Stepping Into the Spiritual
Vita Barron stepped carefully on the labyrinth’s narrow path, at times teetering on the turns, at other times gliding smoothly as if on Easy Street.
A labyrinth is a lot like life, she said.
Dating back at least to 1800 BC, labyrinths are an ancient meditation tool. Christian churches began using them for prayer and meditation as early as AD 350, but they came into their own in the Middle Ages--from the 5th to 15th centuries--when they were inlaid in the floors of some of Europe’s most graceful cathedrals.
Having fallen out of favor as the Western world moved from an intuitive to a scientific orientation by the 18th century, labyrinths are back. Designed into floors or walkways or simply painted on canvas, they suddenly are in demand by a host of faiths and appearing in the most unlikely of places, like prison yards, gay and lesbian centers, retreat centers and in hospitals where informal studies have touted their healing ability.
In Orange County, labyrinths can be found at St. Anselm’s Episcopal Church in Garden Grove and at the Unity Church of Tustin.
They’re also showing up at wedding and memorial services--even in prisons. At least one hand-held version--designed as a finger meditation tool for the blind--is being used by a woman in a jail in downtown Los Angeles and a larger-scale version is being mowed into the grass of a prison yard in the Midwest. According to experts, some 1,000 new labyrinths have emerged in the United States and in Europe in the 1990s alone.
“There’s a labyrinth explosion going on,” said Tom Keelan, associate director of Veriditas, an extensive labyrinth project run by Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco.
Keelan said the return of the ancient tool may be a result of internal anxiety as we approach the new millennium--but also because people today, he said, are seeking a more universal approach to spirituality. The labyrinth has been rediscovered and embraced by people of diverse spiritual views, from New Agers to traditional Christian believers, he said.
Keelan said the attraction is the labyrinth’s welcoming nature. “There is no dogma or doctrine attached to it . . . [Walking one] calms your mind and quiets the chatter that we have in our busy lives so you can talk to whatever God you want.”
Skeptics are quickly won over, Keelan said, after walking a labyrinth’s “sacred geometry” that produces a lulling, calming effect that has been known to lower blood pressure. “After people walk it, they learn it’s not a threatening spiritual tool,” he said. “It’s a direct connect with God.”
According to Keelan, Veriditas has shipped 170 portable canvas labyrinths to various organizations and churches of all denominations across the country and Europe.
One such recipient was St. Cross by the Sea Episcopal Church in Hermosa Beach. That church lends its 40-by-40-foot labyrinth to other locations here locally. It is estimated that some 4,000 people have walked on it in just four years. Vita Barron, 44, walked St. Cross’ labyrinth recently while it was on loan to her church, St. Clement’s by the Sea Episcopal Church in San Clemente.
Her black pumps kicked off to the side, Barron--in white athletic socks provided by the church--walked the labyrinth in a quiet, meditative state for about an hour.
“I was able to look at my life from the beginning,” she said afterward, clearly moved by the experience. “I looked at how my life has progressed and the wrong turns I’ve taken.”
Barron said she walked the labyrinth’s four interconnected quadrants focusing on a different stage of her life in each one--from her premature birth, her questioning teenage years, her current life as an adult and finally her future.
“Walking the labyrinth showed me the uncertainty of not knowing what’s around the corner. It’s a real step in faith,” she said.
The experience of walking a labyrinth varies by occasion and by person. Some people can walk one in a matter of minutes. Others may take an hour or more. There are no rules. Some walk them like a wedding march, while others have danced their way through a labyrinth’s sudden twists, unexpected turns and straight stretches.
Unlike a maze, which is designed to trick walkers with its dead-ends and false turns, a labyrinth is a circular pathway one walks for meditative prayer. Like life, it offers only one way in and one way out.
Chant music or a quiet flute usually plays in the background. Sometimes Tibetan gongs are placed out for ringing--as if to signal the beginning and end of the journey. Some people hold flowers and others hold their hands to the sky. Some read meditations placed along the way while others keep a keen eye on a labyrinth’s narrow 18-inch pathway. Many call it a mesmerizing experience that lingers.
Henri Bendel, 64, also walked the same labyrinth recently on a warm Saturday afternoon at St. Clement’s.
She said she lost all consciousness of her surroundings as she walked the canvas, negotiating its purple twists and curves with the aid of a cane.
“It reminded me what a circle of life we are on,” she said. Bendel--who suffered a brain stem stroke in 1995--said the experience brought her closer to her recently deceased 38-year-old daughter Michaela. “When I got hot walking it,” she said afterward, “suddenly there would be a breeze sent by Michaela.”
Some have had life-altering experiences walking a labyrinth.
Such is the case with the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, who founded Veriditas after her first occasion of walking a labyrinth in 1991. “Somehow, it just grabbed hold of me,” she said.
Artress is now a labyrinth expert and author of a book titled “Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool.”
According to Artress, labyrinths date back 4,000 to 5,000 years. The most famous ancient one, she said, was a kidney-shaped version from the island of Crete built as a lair for the Minotaur.
Thousands of years later, labyrinths were popularized by the Christian church and used during the Crusades as a symbolic way for Christians to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when travel to Palestine was unsafe. Other churches ordered sinners to walk them as a penitence. The most famous labyrinth of this era--and the one most commonly replicated today--is from the Chartres Cathedral outside Paris, completed in 1201.
“The labyrinth is a wonderful meditation of trusting the path. . . . It is not about force, it’s about flow. It’s not about linearity, it’s about circularity, about getting to where you are going in an indirect way,” Artress said. “It makes sense when you are inside walking one. Embrace the skepticism and allow yourself to experience it now.”
FYI
Local labyrinths:
* St. Cross by the Sea Episcopal Church, 1818 Monterey Ave., Hermosa Beach, the first Sunday of every month.
* St. Anselm’s Episcopal Church, 13091 Galway St., Garden Grove, open daily, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and on Sundays to 2 p.m.
* Unity Church of Tustin, 14402 S. Prospect Ave., Tustin, daily from dawn to dusk. Special candlelight walk at 7:30 p.m. the fourth Sunday of each month. Special labyrinth retreat, July 17, 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
More information about labyrinths is available from Veriditas at www.gracecathedral.com