WIUM Local
(2001-09-01)
Photo by Ginny Christensen
What exactly is a labyrinth? A labyrinth is large circle with one winding path which curves back and forth to the center. Unlike a maze which has confusing dead ends where a person can get lost, in a labyrinth one cannot get lost. In fact, one can sometimes get found, as the archetypal path symbolizes the walker's life journey. Today, labyrinths are used for education, healing, insights, and ceremonies, as well as the more traditional spiritual meditations.
Two main types of labyrinths predominate: the older Classical or Cretan design and the Medieval or Chartres design. In the Greek myth, Theseus entered a labyrinth underneath the Palace of King Knossos on Crete to find and kill the Minotaur, the half man/half bull who ate human sacrifices. Since Theseus needed Princess Ariadne's thread to find his way out, perhaps this was actually a maze.
In addition to permanent ones, some labyrinths are spontaneous, transient, and often anonymous, such as those mowed into summer fields some years in the Takilma and Sunny Valley areas, built of rocks at the old Mt. Shasta ski bowl, or traced into the wet sand at coastal beaches.
Grants Pass therapist Suellen Willi reports that the large Classical labyrinth she drew and walked one day at Brookings stayed intact for hours, being used by many other beachcombers. Her first labyrinth walk at Ashland's New Year's celebration engaged her. "I had already been using Celtic knot designs in some brain balancing work I was doing with clients and used the Cretan labyrinth as a fingermaze exercise for the same effect," she reports. "I find walking the labyrinth can be playful, prayerful, introspective and expansive." Willi is now entertaining the idea of installing a Cretan labyrinth in the backyard of her counseling office someday.
Occupational therapist Lani Rossetta also uses Classical Cretan labyrinths (both full size and finger walkable) in her work with students in the Eagle Point, Oregon, schools. Her new handbook, Labyrinths for Kids: Exploring the Construction and Use of Labyrinths as a Tool for Increasing Fine Motor, Visual Perceptual and Gross Motor Skills in the Classroom, shows how her students quickly learn to draw both left and right-handed Cretan designs or glue seeds, beans or velvet rope to boards, then trace the design with their fingers or roll a marble along the path. Tracing double finger labyrinths can integrate left and right brain functions. Rossetta plans to have Classical Cretan labyrinths painted on the playgrounds at two local schools by fall. Some children draw hopscotch designs on the outdoors ones, while others practice mobility by traversing them in their wheelchairs. "The children love to draw them as well as use them," she says.
By contrast, all the other permanent labyrinths in our area are based on or modified from the more elaborate eleven-circuit Chartres design, with its central six-petalled rosette and scalloped lunations around the edge. It is thought that these designs were first constructed in the pavement of European Gothic cathedrals during the 12th and 13th centuries for those who could not make a spiritual pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Crusades. Pilgrims would walk these labyrinths to simulate their spiritual journey. The labyrinth at Chartres remains the most famous, but is often hard to see when chairs are set up over it during church services.
Since the 1990s this ancient archetypal symbol has had a huge resurgence worldwide, thanks largely to the efforts of Dr. Lauren Artress of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco. Labyrinth societies have sprung up, and many new meditative walks have been constructed around the country.
When Ashland career coach Elizabeth Austin set up her portable canvas Chartres labyrinth in the Stevenson Union at Southern Oregon University last May, it was the first time a labyrinth walk was offered at the university, but Sara Hopkins-Powell, S.O.U. Provost, hopes it won't be the last. She was pleased at the turnout of students, faculty, staff, and visitors. "My hope is that the university will [soon] have its own permanent labyrinth," she said. "It can be used in a variety of ways, including student orientation and diversity workshops." Hopkins-Powell points out that walking the labyrinth helps with stress reduction the same way that meditation and yoga does, a fact that many large corporations have discovered, providing facilities to refresh their staff.
The Chartres design appeals to Hopkins-Powell because it's larger than the Cretan. "The eleven circuit labyrinth is large enough so that even if I am not quite [ready] at first, I have a chance to settle down," says Hopkins-Powell. "Walking the labyrinth is for me a way I can reach a contemplative place very quickly." The labyrinth could be a valuable tool for stress reduction and creativity, she said. The labyrinth helps people experience the world and others in a different way, not just in the classroom.
