For the past several years it has become my habit each Lent to create a temporary labyrinth for the season. It has become a spiritual discipline that I enjoy, especially when I am not doing it alone. Peter Strom was my partner this year and I am grateful for his company as well as his knees!

To walk the completed labyrinth, to warm it up and ready it for the pilgrims who will travel it this season is a gift. I forget that I am in a gym and feel the path open up to me in the quiet. This meandering path that leads to the center reminds me that, even when I may feel lost, I never truly am. With God as my center, I am never lost.

This week I am participating in the Advanced labyrinth Facilitator Training program through Veriditas. Veriditas trains and supports labyrinth facilitators globally and offers programs and events to introduce and engage people with labyrinth walking as a pathway to personal and community enrichment, healing, and growth. I became involved with them in 2015 when I began a contemplative leadership program after seminary.

It is truly a global organization. Participating in this training are facilitators from China, South Korea, Ireland, and across the United States. I have met people from New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and Sweden at events or workshops I have attended. A large majority of these folks are pastors and faithful lay people. The labyrinth is a spiritual discipline used in the church from the Middle Ages to today.

The temporary labyrinth that is taped to the floor in the gym (we used blue painter’s tape so as not to impact the floor,) is a classical style labyrinth. Unlike a maze in which you can get lost and is created to confuse, the labyrinth has a single path that leads to a center. A maze is designed for you to lose your way while the labyrinth is designed for you to find your way.

The labyrinth path is to be walked slowly, at your natural pace. A labyrinth walk often consists of the three R’s. As you walk into the labyrinth and move towards the center Release whatever is weighing you down. When you arrive in the center, stop and Receive, listening for God’s message to you. As you travel back out on the path, Return to the world giving thanks for God’s presence.

There is no single right way to walk the labyrinth, each journey is uniquely your own. Since reaching the center is assured, walking the labyrinth is more about the journey than the destination, about being rather than doing, integrating body, mind, and spirit. 

Taking on the practice of walking the labyrinth during Lent allows us to spend intentional time with God as we reflect on how we can listen more closely to where God is calling us in this time.

I invite you to journey to the center, our center which is God, with a prayer by the Rev. Lauren Artress, the founder of Veriditas.

Invocation for Centering

Pause.

Let the outer world loosen its hold.

Beneath the noise and motion,

there is a still point holding you

together-

not ridged, not closed,

but centered and alive.

Centration is the power that gathers,

that gives form without force,

that holds complexity without collapse.

May we return to our inner ground,

rooted enough to remain present, 

open enough to respond wisely.

Step gently.

You are being drawn towards your center.

Peace,

Pastor Kristie Finley

“Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24:42)

It’s Tuesday early afternoon, and I am working on an Asian Chicken Salad at Panera. Not the popular choice on Fat Tuesday, but I’m trying to be healthy, and it’s delicious! Here’s what I see, hear, smell, and notice…

Folks are drawn to the gas fireplace in the center of the room, where seats are filled up around the warmth, and never vacant for long. Even on a mild February day, the chill of winter will remain for awhile. What a blessing warmth is.

The sky to the south out the window has an opaque orange tone near the horizon, while looking right to the west it’s much more dark and gloomy. I wonder about those around me, which sky pattern reflects their spirit just now.

Three women next to me chatter away in happy tones. They seem to be about my age. There’s smiles and laughter. I hear remnants of high school stories from decades ago. How precious time is, how quickly it passes, and what power is held in memories!

On the other side of the clear waist length window is a table overflowing with delicious sweets. Orange frosted scones, cookies, breads, muffins, cakes, and yes, those irresistible cinnamon crunch bagels. How close temptation is always lurking!

Eighty percent of the people I can see are looking at their phones. Me too! Are they getting the newest breaking news? Playing games? Checking the stock market? Working? Face-timing, one of them. I put my phone down. Four seconds later it beeps, thanking me for my recent blood donation. And I hear for all of us Jesus’ invitation to “come away and rest with me for awhile.”

A smiling employee asks if he can take my empty salad bowl away for me. Thanking him, he looks right at me and says, “It is my pleasure.” I watch him do the same, table by table. I can tell who the regulars are, because he knows them by name and they pick up conversations from yesterday. I pray silently the old prayer of a saint from centuries ago: “You have given me so much, Lord, give me one more thing, a grateful heart.” (George Herbert)

Meanwhile, folks are grumbling at the big coffee vats. There is plenty of the decaf, mild blend, and Hazelnut, but the Columbian Supremo is out! And everyone is drinking coffee in the early afternoon, and wants the strong stuff. No doubt about it, that we need some more rest than we get. Finally it comes, and I watch people fill up as George Harrison sings/prays over my airpods, “Give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth, give me life, give me life keep me free from birth, give me hope, help me cope with this heavy load, trying to touch and reach you with heart and soul. Please take hold my hand, that I might understand you, won’t you please, O won’t you…”

A woman walks past me with a scarf covering her head and a hospital ID bracelet on her wrist. My first guess is that she is fighting against the cancer treatments. I take a few moments to pray for her health and strength as she gets in her car and drives away. I realize how much more aware I could/should be of those around me and the burdens they carry if only I’d stop long enough to see them.

