Sermon: I Walk the Labyrinth

[ previous | index | next ]

I Walk the Labyrinth

By Lee Stokes Hilton

May 1, 2005

stand at the opening, arms to my sides. Instinctively, I set my shoulders back and my chin up, as if to face a new challenge. But there's nothing challenging about walking the labyrinth – putting one foot ahead of the other, following the narrow path to the center and back out again. The toughest part is quieting the usual mind chatter about the silly, daily details of life: How late will the dry cleaners be open? ... Don't forget to buy lightbulbs for the bathroom... What should I fix for dinner?

But walking – being in motion – has its own calming effect, and if I remove my shoes, the cold stone of the floor on my stockinged feet grounds me, reducing the static in my mind to a murmur. Think about the path, I say to myself. Move forward.

Labyrinths have long been used within the Christian tradition to symbolize a journey – a quest for spiritual enlightenment, a search for grace, even a surrogate for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But the Labyrinth is more than a pattern in the floor. It is an archetype, a divine imprint, found in all religious traditions, even in cultures that long predate Christianity. In spring, we emerge yawning from our winter hibernation to Mother Nature's coming out party. The evidence of creation is in the trees above us and the ground below. It's a season when the ancient Celts celebrated the earth, and a great time to let the labyrinth work its own brand of awakening on you.

There are no rules to the labyrinth. It has only one path, so you have no decisions to make. You don't have to think about where you're going, so the left brain – that part of your mind that likes to worry about the future and decide where you're going next – can go off and take a nap. And in fact, other than sleep, our world doesn't offer many such opportunities.

Which is why many health centers, retirement communities, and hospitals have begun to install labyrinths on their campuses. Medical professionals know that positive patient feelings and attitudes contribute to better health and faster recovery rates. Because labyrinth walking promotes relaxation, deeper breathing, and a release of stress, the Medical Center of Central Georgia uses theirs in cardiac rehab. At California Pacific Medical Center, surgeons sometimes walk the labyrinth to calm themselves before an operation. And Mid-Columbia Medical Center in Oregon uses its labyrinth to complement the use of chemotherapy and radiation in cancer treatment. In fact, research conducted at Harvard Medical School's Mind/Body Medical Institute found that focused walking meditations are highly efficient at reducing anxiety, lowering breathing and heart rates, moderating incidents of chronic pain and insomnia, and lowering elevated blood pressure even more effectively than drugs. Some doctors find that cancer patients benefit from meditative labyrinth walking to center themselves before treatment, and to relax after receiving treatment. And even in cases where outer healing fails, inner healing can still take place. So hospices are beginning to use labyrinths for stress reduction, relaxation and stillness, in programs dealing with AIDS and cancer, in relieving grief or loss.

Our labyrinth has no walls, so nothing will stop you from walking straight to the center; but the deepest magic of the labyrinth really comes from exploring the whole path, allowing it to take you where it wants, when it wants. It's not a maze – there are no false endings or wrong turns – but the path has its own Alice-in-Wonderland-logic: when it seems like you're closest to the center, you're the farthest away, and when it seems like you're farthest away, you're almost there.

Every walk is a different experience. Walking at dawn, walking at night, walking alone or with several other people. Or walking with just one other person. You get a sense of connection and yet not connection – like the proverbial ships passing in the night. You are close to the other person, then you are far apart. You are on your own path; you are on the same path. For anyone who tends to think metaphorically, the experience is rife with possibility. Maybe you'll walk faster than the people in front of you; feel free to pass around them. Or maybe you'll take their presence as a reminder to slow down in life, to pace yourself.

Not long ago, I was walking the labyrinth with my writing group, all of us hoping for inspiration, and just as I was getting into a sort of zone, the back doors to the atrium opened and an entire class of preschoolers tumbled in. I stopped, and, ok, maybe I felt just a little bit irritated. I tried to stare them down, to turn their movement into quiet tip-toes by force of will. But I might as well have been invisible. The children flowed toward me, around me, and finally past me, like lava from a volcano, and when I realized how futile my anger was, I smiled and let it go. I thought about how life is full of interruptions, large and small, and maybe the best way to deal with them is to let them flow over you, remembering where you are and where you are going, and stay on the path.

Then last fall, I was at Kiawah, one of the barrier islands off the coast of South Carolina. It was early Sunday morning, and a beautiful day, so I decided to take a walk on the beach. I turned to head north along the shoreline, and I noticed a woman some 50 feet ahead of me, standing absolutely still, facing the ocean. As I drew nearer to her, I saw that she was standing in the middle of a design she had drawn in the sand. It was a labyrinth. I knew I shouldn't interrupt her, but the opportunity was too good, so I stopped and asked her how she drew it. “Oh, it's easy,” she said as she moved over to a clear place on the beach next to her.

She picked up a stick and began to draw as she talked. “You start with a cross and four points,” she said. “You connect the top of the cross to the first point, then the right arm of the cross loops back over to the second point. The left arm of the cross loops clockwise around to the third point, and finally, the bottom of the cross connects all the way around to the fourth point.

Images borrowed from: Kids Ark - a cyber space station for kids
[ web.ukonline.co.uk/conker/artscentre/artroom-labyrinth.htm ]

“It's a small labyrinth,” she added, “but a good one for the beach.”

I moved on and let her finish her meditation; but when I approached that spot on my return, I realized no one had walked that labyrinth she drew for me. So I walked it, and when I got to the center, I faced the ocean and inhaled deeply of the warm sea air. As I walked out and back to my condo, I felt lighter and more refreshed than I had in days.

So the real message of the labyrinth is this: make of it what you wish. Become a part of human history...people all over the world have been walking these patterns for more than 3000 years. Just have the experience. Go through the turns – slowly or quickly – and allow it to relax, inspire, or frustrate you in whatever way seems appropriate. As likely as not, you'll find both relaxation and clarity. Like life, the labyrinth has its twists and turns, but it's a great way to straighten out those tangled thoughts.