James Derkits

Let me start with a confession about my cynicism, to get that out of the way. Sometimes when I think about the labyrinth, especially after I haven't walked one for some time I think, "I've done this before, I know what it's like. I don't need to do this again." And then I walk it and it works. The first time I walked a labyrinth I was in college, and helping with a youth lock-in at St. David's, Austin . Now St. David's has a beautiful outdoor, stone labyrinth, but that time we taped it out in the parish hall. An ancient, sacred prayer path in painter's tape. The following summer, we taped one out on the gym floor at Camp Allen , then one on the stage of the parish hall of St. Mark's, San Marcos . I've also walked the canvas ones and one of my very favorites was a labyrinth at College of the Transfiguration, Grahamstown, South Africa . It was made from rocks lining the edges of a path our in the yard of the college. I had the idea to...

Eli's not quite ready to take his show on the road, but he has started making up his own jokes. He hears us tell a joke like, "What did the baseball mitt say to the baseball?" "I don't know, what?" "Catch ya' later!" We all laugh...we like those kinds of jokes. After a few minutes Eli will come up with one like this one: "What did the BB gun say to the BB?" "I don't know, what?" "I'm gonna shoot you out of there!" We all laugh. One of his favorites that I tell often is, "What did the hot-dog say when it crossed the finish line?" "I don't know, what?" "I'm the wiener! I'm the wiener!" That one is best told with an overabundance of enthusiasm, victory fists lifted high in the air. Eli's sense of humor is really budding. He laughs at things in movies, and a couple of times we've really gotten into a good, deep laugh that's hard to quit, lau...