Nine: The Buried Treasure

In 2025, something shifted.

A strong inner knowing came — quiet but insistent, the kind I have learned to trust — that the labyrinth needed to rest. To be covered, held, tucked in. Rich soil and grass seed were laid over the path, and the river meadow was allowed to return to itself.

This spring, you would not know the labyrinth was there. The grass is whole and green and beautiful. And beneath it, every single stone is undisturbed — each one pressed into place by hand, still holding the pattern.

The path is there. It has not been lost. It is being held.

And this is what the mystics know about the divine life itself — that it does not abandon what it loves. That the sacred presence which holds the labyrinth beneath the grass is the same sacred presence that holds me in my own winters. Not from outside. From within. Because I am not held by God the way a stone is held in a hand. I am held the way the ocean holds a wave — entirely, from the inside, as its own expression.

The mystics of many paths know this season: the dark night that precedes the dawn, the silence before the word, the winter that the seed must pass through before it can become anything at all. In the contemplative traditions it is called emptying — the letting go that paradoxically creates more space for what is sacred. My body knew it before my mind had words for it.

What if withdrawal is not the same as abandonment?

What if the most loving thing I can sometimes do — for something, for someone, for some tender part of myself — is to cover it gently and let it rest?

What in my life is not gone — but resting?

What have I covered with shame that might actually be sleeping under love?

What pattern in me is being held, intact, beneath a surface that looks like nothing is happening?

The labyrinth will open again in its own time. I am in no hurry. Some things know when they are ready.