The Labyrinth and Quaker Meeting
AKMA points to the Grace Cathedral website. It’s been nominated for a webby. I can offer no higher praise than to say that we found it useful in December when we wanted to attend Christmas Eve services and needed to know what was happening and when.
On the Grace Cathedral site is information about labyrinths. The kids in our first day school made a labyring with masking tape on meetinghouse basement floor. I wish I’d had then this context that I pulled from the Grace site:
The labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Walk it with an open mind and an open heart.There are three stages of the walk:
Purgation (Releasing) ~ A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.
Illumination (Receiving) ~ When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
Union (Returning) ~ As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for.
Guidelines for the walk: Quiet your mind and become aware of your breath. Allow yourself to find the pace your body wants to go. The path is two ways. Those going in will meet those coming out. You may “pass” people or let others step around you. Do what feels natural.
This makes the labyrinth sound a lot like what one does as one centers down into the silence of a Quaker meeting.
