The woods do not work well as a labyrinth

Today, our Contemporary Moral Issues class met at our professor's house and we had a guest speaker from the Center for Religion and the Environment lead us in "Opening the Book of Nature," a class he teaches to instruct people in seeing God in nature and "reading" God's presence in nature. The ancient church fathers and saints wrote about the "two books" -- the book of scripture and the book of nature -- that were essential to understand God. We've gotten really good in post-enlightenment western Christianity about analyzing the "book of Scripture," but have all but let the "book of nature" go.

This all sounded good enough, and I was looking forward to the hour that we were given to "wander" in the woods behind our professor's house. It was very "retreat"-ish, and all my "aha" moments where I've really felt a sense of direction and purpose and what I believe to be God's call to me have all happened when I have been out in nature on retreat. So this was a familiar scenario to me. Only problem was, there weren't any clearly marked trails right behind her house, and there were three miles of woods to explore with no signs of "civilization."

Unfortunately, the good sense of direction that I generally pride myself on failed me, and I got completely lost. I came upon the same spot on the woods three different times, after being SURE that I was headed in the opposite direction, back towards the house, I'd suddenly find myself again back at the same spot. My husband, who is an Eagle Scout and lived in Alaska for a number of years and is familiar with wilderness survival and wanderings, later informed me that the human tendency in such situations is to walk in circles. I wonder what that says about our spiritual and intellectual pursuits.

I was sort of following these open paths (or what I saw as open paths) through the woods, thinking I'd let the woods guide me as I would a labyrinth. Only problem is, the labyrinth is carefully engineered (by humans!) to do what it does -- to bring you to the center and then bring you back out again, without you having to focus on remembering where you've been or where you're going. It's a nice metaphor for being led by God. But out in God's actual creation, following a path and allowing it to lead you without being aware of your surroundings only leads to being lost and scared. So how should we REALLY approach our relationship with God? Is the labyrinth really such a good metaphor? It certainly doesn't work to use God's untamed creation that way.