So much to see, so many souls to encounter, so many stories unfolding. So much joy, so much sorrow, and all of this in every sacred day. I wonder what they think as they see me.

Life is a gift. What do you notice where you are as you read this? I’d love to meet you at Panera and talk about it!

Love from here

Peter Hawkinson

I’m blogging from home this Monday morning, sitting here, looking around, trying to locate something to write about. Meanwhile, Bear continues to stick his nose into my ribcage, his own way of pleading for what we call his “morning rub”.

It’s a daily ritual with him and me. When I make my way downstairs to put on my shoes, and find a coat, and head off to to Church, he comes close. The first thing he does is enjoy a mighty morning stretch with a kind of low key, pleasured groan. Then, rising up, he walks back and forth close in front of me, giving me full access to his whole body. I find his back and he stands still and tall as I massage his spine. Then he lays down, inviting me to find his belly ribcage and and press on the spaces in-between as once again he groans softly as if to say thanks.

The whole process takes about five minutes. Gotta get around and behind his ears. He delights when I get to the backside, a place he can never reach. Last he stands right in front of me as I gently pet him under his snout on his neck. When he’s had enough he walks across the room, circles up as dogs are prone to do, then sets himself down and takes one big cleansing breath.

He helps me think about the importance of touch, and the vulnerability and trust that comes along. This is because Bear came to us with an unknown history. I found his face on the facebook Chicago pet re-homing page. With little information we met him and his handler at a dog park in the city, and home he came with us. We aren’t sure exactly how old he is, and he likely suffered through some neglect or trauma early on. So when he first came to live with us he did not like to be approached form his back, and made it clear he wasn’t a fan of closed doors and isolation. He would not be trusting enough back then for a morning rub.

But now things are different! He has a happy life, he’s surrounded by loved ones, the doors are open, and he has learned to trust our touches. As I write now, and music plays on my computer, he howls along, evidencing that he surely has some hound in him, even though he looks like a Labrador Retriever. He barks at the mailman as he sits alert on his bed by the window that comes down to the floor.

He reminds me of the healing power and need we have for touch, and the joy we have in each other as loved ones to nurture that touch.

Love From Here!

Peter Hawkinson

To be in Capernaum, Jesus’ adult home town, is a thrill beyond measure. The ruins are extensive, including the floor and walls of the ancient synagogue space. It sits right along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where call stories are easily imagined and a natural amphitheater seems likely the place where Jesus preached his most extensive sermon on the mount. Oh, to be there!

There is one path, to the right, where pilgrim throngs enter from the adjacent parking lot filled with tour busses. And there is one path out, on the left. Traffic flow is important! It’s the kind of holy spot you just don’t want to leave, but the two tours I’ve been on keep us moving for all there is to see in only a week or so.

The first time I was there with my dad. The second time it was Bonnie. On both occasions, we were not prepared for what appeared on the path out back to the bus. There appears to be from a distance a homeless person on a park bench up ahead. Getting closer it is “The Homeless Jesus”, a bronze sculpture by Canadian Timothy Schmalz depicting a cloaked figure sleeping on a park bench, identifiable as Jesus only by the nail wounds on his feet. First installed at Regis College in Toronto, it now appears at over 50 spots around the world.

That moment when you connect his feet to his identity takes your breath away, and leaves you wondering what to say. I remember my dad, after a long silence, said “He still in this world has nowhere to lay his head”. The next time, Bonnie’s first, I held back the urge to tell her what I knew was up ahead, and let her find it for herself. I don’t remember what was said, but I know we lingered there for a long time and talked until the bus driver came to find us and tell us it was time to go.

The sculptor comments that “it is meant to symbolize the compassion Jesus has for the marginalized and homeless, urging us to see Christ in the poor.” Coming to mind is the grand narrative of Matthew 25, where Jesus speaks with his disciples about his return someday to judge peoples and nations in an unexpected way. Here, the culminating words: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

It is frequently and is now the screensaver image on my computer, so I encounter it multiple times each day. I offer it simply to you as a theological icon.

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson