View from the Pew
A look inside Hawaii's houses of worshipBy Mary Adamski
Saturday, September 1, 2001
A friend who walks for her mental as well as physical health pictures the internal effects as burning adrenaline and stimulating serotonin production in her brain to the betterment of her memory and decision-making. A simpler image to me is the very act of walking away, leaving problems and people who caused them behind, even if temporarily. Walking toward your
spiritual centerThere's a particular walk that practitioners envision as having a more profound effect. They say a measured march along the looped path of a labyrinth in a prayerful or meditative mode can bring them close to a divine presence, be it God, self-awareness or whatever their spiritual center.
St. Andrew's Cathedral offers the opportunity on the last Sunday morning of every month on its replica of the 13th-century pattern from Chartres Cathedral in France. Now, don't borrow an image from movies or computer games of a dark and threatening maze. This week, a half-dozen people were ahead of me on the path of the canvas labyrinth stretched out in bright and airy Davies Hall. A senior woman paced to her own drummer, pausing at each loop in the 11-circuit pattern. A middle-aged man never took his eyes off his toes. A girl dangled a stuffed toy by its ear as she followed her mother's glide, a beautiful little ballet.
No shoes and no talking are the rules. A printed guideline suggests silently reciting a favorite prayer or a sacred word. If you bring in a situation or question, the advice is to use the walk toward the center as a time to give the problem into God's care. People sit, kneel or stand in the center for a time to "wait upon whatever wisdom or insight God may have for you." On the way out, you "reflect on how to take what has been given to you back into your everyday life."
I confess that my maiden march wasn't a smooth one. The outside spilling in -- good sounds from the cathedral choir, bad vibes from heavy trucks passing by. Nor could I tune out the people sitting at the sideline; they felt like an audience invading a private experience. Worst of all, whatever prayer I started would deteriorate into a litany of the worries I carried into the labyrinth that day. As I stood in the center, I wasn't so much focused on hearing from God as I was churning out my "woe is me" theme.
Walking out, thankfully alone on the grid now, I admired the designers of this ancient art form, which is centuries older than the medieval church that adapted it as a symbolic alternative to a dangerous and costly pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Even a distracted citizen of this multimedia-battered century gets a sense of moving through some special space and emerging with something changed.
I envied Chris Richardson, who told me later that it was a "real, powerful experience. I use it as a way to get my head on straight, to get connected." I listened as cathedral Deacon Honey Becker waxed enthusiastic about planned labyrinth experiences, a private seaside one in Makaha, a Kula church's monthly walk tied to the full moon.
Not for me, I'm afraid. I still need to go back to the first step.
RELIGION CALENDAR
Mary Adamski covers religion for the Star-Bulletin.
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.
