Quiet

     I was on the University of Maryland campus for almost seven years, but I never noticed that they had a labyrinth. This is probably because physics graduate students walk a path from their home/parking place to the physics department, with occasional detours for food or the gym only. I never had occasion to go poking around the Memorial Chapel, where this is built.
     A group of people from my Unitarian church took a trip there last weekend. I learned that labyrinths are now often built as places of contemplation, open to people of various religions, and I learned the difference between labyrinths and mazes  - a labyrinth only has one path to the center and back again.
     I found it quite meaningful to walk the path slowly. This is something that I wouldn't have enjoyed a few years ago, but I think I've become more contemplative. I'm still terrible at meditating, because I have an abiding urge to get things done and that doesn't easily quite during meditation. But I'm better at using forced times of inaction (like on a car ride) to sit and think. I now regularly think about life, the importance (or relative lack of importance) of various activities in my life, and what should really matter to me. I assume this come about as a result with my close experience with death. I thought this might fade as my grief grew less acute, but so far it hasn't. In contrast, the expectation that anyone around me could drop dead in an instant has lessened, and I am grateful for that.