeds
• 6 blue glass beads
• 1 reddish bit of broken glass
• 1 rusty bottle cap with one of the Laurel seeds and a shard of pottery in it.

 
We used to have a guestbook at the labyrinth. I had to remove it because the container holding it was leaking when it rained. Paul Soupiset and I have talked about putting a mailbox down there or something waterproof to hold the guestbook. I'm sure we'll get around to it in a year or so. The entries I found in that book tell me that pilgrims visit our labyrinth all the time. No one knows who they are or why they come. And no one knows what the things in the center mean.

Which is very cool.

On that same day I found the strangest leaf. It was totally bereft of color, as if it had been drained by some strange process.





I later told Tim that this leaf was a perfect representation of my soul. I'm there. I'm always going to be there. I'm a "be there until you die" kind of person. But just showing up doesn't mean you have any life left in you. Tim laughed. Hard. We both laughed about it. It's the sort of thing pastors understand. Why was that so funny? I don't know, but it was.

I was all there Sunday at the Quaker church though. I feel all there right now.

I tried to put the leaf into the cairn but it fell to pieces in my hand.

rlp