THE LABYRINTH
The word labyrinth has always appealed to me as a woman and a writer. It is ripe with connotations of circuitous paths, journeys, a patterned purpose, beauty and mystery found along the way. When I think of labyrinths, I think less of English gardens, the pageantry of medieval times, centaurs, and mazes; and more about images of roundness, patterned purpose, a natural, organic, even mystic way of knowing the numinous. Before I started reading about labyrinths, taking sojourns to find them, walking them as prayer; in a deeply intuitive way, I knew they were places - like other Thin Spots - where heaven touches earth.
Until this spring I'd never walked a labyrinth. I'd just dreamt of them, seen them in books, imagined their round allure, felt drawn to their mysterious yet predictable patterns. In June after losing a friend to Cancer, a book to unexpected and radical publisher cuts, and having to reschedule a long awaited bash with my closest girlfriends in honor of my 40th birthday; a labyrinth in Canada found me. It soothed me during my time of loss, welcomed me to Middle Life, and began reigniting my creativity.
PATH TO THE LABYRINTH
My path to the labyrinth was casual, organically daily, delightfully unexpected. Early in May, I was chatting with one of my neighbors who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Checking in to see how she was feeling, I stood at the end of her driveway."What'd ya do today?" I kicked a rock in the boulevard.
"I walked the labyrinth at Olcott," she said with a slightly detached nonchalance.
"Labyrinth?" I asked, my eyebrows raised, the word almost cartwheeling on my tongue. "What labyrinth? Where?"
My neighbor stooped down, weeded a Dandelion from her lawn. "The Labyrinth at Olcott. It's just a couple blocks from here." She threw the weed beside her mailbox.
For the next few days it was as if the labyrinth whispered to me. She felt alive and near, beckoning. Calling to me. Welcoming.
She asked me to come and slow down, to come and cry, to come and find answers to my questions. She whispered words of wonder and womb, of a prayer one could walk. Her siren songs were tantalizing. They promised, "Come, be redirected. Let me ignite new energy in you for living a full, creative life. Let me help you meet the challenges you are about to face and find ways of serving Christ with a fresh joy, peace and wisdom." At the time, I couldn't have put exact words to her beckonings. But, they were there - in my soul - deeply imprinted like the ancient black and white picture of my great great grandmother that hangs in my family room.
MY FIRST LABYRINTH WALK
On Friday, May 9th I dropped my three-year-old daughter, Emily, off at preschool. Typically I would head straight home and use the two precious kid-free hours to write. This particular day was glorious with blue sky, vernal green grass and a breeze that carried the voice of the labyrinth directly to my ear. Her words tempted me to forget about my deadline for one morning and go on an adventure.
I tried to remember exactly where my neighbor said the labyrinth was. East on Geneva, take left before you get to Main Street . . . Once I was in the general vicinity, I followed arrowed signs and turns on a one lane road until I came to a garden and acres of wide open space encircled by mature trees. In the distance I could see a covered sign, a bench, and what appeared to be the labyrinth. I inhaled deeply. My ankles got wet by dewy grass as I walked. The journey to the labyrinth is a pilgrimage in its own right, I thought.
At the top of a small hill, she sat furrowed and friendly. She was perfectly round, a series of seven twisting concentric circles made with pale red pavers nested amidst a bed of colorful polished stones. She wasn't exactly what I'd expected. I had hoped for a glorious eleven circuit medieval labyrinth, maybe gardenesque with perhaps a row or two of boxhedge and greenery. Instead, this one was small and humble, a seven circuit Cretan (I would later discover). Standing in the middle of the wide open space I felt a little self-conscious. Industrial sized lawn mowers buzzed by, bringing an everyday hum that calmed me. I read the sign:A labyrinth is a complex and circuitous path that leads from a beginning point to a center. Labyrinth patterns are universal, being found as archaic petroglyphs, Amerindian basket-weaving designs, and paintings or drawings from all over the world . . . In the Christian Middle Ages, labyrinths were often formed with colored paving stones in the floors of cathedral naves. Later, labyrinths were sometimes constructed of turf, herbaceous borders, or hedges . . .
The labyrinth at Olcott is a meandering pattern of the seven-circuit Cretan type, with its path marked by circular stepping stones in a field of pebbles. You walk it by entering from the northwest . . . and following the path to the center, where you may wish to pause for a few moments. Then reverse your direction and retrace your path back out to the starting point.
As you enter the labyrinth, you may focus your thoughts on a question or concern. You may walk the labyrinth with a quiet mind, sensing without particularizing the wonder of the pattern . . . In the labyrinth, as in life, there is no single right way to follow the path.