Labyrinths don't require a lot of instruction. "You can't fail labyrinth [walking]" says Hopkins-Powell with a laugh. The freedom in ways to walk is one of the labyrinth's appeals. People can walk, run, skip, kneel, crawl, or dance at any speed as they follow the path. If they encounter someone coming the other way or someone moving at a different rate of speed, they simply pass in a respectful manner-just like in life. Some describe the three stages of the labyrinth walk as release or purgation on the walk in, insight or illumination at the center, and integration on the way out. "It's a great way to integrate left and right brain activities," she says. Walking the labyrinth integrates the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a person.
The labyrinth in Yreka is used in the same way, according to Audrey Flower, executive director of the Madrone Hospice House. When their facility was being designed in 1999, the local Episcopal minister, Rev. Richard Green, encouraged them to add a labyrinth. Now their Chartres labyrinth in a newly planted rose garden is used by hospice staff and family members of the residents, as well as by the community. As soon as a path is paved across the gravel parking area, residents with walkers and wheelchairs will be able to use it too. Flower walks it with staff members and nurses as they discuss issues that need resolution. Walking also helps them deal with the stress of caring for their patients and healing their grief.
It is in this light that Three Rivers Community Hospital in Grants Pass will be adding a permanent public outdoor pavement labyrinth to their Helen K. Spears Cancer Center this fall. Staff, family, friends, patients, and the general public will be able to benefit from walking this ancient design.
In addition to a physical labyrinth at S. O. U., Hopkins-Powell has been talking about creating a college course studying labyrinths in different societies, in art and in music. She would like to have the course and the labyrinth established within the next two years.
Martha Phelps Cotton, labyrinth facilitator and co-creator of the 55-foot labyrinth in Big Sky Meadow at EarthTeach Forest Park above Ashland, sees the concentric circuits of the Chartres labyrinth design as echoing life's journeys. In addition, she teaches that the four distinctive quadrants of the Chartres labyrinth, commonly recognized as the arms of the Jerusalem cross, also correspond to the Native American medicine wheel as well as the life mandala. "Each quadrant relates to one of the four directions, seasons, quarters of the moon, and stages of life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and elderhood) - and their human aspects, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual," observes Cotton.
Labyrinth ceremonies include coming of age and rites of passage, weddings, and funerals, as well as solstice and equinox celebrations. Cotton envisions the using the EarthTeach labyrinth, which she and her husband, Peter, laid out, for many purposes, including educating and guiding people in healing birthing trauma. Hikers, individuals, school and community groups, Southern Oregon University groups and Rogue Community College nature classes have all used it. Staff development and outward bound type programs have integrated labyrinth walks into their process.
Karen O'Dougherty of Ashland uses the EarthTeach labyrinth as part of her annual Body Basics/Mother-Daughter body awareness retreats. When O'Dougherty, a former school teacher, joined nearly a hundred other individuals over a period of months helping place the stones at EarthTeach, she knew she wanted to incorporate it into her retreat for adolescent girls regaining positive self-images. "The labyrinth is a powerful tool," she says. "Its effect is very different for each person. Some are energized, centered and balanced; some are quiet, tearful, moved; some get strong messages of the new positive image; some have a soft walk and general peace. You just can't predict what experiences a [walker] will have."
Our region seems to have drawn labyrinths the way it has attracted spiritual authors such as Gary Zukav (Seat of the Soul, Soul Stories), Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God books) and Jean Houston (Jump Time, A Mythic Life) all now Ashland residents. Houston adopted the labyrinth as the symbol for her mystery school back in the 1980s, and her students walk the labyrinth frequently as part of the process.
People's journeys to the labyrinth are often as circuitous as the design itself. One of Houston's workshops in Memphis, Tennessee drew Elizabeth Austin, who then attended Houston's mystery school in New York in 1991. A labyrinth had been marked in masking tape on a gym floor. Austin had never walked one before, but she recognized the shape and knew that it contained mystery.
