labyrinthine tales, #1

One of the videos I uploaded during the Lambeth Conference, 2008 was an interview with a man in charge of the construction of an outdoor labyrinth at the University of Kent, overlooking Canterbury, and oriented towards the towers of Canterbury Cathedral.

The crew completed the labyrinth in half the time they had projected, cutting thousands of York stone blocks on site and laying them in the newly-designed labyrinth pattern, the work of Jeff Saward who drew on labyrinths from several indigenous cultures, as well as Western models like the famous labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral.

The reason for the haste in construction was so that the labyrinth would be complete before the Lambeth Conference ended. I had the privilege of taking part in a dedicatory service near the end of the Conference, meaningful to me as I have the honor of serving in the diocese that is the birth of labyrinth movement, home of the Rev. Lauren Artress and the labyrinths of Grace Cathedral.

This past summer Sheila and went back to Canterbury, to hear our friends in the Piedmont Singers from Virginia sing Evensong at the cathedral. After the mid-afternoon Evensong, there was a draught of time before we would join the singers for dinner, so we went to the university in order to walk the labyrinth.

There, on that huge, sprawling, yet beautifully ordered, organic labyrinth we saw an English woman walking a young Rhodesian Ridgeback. He was red-wheaten in color, like our beloved Blaise, who had died only a few months before after an extraordinary life of 14 years. Really, he was the most beautiful Ridgeback I have every seen, next to Blaise.

Blaise was a great being, as the “Tale of Jumping Mouse” describes a bison – great in heart, in spirit, in intelligence, and bodily strength. Diagnosed with cancer on our car trip across the country to move to San Francisco, she lived on for three years, out of love for us, I believe. Like so many people, she hung onto life because she had a mission, supporting her human family.

Nobody in our family but me liked the movie “The Jane Austen Book Club,” but I have my reasons. A central reason was that one of the characters raised Rhodesians, and in explaining about the breed to another character said, “Rhodesians are matriarchal.” Lots fell into place about Blaise and our family then. I had always seen how deeply she loved us, and anyone who spent any time with her also knew what a dominant and dominating personality she had. I finally saw that the two went together; she was mothering us all those years.

The labyrinth is, if you will, the field of our being. In it we meet, recapitulate our life journey. These meetings are not in the mode of ghostly visitations, but in the manner of anamnesis, a representing. Thus, walking the labyrinth may be an occasion of  transformation, brought about by prayerfully encountering the past, learning from the past in our present, and emerging into the new life that follows.

Blaise’s great being now inheres in our family as a whole, I think. The quality of unswerving devotion and love, the mothering principle, always there among us, I can now identify, celebrate, and honor.