A Lenten Message & Spiritual Challenge
from Rev. Tuesday
Spiritual Challenge for Lent: The Labyrinth
Mazes and Labyrinths
Last summer, Tony and I visited the corn maze at the Farm on Weekeepeemee Road. It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and I figured that we would be out for maybe a half hour. I enjoy puzzles, and was looking forward to an easy outing with my husband.
After 90 minutes I was beginning to feel annoyed and uncomfortable, irritated by the straw that poked into my loose sandals. I kept thinking about the bottle of water I left in the car with longing. Every time we came back to a spot we had been to before (once or twice or more) my frustration grew. The maze, made of tall, growing stalks of corn, was well-designed to do its job: test, confound, and challenge. This living puzzle was more than I had planned - or not planned - on, and it wasn't really fun anymore. Hot, tired, and thirsty, I just wanted to find the way out as quickly as I could.
Earlier that summer I had a very different experience. there is a beautiful labyrinth behind Yale Divinity School, where I was in residence for a week-long fellowship. In the heat of the June day, just after lunch, I walked the path of the labyrinth. Its lines are traced out in stones set in a garden bed of native plants. I followed the slow, single, winding path of the labyrinth without the risk of hitting a dead end. The path often turned in ways that surprised me, but I never worried that I would get lost. The lines reliably, faithfully, lead into and out of the center, the heart, of the design.
By design the maze challenges you to find the way out; the labyrinth asks you to stay present as you walk through. Mazes have been used throughout history to challenge, deter, and even trap those who enter. Labyrinths have long been used as a way to symbolically go on a spiritual journey.
Often, the challenges of life feel maze-like: Go this way, or that? Will the next decision - a job, or a purchase, or college, or a move, or having the surgery (or not having the surgery) - be a step on the way out of being stuck, or will it lead to a dead end (or worse)? Sometimes a choice that seemed simple finds us unprepared. We can't see past the next bend, let alone find the exit to what we wish life would be.
A labyrinth doesn't ask you to guess and get it right or wrong - it only asks you to keep going. Its path will bend and turn and twist, and it may take longer than you think, hope, or want it to go, but it will always lead to the center, to the heart. It takes the time that it takes.
Lenten Discipline: Intention at the Heart of the Labyrinth
This year for Lent, I invite you to consider the labyrinth as a model for spiritual practice. Instead of thinking of what you will "give up" for Lent, perhaps you might set an intention instead. What is the practice that will lead you toward your intention? With the labyrinth as a model, you can't fail, and there are no traps. You simply move toward the intention at the center of the path. The only goal is to keep moving forward.
Ways to Walk the Labyrinth
Grace Cathedral in San Francisco has two beautiful labyrinths - one indoor and one outdoor - for spiritual pilgrims to walk through. They suggest that pilgrims use three steps in their journey: Release, Receive, Return. (Read more about it here.)
Release: as you move toward the center, let go of thoughts and distractions, a time to open the heart and quiet the mind
Receive: at the center of the labyrinth, stay as long as you like. It is a place to receive what you need. Some days this may feel like a lot. Some days it will feel like a little. Receive what is there for you to receive.
Return: leaving by the same path that brought you in, walking with God as you do. This time is for integrating what you have received into the work and life God is inviting you to do.
During Lent, we will have a finger labyrinth available to use in the Pearson Room. We've also set out a PDF of a labyrinth for you to take home. You can trace the path with your finger or with a pen or pencil or crayon. As you travel the winding path, what will you find at the center? What is it that you need the most? Perhaps it is closeness with God. Perhaps it is forgiveness - for yourself or for another. Perhaps it is clarity about what to do next. Or perhaps it is simply finding a way to be open in heart and mind to hear what God wants to say to you.
This link shows you where all the large, walkable labyrinths near you are.
I hope you will join me, fellow pilgrim, on this Lenten journey.
Grace and peace,
Rev. Tuesday +