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EMS Labyrinth: A Prayerful Walking Space in Preparation

Brian Martin Burkholder and Wendy J. Miller display the design for the labyrinth being constructed on a EMU hillside site.
Photo by Jim Bishop

On the hillside a short walk up from Eastern Mennonite Seminary, people of all ages and walks of life may soon be seen walking in quiet circles.

A stone labyrinth, now under construction, will facilitate students, faculty, conference attendees and visitors from the surrounding community who seek a setting for prayer and meditation.

With a $15,000 grant from the Lilly Project – an EMU program supported by the Lilly Endowment Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation - EMS broke ground in September for the labyrinth, planned by the seminary’s Spiritual Formation course faculty in cooperation with campus ministries personnel Brian Martin Burkholder and Julie Haushalter and C. Eldon Kurtz, director of physical plant.

Located slightly uphill from the campus gazebo, the 30-to-45-foot-diameter labyrinth will be constructed in a "Santa Rosa" design by stone mason and former seminary student Kirk Shank Zehr, working with Will Hairston of EMU’s physical plant to ensure architectural harmony with the larger campus. Outlines will be river stone, level with the stone pathways; a retaining wall will create a level surface.

Brian Martin Burkholder, campus pastor and director of campus ministries, promises a "maintenance-friendly" construction, requiring little upkeep.

Labyrinths, dating to antiquity on several continents, consist of circular paths leading into, then away from, a center.

Though the words "labyrinth" and "maze" are often used interchangeably, the concepts differ, notes Wendy J. Miller, EMS associate professor of spiritual formation, and Linda Alley, a project steering committee member. Mazes may include dead ends and the challenge of getting lost. In a labyrinth, however, the Spiritual Formation faculty’s proposal points out that however circuitous its turns, "One can feel assured that the path continues forward and will end up at the center."

"It has no puzzles at all. If you trust the path it will take you there," says Alley, administrative assistant in the student life division and a seminary student working toward a masters degree. Of course, walkers must expect unexpected turns: "It’s like life." Alley, who located the Santa Rosa design for EMS, is also constructing a labyrinth at her home.

Miller notes that in the Middle Ages, European Christians adopted the labyrinth as the means to a symbolic journey -- a prayerful walk substituting for longer pilgrimages, especially during Lent. Labyrinths were built into the floors of the great cathedrals. Pilgrims sometimes walked them on their knees. The famous Chartres Cathedral labyrinth, constructed around 1200, features the Christian symbols of a cross, forming quadrants, and central rosette. "The walker meanders through each of the four quadrants several times before reaching the goal," Miller wrote when proposing a campus labyrinth.

The contemporary Santa Rosa blueprint, created by Lea Goode-Harris and named for the California site of its first use, combines Chartres with more ancient designs. Seven circuits, divided into four quadrants, lead to a 9 ½-foot center. As a balancing aid, Goode-Harris – whom EMS will pay for the design – included equal numbers of right- and left-turning switchbacks.

Several EMS classes will use the labyrinth. "We will provide a guidebook, but not a map saying ‘When here, think this way,’" says Burkholder. He envisions it as a place where each walker can "receive what God has for us."

One approach cited by Miller is the Christian "threefold path" of letting go - what Anabaptists call Gelassenheit - being present for God and receiving guidance for the outward journey into the world.

A web page located by Miller suggests that adults or children walking a labyrinth "Make it serious, prayerful or playful. Play music or sing. Pray out loud. Walk alone or with a crowd. Notice the sky. Listen to the sounds. Most of all pay attention to your experience."

Burkholder sees a university as an excellent site for a labyrinth - a tool of reflection and study. Miller, however, notes it transcends the limitations of academia:

"It’s a way of engaging in which words are laid aside, which in the academic community is rare." She characterizes this spiritual practice as having arisen in response to a split between academic and spiritual ways of knowing that emerged during the rise of Europe’s universities in the 9th to 11th Centuries. The pilgrimage tradition, depicted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, preserved a spiritual orientation, she says.

Labyrinths have recently made a come-back in Western culture, a trend Miller attributes to "a renewal of spiritual life." Alley has discovered that many hospitals are building labyrinths – in fact, to assist concentration, one Johns Hopkins University surgeon always walks a labyrinth before entering an operating room.

Burkholder hopes the campus labyrinth may be completed by Christmas. Users are expected to include special groups such as the EMS Summer Institute for Spiritual Formation. The EMS proposal also notes that "With the possibility of promotion and education through the Congregational Resource Center, we envision use by local church groups and the community."
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Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer from Harrisonburg.

— article by: Chris Edwards; posted September 29, 2005