Sinuous labyrinths offer clarity, relief

WESTON -- To the usual fabrics in the Regis College gym -- banners on the wall proclaiming basketball and softball championships -- some new ones have been added: Five canvas labyrinths, of varying sizes and designs, unfurled on the polished wood floor. As a harpist strums beautifully soothing background music, bands of shoeless people patiently snake their way along the concentric circles toward the center of each labyrinth.

Once there, some clasp hands in a prayer-like pose. One woman sits Buddha-like and meditates. Another, eyes closed, raises her arms high toward the heavens. Those milling about on their way in or out occasionally bow to fellow walkers as they pass on their circular journey. One woman wears ankle bells that jangle uniform with her measured gait.

Galileo once said that without mathematics to understand the universe, ``one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth." The Labyrinth Guild of New England, which held its annual festival last Saturday, might dispute its sacred object's association with dark ness and blindness. A labyrinth is not a maze, meant to confuse and lose the hapless walker; rather, it is a single path, albeit an intricate, repeatedly folding one. Follow it and even those with a horrible sense of direction will reach the center and out again.

For 130 festival-goers from throughout the Northeast, and for other enthusiasts around the country, the labyrinth is a conduit to meditation and spiritual replenishment.

``When you step onto the labyrinth, you can let go of any concern that you're going to be able to find your way," said Tricia Kibbe , the Sudbury woman who coordinated last weekend's festival. ``It becomes like a three-fold path. The going in is releasing, letting go; the center is about opening up to the divine, to that center of yourself and of spirit; and then coming back out is incorporating the walk."

Some walkers are spiritual seekers who aren't necessarily religious, she said. ``But in any case, you're getting to your own core."

If this sounds incorrigibly New Age-ish, it's worth recalling that one of the most famous labyrinths is of medieval Christian construct, adorning the floor of France's Chartres Cathedral. Several area churches use labyrinths, and Boston College, which painted one on grass in 1998, built a permanent labyrinth of stone as a monument to alumni killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

``A lot of the people who come to our festival are ministers who are coming to learn more about how to use the labyrinth in their community," Kibbe said.

The Rev. Carol A. Brink , until recently the pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation in Wrentham, first walked a labyrinth at a workshop a dozen years ago. Gazing from the bleachers at the walkers on the gym floor, she reflect ed on the spiritual power she's found by walking Chartres-style labyrinths, divided into four quadrants .

``You begin to lose yourself," she said. ``You lose your way. One minute, you're closer to the center -- `Oh, I'm almost there.' And the next minute, you're way out there."

People often mar life with invidious comparisons to others -- their salaries, their cars -- but ``you can't do that on the labyrinth because everybody is on their own path, together. . . . It makes you aware of your relationships to others. I don't know most of these people that are here, but the labyrinth draws us together."

Workshops at Saturday's festival covered everything from the nuts and bolts of building labyrinths to their spiritual aspects. (According to Indiana labyrinth maker John Ridder , a labyrinth can run anywhere from less than $150 for a design of grass and wildflowers to a cool $250,000 for polished granite.)

On the spiritual end, the Rev. Joy A. Bergfalk , an American Baptist minister from Rochester, N.Y., explained the similarities between labyrinth walking and the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

``He always said, adapt [his exercise] and use it however it fits," she said after her talk. ``What I've kept noticing is, there's the same dynamic here, this going in, centering, coming out. It's a cyclical thing."

Bergfalk first walked a labyrinth at a California conference eight years ago. ``I realized that I had no control over the path, I could not tell where I was going, which was exactly where I was in my life." She said that she had just lost her job, her husband had left her, and her daughter, then a high school student , was pregnant.

She found stability only in her sense of her relationship with God, and the labyrinth ``mirrored that. All I could do was put one foot in front of the other. . . . I just need to trust and follow the path."

Spiritually hooked, she put a labyrinth in her yard. Remarried now, Bergfalk and her husband have opened their labyrinth to the community.

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