I was in Rancho Palos Verdes last week for a planning session with an organization I am part of. It was a beautiful setting at a monastery. I am always drawn to quiet places that have areas where I can sit, think and reflect.
This particular place had a beautiful labyrinth. A place to walk towards the center of a maze. It is outlined by stones so not to lose the path and takes about 20 minutes to leisurely walk through it. By the time I reach the center, my heart rate is slowing down, my mind is clearing a bit and my soul finds it’s anchor again.
I am an activist and sitting still has never been a draw to me, so having a labyrinth helps me to walk, center, pray and think. Jim and I have been talking for years about building one in our backyard and now he has been working on it for weeks and I enjoy the walk in our smaller version of it.

The group of people I was with are amazing, passionate, committed folks that want to see justice and mercy lived out for every person. I was speaking with one of my friends, a pastor from Michigan. Jerome is highly educated and has an amazing brain to put concepts together. I love listening to him and the way his brain makes order out of chaos, how he shares about his heart for the congregation, how his accident that almost killed him motivated him to do even more.

As we were talking I told him about the labyrinth….. And Jerome had no idea what I was talking about. He had never seen a labyrinth, could not imagine it, and did not see any purpose for it. He had seen corn mazes before and wondered if it was like that.
We had a long conversation and I took him to the labyrinth… and even after seeing it, he was perplexed of the need of it.

That all made me think of our the concept that we often talk about of ”living in a bubble.” Here is a highly educated man, with decades of living and learning and yet he never heard of it.

What are the things that I never heard of that are so normal for others? What are the things outside my bubble that I should explore? What is outside your bubble?
We often talk about “popping the bubbles” that keep us separated, isolated, and unable to move beyond our known world.
So, pop my bubble…. I would love to have conversations with people who think differently than me, whose experiences are different, whose bubble is different.
Could our world be a better place if we would learn to step into each other’s bubbles from time to time and learn?

Knowing my friend Jerome, he will go home, grab some books, do some research and learn more about this strange thing called a labyrinth.