I stood at the mouth of the labyrinth feeling tempted to count the pavers. That would be so Modern, I thought. Ignoring the shame of my fall from postmodernity, I honored the urge to count the labyrinth's stepping stones, figure out her pattern. As I stepped into the mouth of the circle and continued on the path I counted stepping stones, "One, two, three, four . . . It was difficult to count and balance and follow the twisting path. I almost fell off the stones a couple times and had to remind myself, "there is no single right way to follow the path."
On the thirty-ninth stone, I considered my age, my quickly approaching June birthday, the step I was about to take into Middle Life. Thank you Lord for my life. Thank you for my thirty-nine years and the ways you've guided my feet as I've walked them. I looked at the cloudless almost periwinkle sky. I noticed a couple of cardinals in a particularly tall pine. Then stepped to the fortieth stone. I know you will be with me as I walk this year.
A picture of my Aunt Patty's face popped into my mind as I counted the steps between thirty-nine and sixty-nine - the distance between us in years. I prayed for Patty, who was recently diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. As I stepped on the the sixty-ninth stone I paused and asked God to grant my aunt's wish to live to see her seventieth birthday. Lawnmowers buzzed a song into the breeze as I stepped onto the seventieth stone, expectant and hopeful.
As I traversed to the middle of the labyrinth on my virgin walk, I started thinking about writing about the experience. I pushed the thoughts away hoping to take in the sensate experience fully, purely: stones on my bare feet, a path to follow, a middle in which to rest, a rejuvenated way back into my daily life. As I wound my way out of the sacred circle I felt thankful at the new discovery and hungry to walk, learn, know, experience more.
INVITING OTHERS TO THE LABYRINTH
When I picked Emily up from preschool, I couldn't wait to bring her to my new place of play and prayer. "Wanna go to a special place before we go home?" I asked her.
"What special place?" she asked.
"A labyrinth," I said enjoying the sound of the word and the way it felt as it rolled off my tongue.
She looked out the window watching trees blur green and gold. Cocking her head to one side and eyeing me in the rear view mirror, "What's a labyrinth, Mama?"
"A labyrinth is a curly (though my daughter is quite verbal, I didn't think she was ready for circuitous) path that helps us find our way."
"Let's go!" she said without a moment's jerk of hesitation.
Emily ran the Labyrinth as Olcott with lithe, smooth, energetic steps. She raced it, really. I walked, smiling gently as our paths crossed and we occasionally bumped into each other. (Such a metaphor for trying to lead a contemplative life as the mother of young children. Interruptions always. How will I learn to embrace them? I wondered.) We ran back to the car, holding hands, refreshed, joyful. I think we may have even skipped.
Later that night on our way out to grab a pizza, Emily and I introduced the labyrinth to her brothers, Ben and Ayden, and to Bryan, my husband. We walked the circles as a family. The boys raced like Emily had earlier that afternoon. Bry slowed down for the first time in weeks. Again the contrast: parents needing repose, children needing to burn energy. We all breathed in fresh air, noticed sky and birds and the beating of our hearts: a family, together, praying with moving feet.
A SEARCH FOR MORE LABYRINTHS
Once I had walked my first labyrinth and introduced it to my family; I was hungry to find out more about this mysterious, sacred, seemingly lost spiritual helpmate. Serendipitously, I discovered the Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress' WALKING A SACRED PATH: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice. And, along with that, her organization, Veriditas, which (among other things) offers a World-Wide Labyrinth Locator. Check it out at http://www.veriditas.labyrinthsociety.org/.
On Father's Day, using the Labyrinth Locator, my family and I found an 11 circuit, Medieval Chartres replica at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital on Roosevelt Road in Wheaton.
When I look at a medieval eleven circuit labyrinth with its eleven concentric circles and six-petaled rose in the middle; the soil of my mind fills with virescent seedling images pushing up concepts that seem to be missing in the modern church. Images of the feminine side of God, a place of nurturing and grace, of healing and hope. A place where the people and problems of earth can swish around in divine amniotic fluid, in God's womb.
This year, the fortieth in my circuitous life-journey, I hope to make pilgrimage to local (and some out-of-state) labyrinths. I'll go to Minnesota and walk a labyrinth in an arboretum with Cheri, to Dallas and sojourn to a church labyrinth with Jules. I hope to visit San Francisco with my husband Bry, brother Rob, and his wife Kristin, where I imagine Kristin and I in gowns, Bry and Rob in tuxes walking the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. Someday, perhaps on my fiftieth birthday, I'll make it to the oldest existing church labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France. Please, come, walk with me. If you do, don't hesitate to write with stories of discovery as the labyrinth helps you rediscover the depths of your soul.
The labyrinth is an archetype of wholeness, a sacred place that helps us rediscover the depths of our souls so we can remember who we are.
- Lauren Artress, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice.
Labyrinths can help us to redirect and ignite new energies for living full, creative lives. They can help us meet the challenge to find ways to be of service to something greater than ourselves. - Lauren Artress
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