Labyrinths

Sacred Pathways

Midsummer Solstice Labyrinth

Blessed by the first day of hot hot summer evening sun at the local beach, we found our way to a clear sandbar at low tide to celebrate the solstice with a midsummer labyrinth.

Our intention was simple "To build and walk a labyrinth to honour the cycles in our own lives, remembering our own power and bringing awareness to the beginnings and endings we each move through with the cycling of the seasons." The labyrinth found her place our toes dragging through the sand to mark the lines. We called the guardians marvelling at the sparkling ocean as we welcomed the West to our ritual. We began our walk, each of the five women taking time to move into themselves as the pathway drew them to centre and the burning of the ending. Returning to the outer realm of sand and sea asking for a sign of the beginning, the healing ocean spoke as the water swirled around our feet on the incoming tide. Finding the path beneath the water brought us to aspects of seeking through the veil of mystery, trusting that we know the way, letting our bodies show us the truth.

Once again, the labyrinth had offered an experience we could not predict, and the natural world had reminded us who is really in charge!!

Spring Beach Labyrinth

Finding opportunities to create and walk the pathways of this ancient sacred symbol brings me always closer to the place of deep listening from which I draw the wisdom of 'she who knows'. With the advent of longer warmer days the beach at low tide offers itself as a palette for this ceremony and on a recent cool spring Vancouver evening we gathered at Spanish Banks for my birthday labyrinth building.

Womb-Entering A Collaborative A/r/tographic Inquiry

As a co-creator with thirteen other women leaders of multi-faith awareness and practices, my participation in this PhD research brought an unimaginable richness and diversity of experience to the winter and spring of 2006-2007. The image below shows some of the art that flowed from our desire to express, reveal, create, dialogue, educate and celebrate our individual and collective spiritual journeys.

My first experiences with labyrinths

1997 was a year in which I seized the moment and made a dramatic turnabout in my life. The space that opened as a result quickly began to attract opportunities for my exploration and among these was the labyrinth. An early teacher of mine showed me a labyrinth on Bowen Island near Vancouver. Set under the watchful gaze of tall Douglas firs, defined in rock and gravel, this labyrinth invited me to walk. I can't say that the experience was hugely powerful or life changing, but it did impress itself on me for since that time, the labyrinth has consistently 'shown up'.

It was perhaps just a year or so later that I walked the labyrinth at the Naramata Centre on the shores of Okanagan Lake. My sacred walk on that path represented for me a beginning of understanding the power of this form to deepen my capacity to hold an open listening place inside for receiving guidance.

I soon discovered the labyrinth at the heart of Vancouver's West End in the hall of St. Paul's Anglican church. Here at the start of the 21st Century I began a 'tradition' of walking the labyrinth on the eve of the new calendar year a practice to support my releasing of old burdens as the year turns.

Lessons from the Labyrinth

The labyrinth started finding its way into my teaching as I began my apprenticeship as a teacher of feminist earth-based spiritual traditions. I created labyrinths from cornmeal, pavement chalk, and hemlock cones as we used this sacred form to deepen our connection to the workings of spirit and find our own true path.

One of the great turf labyrinths of Europe is found in Saffron Waldon, Essex, England. When I walked this 17th Century path with friends and their children it represented for me a metaphor for my path in life. It showed me how I sometimes walk alongside, sometimes away from and sometimes towards the people who have a role to play in the tapestry of my daily experiences. I realized that the message also showed me that at the core we are all following the same path each in our own way and our own time, but it is the same path.

Creating and building a labyrinth

In 2003 I was invited by friends to design and install a labyrinth at their property, Garry Oaks Winery, on Salt Spring Island. The winery is situated on slopes beneath Mount Maxwell overlooking Burgoyne Valley. This powerful location anchored by a massive ancestor guardian Douglas fir and protected by a row of ancient Garry Oaks is nourished through the roots of a century old apple orchard.

Here we built a classical seven-circuit labyrinth using bricks to mark the pathways in sand. As the lines were marked and the bricks laid, it seemed that this sacred geomantic symbol had always been there, we were simply the tools it used to rise from the earth and claim its place on the surface of the land.

Chartres

Travels to Europe offered another labyrinth gift in 2005 when a short drive from Paris brought me to the famous medieval Cathedral at Chartres and the wonderful inlaid stone labyrinth there. Entering the Cathedral the smell, the hushed quiet, and the brilliant blue light of the rose window pushed me instantly back into childhood memories of the little English girl who had first stepped through those doors. The shear magnitude and magnificence of the building had awed me then and it awed me now a half-century later.

The labyrinth beckoned and after some time in silence I began my walk. In that instant the angelic voices of a visiting youth choir rose up into the domed roof of the cathedral. As I placed one foot after the other in the footsteps of centuries of pilgrims who had come there before me, the songs of praise and worship rang out above me.

It is almost impossible to describe the experience of walking a pattern that has been in place in stone for hundreds of years. I sensed the feet of the ancients pressing up into mine as I walked, I felt my energy shift deepening as I moved further into the walk, I was lifted by the voices, inspired by the resonance of this sacred building, hushed by the presence of the multitude of prayers ringing through the air of this sanctuary. I was filled with hope, love, and peace.

Labyrinth walking

Every labyrinth has brought me a different message and experience. Every walk has its own character and energy. The labyrinth allows me to start just where I am and go wherever it is I need to in that moment with that walk. My relationship with the labyrinth continues to inspire and involve me as I trust each step along the sacred circuitry of its wisdom. Until my recent move to the Comox Valley I served the labyrinth as a volunteer at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Vancouver's West end. There I was held in the circle of volunteers who safekeep this sacred space for all who come to walk. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary this labyrinth offers an experience of the healing powers of this ancient sacred symbol.

For opening times check www.stpaulsanglican.bc.ca and click on labyrinth.

For information about labyrinth classes please check the Mysteries of the labyrinth page.