I spent a day in Dublin after my time in Corrymeela and like a good tourist, I bought a ticket on the Big Bus Hop On Hop Off bus. I stayed on the bus the entire way around the first time, I got a great overview of the city and had a chance to decide where I wanted to go on the second time round. I had planned to stop at Trinity College and see the Book of Kells… there was a two hour wait… I decided against it.

One of the stops was at Christchurch Cathedral, a Church of Ireland place of worship dating back to 1028! There is a beautiful Chartres style labyrinth in one of the courtyards and I had to walk it! It took quite a while, and I had to wait a number of times for people to move from the path, they were usually using it as a shortcut between the gates to the church yard and the entrance to the cathedral or simply to stand on to take pictures of the cathedral. In the hour or so that I was there, nobody else actually walked the labyrinth. As I walked the curving lines of ancient pilgrimage, I got any number of weird looks as I waited for people to move off the path, although everyone was polite once they noticed me.  As I entered the centre and stood in silence for a few minutes,  I debated internally about simply walking across to exit, rather than returning on the path. But I have never been able to disturb the energy of a labyrinth in that way, so I returned the same way I came. Different, but the same. And that’s my window on God’s world.

It took a very long time to get a photo without people using it as a shortcut between the cathedral gates and the entrance.