This Lenten and Easter season, churches across the nation-including many in Virginia-are offering labyrinths as a way for Christians to use the metaphor of walking, running or even crawling their faith as they move closer to God.
By Marcia J. Davis
This Easter season, lines are forming on church campuses and in parish halls to walk labyrinths in a metaphoric search for treasures of the spirit and the soul.
As churches incorporate the labyrinth in Lenten and Easter rituals, they are drawing a different crowd, more comfortable moving through a physical faith walk than sitting passively in church pews. Labyrinth trekkers say they can move closer to God, peel away layers of hurt, or find solace from a stressful walking-on-eggshells lifestyle.
Labyrinths are pathways painted on canvas for portability, stained on concrete sanctuary floors, or, when outdoors, set in stone or terrazzo. They can be paved with brick, or planted in grass with pathways of mulch.
Labyrinth designs are not random, but follow the patterns of what is considered sacred geometry. The most popular design clones France's circular Chartes Cathedral labyrinth, built in 1201.
“Ancient tradition in the French Gothic cathedrals at Easter was for clergy to walk the labyrinth singing hymns and tossing a golden ball back and forth in the name of the risen Christ,” according to Lauren Artress, a San Francisco author on labyrinths and head of Veriditas, the World Wide Labyrinth Project.
Through the ages, churches have used the labyrinth as a pilgrimage walk when the journey to the Holy Land was too dangerous to make.
Artress, widely credited with bringing the labyrinth into contemporary Christian churches, travels across the country helping individuals and groups understand and apply the labyrinth.
“The trend has caught on so in churches of every denomination,” she said, “because spiritual hunger is so great right now. People so want to connect deeply in a prayer life.”
The labyrinth draws out the spiritual natures of children, youth and adults of all ages, Artress said.
Like many who walk the “L” regularly, she considers the walk a metaphor for one's life or spiritual journey.
“It's important that you understand there is no right way or wrong way to walk it,” said Artress.
“Children love to run it … then, wind down and uncoil to be very quiet in the center. … It's not a maze. You can't get lost-there's only one way in to the center and the same way out.”
At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, where Artress serves as canon, hundreds come on Easter Sunday to walk the outdoor terrazzo labyrinth, set in a meditation garden, as a way to honor the day and “be present with the glory of Easter,” she said. Every Friday in Lent, many make the candlelight walk indoors on a massive wool tapestry labyrinth to the strains of a Tazie musical chant playing softly in the background.
On Easter Sunday at Church of the Servant in Wilmington, N.C., the altar will be positioned at the center of the labyrinth as the place of resurrection, according to Jan Christophersen, coordinator of the church's Labyrinth Guild. “We will physically act the story out, from the tomb to the resurrection, by walking the labyrinth,” she said.
River Road Church, Baptist, in Richmond; Kirk of Kildaire Presbyterian Church in Cary, N.C.; and Faith Lutheran Church in O'Fallon, Ill., are using labyrinth-painted canvases for Easter and Holy Week walks.
At Kessler Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, the newly dedicated outdoor terrazzo labyrinth will be host to the youth's sunrise Easter service. Linda McLemore, who heads Artspirit, a Methodist mission group in the Dallas area, recently led labyrinth training for members of the Kessler Park congregation and community.
McLemore said her artists' group would walk the labyrinth on Easter with Scripture, prayer and poetry, and that the church would be inviting members of the community to walk the labyrinth.
Kay Quisenberry, a professional dancer in the Artspirit group, said the labyrinth gives her a different experience each time she walks it. She finds joy in dancing through the labyrinth and calmness in kneeling to touch the ground or gather small stones to commemorate her walk with God.
Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal in Augusta, Ga., is hosting labyrinth walks each Friday during Lent, and on Easter weekend. The labyrinth, stained in brown and white on the parish hall floor, is set up with the 12 stations of the cross representing the walk that Jesus made between the time of his persecution and his resurrection.
Parish nurse Karen Hill was instrumental in making the labyrinth part of the church's new building plans. She said many people in her church still do not understand the labyrinth, and she is helping to teach the congregation and community about it.
“People need to know it's not anything about magic, and it's not to be used or thought of as a Ouija board,” Hill said.
“On Easter, we will have a liturgy, then gather at the entrance of the labyrinth and invite the Holy Spirit to come. Each person can pray for whatever they are asking from the walk: forgiveness, self-reflection, self-examination, enlightenment, healing, guidance … .
“At the center, in union with God … you can wait, sit, stand, lie down, kneel, or whatever you want.”
Hill said she remembers the first time she walked the labyrinth: “I lay in the center with tears dripping off my face as if I lay on the cross myself.”
Religion News Service
Marcia J. Davis writes for RNS.