Lauren Artress attended that same mystery school en route to her new job as Canon at Grace Cathedral. Austin recalls, "When Lauren walked that labyrinth, she shifted. Labyrinths became her mission. Lauren has singlehandedly been the most influential person to bring labyrinths into the consciousness of so many people in the world. It's an old paradigm made new." Artress's dedication to labyrinths has resulted in the creation of indoor and outdoor labyrinths at Grace Cathedral, a training program for labyrinth facilitators, and a book, Walking A Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool, all in less than 10 years.
Austin meanwhile moved to Ashland herself and purchased a canvas labyrinth. "I felt inspired the buy the labyrinth in 1997 but didn't have any plans for it at that time. I just had this knowing that I should get it. Using the canvas labyrinth is not a casual thing," she says, explaining why she doesn't actively market its availability. "There is always a ceremonial aspect to it." Now Austin's labyrinth gets frequent use at Houston's mystery school sessions. "It's an archetype asserting itself," says Austin.
All cite the archetypal design's usefulness as a tool for meditation and healing. There's something about the guided path where one doesn't have to make choices that allows a walker to get into a meditative state. The labyrinth is tool for spiritual work, rather than in some way holy itself, say users. Like a rosary, said the Reverend Anne Bartlett of Trinity Episcopal Church in Ashland, it can help someone pray.
Grants Pass retired C.P.A. Ginny Christensen, who constructed a Chartres labyrinth in her yard last year, would agree. She first encountered the labyrinth at Chartres at age 12, but it wasn't until she walked a portable canvas one in January 2000 that she was inspired to build her own. "There is something special about the sacred geometry of the Chartres design. I could feel it." she says. For Christians such as Christensen, the connection to tradition is key.
It is in this light that Trinity Episcopal is considering adding a labyrinth to the Memorial Meditation Garden they are planning for their vacant lot at the corner of Second Street and Lithia Way. "It's in the Anglican tradition to have an adjacent churchyard for burial," explains Rev. Bartlett. The proposed garden would include both columbarium and consecrated ground for the burial of cremains.
"For Trinity to come to this vision makes sense by long traditions of our parish to be generous with what we have been given and let the community use our space. We want people to come to us as they are to worship God and find peace and refreshment. A quiet sanctuary on a busy corner would be a gift to tourists and to the community."
Walking the labyrinth as a community event is perhaps most noticeable when the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Ashland sponsors a public walk on Austin's labyrinth for several days over New Year's Eve. Here, in keeping with the Unitarian tradition, there is more obvious ecumenical participation. Buddhist, Native American, and other spiritual traditions participate with music, art, blessings, and altars. "It feels like giving a gift to Ashland," Austin says. "People don't have to be of a certain religious belief - or any religious belief at all - to get something out of it."
Using the labyrinth as a tool for remembering and healing is also the goal of Calvin Vanderhoof, former mayor of Weed, who works with the HIV-AIDS awareness project of Siskiyou County. In 1998, she attended a conference at a Santa Rosa convent and found herself walking their labyrinth. She decided to bring the concept home. Looking for suitable space in Weed, she gathered community support. It became clear that the best location for the labyrinth was out at the Living Memorial Sculpture Garden on National Forest land north of Weed. There, amid the pines and juniper in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, artist Dennis Smith has made and erected huge metal sculptures honoring veterans of the Vietnam, Korean, and World Wars. Veterans, family, friends, and supporters share a time of remembrance of the sacrifices made and the healing that still needs to be done.
Vanderhoof and her team modified the Chartres design to provide wider than normal paths to accommodate wheelchair and disability access. The Veriditas staff at Grace Cathedral warned them about making it too big, so they used fewer concentric circuits, laying it out flat with square reddish concrete pavers. A paved entry path meanders from the parking area--"like the path of life," said Vanderhoof's husband, Dale.
Whether indoors or outdoors, alone or in ceremony, young or old, area residents are finding their way to these ancient archetypes, finding new ways of incorporating it into their lives, and, in so doing, finding their lives enriched in new ways.
© Copyright 2012, JPR
