Fresh Rain

Sacred Places

by Felice Rhiannon

Twists and turns delight the eye even as they confound the mind. A six-petalled rose draws me into its heart. The scalloped edges hold the round, fecund space. A break in the edge provides the way in and the way out, entry and exit the same. I step, for the ‘thousandth’ time onto the path of the venerable labyrinth. It is the first time. It is the now.

Today’s ‘now’ connects me with the 13th century. Today’s ‘here’ connects me with Notre Dame de Chartres cathedral, in northwestern France, and the global community of labyrinth walkers. The sacred space of the labyrinth inside the cathedral is echoed in private gardens, hospitals, public parks, prisons, and, of course, churchyards. The same sacred space can sometimes be found, and lost, on beaches, etched in sand and cleared by the tides. The path of the labyrinth has been built with hedges, dug into turf, carved in stone. Wooden plaques, engraved with the pattern, bring the sacred space into our homes, in a twelve-inch circle of connection, using a finger instead of feet to trace the way.

I first encountered the labyrinth in decades past, the time and place unremembered. I can, however, vividly recall a profound meeting with the labyrinth in San Fransisco at Grace Cathedral in the 1990s. The Cathedral’s then-canon, Lauren Artress, had recently brought the labyrinth to contemporary consciousness and spawned a global revival of the ‘pilgrimage’ path. Her goal was to “pepper the planet with labyrinths.” She has succeeded. There are now more than 6000 worldwide. She has re-ignited a path for personal and communal transformation.

On this occasion, I walked the labyrinth’s winding road on a thick carpet, woven with the same pattern as the one found in stone on the floor of Chartres Cathedral. The San Fransisco sun shone through the stained glass windows of Grace Cathedral and cast lakes of coloured light across the purple replica. The sound of the organist’s rehearsal filled my ears and emptied my mind to be present to each step. 

Unlike a maze, the labyrinth has just one path. There are no tricks or dead ends. To me, a maze is a pathway of the mind keeping track of the right and left turns in order to find one’s way out. The labyrinth, on the other hand, can be seen as a path of the heart where the mind can relax and the heart trust that the way in is also the way out. 

The labyrinth journey might be compared to the ancient idea of a Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or the Muslim fulfilment of the once-in-a-lifetime journey to Mecca. These larger sacred places are condensed, concentrated into a much smaller, non-religious pathway, no less numinous for its size.

Lauren Artress has suggested that the path on the labyrinth can be experienced as three stages. I have often added a fourth at the beginning of my walk. To prepare, I walk (and I use the term ‘walk’ whether I’m referring to using my legs or my finger) around the periphery of the pattern in order to centre myself, to breathe. This could be likened to the preparations needed before any journey.

Then, when my inner preparations are complete, I stand at the entrance for a moment, taking in the beauty of the pattern of the path and of the central rose. I contemplate the truth of my being in a sacred space. When my heart is ready, I bow, allowing further surrender to the present moment and whatever might arise on the journey. I never know what might, or might not, arise as I walk. These preparations allow me to let go of expectations.

The first stage on the pathway toward the centre might be experienced as a release, a time of letting go, of shedding thoughts and distractions. This is timespace to release the chatter in my mind and slough off of the restrictions in my heart. Letting my heart open and my mind to find quiet brings me to the embodied experience of each step, of each turn on the path. It is as if each step releases into the Earth another thought, another fear, another desire, until I have a sense of opening to the unbounded.

Once I reach the centre I am ready to receive. The centre holds me for as long as I care to stay. It is the heart of the labyrinth, a place of stillness, of meditation and prayer. Here I might receive guidance around a concern, or creative ideas, or simply the profound gift of deep silence, all received with a sense of gratitude. The centre holds illumination.

The return journey, along the same path I have already trodden, brings a time of joining, of union, of deeper connection with whatever I hold sacred…be that a Higher Power or the Beloved, or the forces of healing in the world, or the work for which my soul is reaching. The return journey re-connects me with the material world, the place my bodymind lives after being refreshed by the path of spirit.

Though this three-part template is a useful tool, I sometimes approach the labyrinth without any agenda, in simple being, exactly as I am in the moment I step onto the path. This allows space for whatever arises to flourish and be complete.

The sacred space exists in the form of the labyrinth regardless of how I approach it. That has become more evident as my use of a finger labyrinth has increased since the Covid pandemic forced many in-person, organised labyrinth walks to be cancelled. 

The very act of walking the path toward the centre, standing in the rose, and walking the path toward the world again propels me inward, toward the One, and outward again to connect to the world, renewed and refreshed by its enduring energy.