Keep Walking

 by Michael Malloy, LCSW

‘Solviture ambulando’ wrote St. Augustine of Hippo, ‘It is solved by walking.

There have been two watershed experiences of my life—at least so far.  One was doing a counseling intensive for three weeks in July the Arizona desert at PCS (Psychological Counseling Services) in Scottsdale.  Over those three weeks, all day long, my life was open to a number of therapists…I met myself there and left with a greater integrated me.  Then a few years later, also in the desert but the high desert of northern New Mexico at a place called Ghost Ranch, I experienced a rite of passage with Richard Rohr for five days…I met God…and more of myself there.  I’ve returned to Ghost Ranch several times since then because the very location…has become holy to me.  When I get within a few miles of the ranch I can feel the stirrings of those five days begin to come over me yet again.  The Celtic peoples call those places ‘thin places’, where the barrier between this world and the next is lean.

It was there at Ghost Ranch that I first saw and walked a labyrinth.  We spent much of the time alone during the MROP (Men’s Rite of Passage).  We were staying in rustic bunk-houses..the kind with raw, open studs, three bunks, and a chair…with the john down the sidewalk along the front of our bunkhouse which was named Sagebrush, real southwestern huh?  I found myself waking early, before daylight, often to the sound of the coyotes howling in the hills nearby.  One morning I quietly pulled on some clothes and slipped out to wander the trails around the ranch.  Just as darkness was beginning to fade, I came across the labyrinth.  If possibly you’ve never seen one, it is multiple concentric circular paths that turned back on themselves time after time.  There were no directions…only implied instructions in that there was only one place to enter…so I did.  The labyrinth was constructed of thin stones turned on their sides defining the path with a fine chat that created a soft cadence under my feet.  

The experience was mesmerizing as I slowly walked.  The slower pace seemed to speak most…since it was about the experience of walking and not so much about reaching a specific destination…yet that ‘destination’ was just the center of the labyrinth, easily seen from every spot along the way.  After a few minutes I came to trust the path and follow it…assured of reaching the center. So, unlike corn mazes created here in Tennessee in the fall, I didn’t have to worry or debate at each turn ‘which is the correct way’, the path itself WAS the way.  With the worry of something going wrong out of the way, my mind went elsewhere, becoming more conscious of other things around me…like the burrow over the fence standing there staring at me, the abundance of wildflowers nearby, the hills beginning to glow from pastel to Technicolor.  It was like my senses were cranked up several notches…like some have described happening during drug experiences.  I lost track of time.  I began the labyrinth alone but another young guy joined…Richard Rohr’s own nephew.  Our feet on the chat became in sync…like my years in marching band, but now, it didn’t seem we were trying so much to stay in step.  It was a symphony of sounds of early morning nature to the cadence of the crush of chat beneath our feet.  When I found myself at the big rock in the middle I sat there to take in the sunrise. Just then the sun topped the horizon and the rays shot across the sky with a burst of light illuminating the hoodoos high above Ghost Ranch…the ‘logo’ of the whole place.  Then as I opened a pocket-size copy of the Psalms I found myself at these verses of David:

God’s glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.  

Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening.

Their words aren’t heard, their voices aren’t recorded, but their silence fills the earth; unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.

God makes a huge dome for the sun—a superdome!  The morning sun’s a new husband leaping from his honeymoon bed, the day-breaking sun an athlete racing to the tape.

That’s how God’s Word vaults across the sky from sunrise to sunset, melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith.

The revelation of God is whole and pulls our lives together.  The signposts of God are clear and point out the right road. The life-maps of God are right, showing the way of joy.

The directions of God are plain and easy on the eyes.  God’s reputation is twenty-four caret gold, with a lifetime guarantee.  The decisions of God are accurate down to the nth degree.

God’s Word is better than a diamond set between emeralds.  You’ll like it better than strawberries in the spring, better than red, ripe strawberries.

Clean the slate, God so we can start the day fresh!  Keep me from stupid sins, from thinking I can take over your work; then I can start this day sun-washed, scrubbed clean of the grime of sin; These are the words of my mouth; these are what I chew on and pray.  Accept them when I place them on the morning altar, O God, my Altar-my Rock, God, the Priest of my Altar.

Psalm 19

It was stunning. Dumbfounding. As I leaned against that granite boulder it was like a script for what I was witnessing across the sky that very moment.  I just sat there for a good while…quietly hearing in the background the cadence of the other’s guy’s feet against the chat.  Long ago, decades ago I eliminated the word ‘coincidence’ from my vocabulary.  As one has said, ‘confidence is just God’s way of remaining anonymous.  Over my lifetime there have been enough experiences where I’ve doubted whether or not God was in a certain experience, a specific situation…but then I did the mathematical numbers, the odds.  They were astronomical.  Further along in life, I’ve come to see that I’m a card-carrying mystic…as well as an INFJ.  That morning leaning on my ‘altar’ I saw and ‘heard’ the evidence God…in technicolor of beautiful Ghost Ranch. 

After the MROP in 2006 I started trying to return to Ghost Ranch each year…and most years I have. Last year in February before COVID I made it to the desert, but it was Tucson, Arizona, not the high desert of NM.  Yet there is still and always for me something about the desert. My take is that it is a reminder to dumb down, to simplify…which was a key part of the rite of passage. Also, the sunlight of the high desert is brighter, cleaner—more brilliant. Part of the reason so many artist are drawn to live out there.  

I had told a friend of mine about what I just told you and months later for Christmas he brought me a gift of the art I’ve added above…which hangs on the wall of my study.  

It’s not quite like being right there, but it’s darn close.