MOLI VIEW™

I kept hearing about a labyrinth in Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan, just blocks below the site of the World Trade Center collapse. An artist, Camino De Paz, got the "okay" from the city to lay down stones to mark a winding circular path that goes nowhere, but inside itself. If you follow the path all the way in, you then have to reverse direction and wind your way back out again. There are no tricks and no dead ends, but there is a unique opportunity to walk, and walk with no purpose but to contemplate.

The park shares space with ferry docks, walls of plywood, and orange fencing around construction sites, so I had a hard time finding a flat circle in the grass at night. Traffic is noisy and heavy and impatient for entrance to the Battery Tunnel. A shiny Korean War memorial is nearby, obtrusive. In an unusual triangle with seemingly nothing but overgrown grasses and clover, there was an opening under Jerusalem trees. Labyrinth found!

There are different ways to approach a labyrinth walk. These suggestions are from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, where there is an outdoor labyrinth of terrazzo stone and an indoor labyrinth on a wool tapestry.

There are three stages of the walk:

• Purgation (Releasing): A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.
• Illumination (Receiving):When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
• Union (Returning): As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for.

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