A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

There was a time when I would describe myself as being declared a heretic in at least 2 different churches. As I consider some of the tools I use now in my spiritual and pastoral toolbox, I think I might have to expand that level of condemnation. And maybe I have done my part to intentionally amplify that status in the last few years. I confess that I have a bit of a stubborn streak when it comes to people trying to control me (Enneagram Type 8 for those of you who care).

I hoping in the next few weeks to begin to write extensively here about my learnings from and ministry application of the Enneagram in this space. If you google “Enneagram” you will find a few sites that are very eloquent in its condemnation of the Enneagram as a tool of the occult bringing spiritual chaos into the church. I suppose the Enneagram symbol does look occult/mysterious/secret-society like. And after all, most of the early adopters of the Enneagram are non-Christian mystics and psychologists. If that is the case, then the labyrinth would also be placed in that category of anti-Christian symbols that appear occult. For me, both that labyrinth the Enneagram are symbols and tools that have great power and usefulness in my work as spiritual director and pastor as well as in my own personal walk with God.

The more I think about it, there are other reasons for falling into the heretic mold for some people. I am very much a process oriented person. Not only do I still use the family process perspective on relationships from Murray Bowen and Ed Friedman in my counseling and spiritual direction, but I definitely see myself as a Process Theologian. God’s love might be unchanging, but our God is a Living and Dynamic Being who responds to and is affected by the divine involvement with history. So how God works in my life is never the same as how God works in another person’s life. Beyond that, how God works in my life today is not the same as how God has worked even in my own life. There is no “God only works in these prescribed ways” point of view in my theology. Not only would those Baptists in my history be aghast, but my Reformed Church colleagues would be convinced that I have lost something important.

I, however, think I have gained far more than I have lost. And that gain lies behind my title. it also lies behind a deeper reorientation I think the church should examine about many things we do that are acceptable means of grace within the church.

The key reorientation is to not become focused on the various forms of God’s grace, but to keep our eyes on the Grace of god itself.

I enjoy the symbol of the labyrinth because I do believe it has a certain beauty and symmetry to it. I have experienced some profound moments of God using the labyrinth in directing and transforming my life, but the symbol of the labyrinth should not become a magical talisman that holds power itself. It is powerful as it holds and contains and brings my life into contact with the living and dynamic presence of God. The symbol of the labyrinth is simply that of a tool (a very good tool for many people, but worthless to many others) that God is able to use to slow down our lives to be able to see, hear, and allow God to work within us. The focus is on the God at work, remaining thankful for the tool.

Same thing with the Enneagram and Process theology. I am a student of both and a witness for both in my life and ministry even if I don’t mention the names themselves. Why? Because God has used both the process orientation and the Enneagram to open up a deeper and profound perspective on the spiritual journey that rings true as I seek to follow God. There are so many aspects of the spiritual life that it is easy for me to forget and to get lost in all the nuances and details that come from Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The Enneagram has become a very easy way to remember and to process what God is doing in my life and in the lives of those I know and love. I get excited about how it helps me sort through all the details to hold the core gifts of God before my heart and my preaching. There is no magic in the symbol, but there is power because I keep finding the ways that it makes sense of what God is doing. While I am thankful for that understanding, it is simply a tool, a very powerful one to me, that keeps my focus on the god who is ever making us and remaking us into the imagio dei.

Yet, my title goes beyond that. I find myself continuing to remind myself of this tool perspective for more things in the church. How many of our worship wars come about because we have our eyes so focused on the form of our worship (music styles, liturgical styles, media, architecture, etc) that we forget Jesus leading us to be people who worship God in spirit and truth (John 4:23). Worship is important and we need to do it often and well, but when we become so wrapped up in what worship looks like, have we lost our way confusing the means with the grace.

How about church budgets and apportionments? Do we become so focused on the dollars and cents and the power that goes along with them that we lose sight of our money being tools that God gives us in order to witness to God’s love in word and deed? I have been trying for years to keep my focus on the grace we are stewards of during the annual finance campaigns. I believe that as we keep our focus there, the tools will no longer leads us into anxiety, but will become occasions for celebration and greater generosity. Or how about administrative structures (both local church and denominational)? We are way too focused on the forms of our structure that we forget what they are there for.

Even spiritual disciplines (I could go on, but this will be my last set of examples). For years, I would become discouraged because I couldn’t journal everyday, or read my Bible every day, or even pray every day as I knew I should, or even as I wanted to. I would really kick myself for not being a very disciplined person (as this blog will demonstrate). Lately, I have realized that my self-defeating discouragement was another form of putting the means before the grace. I was always thinking that the important thing was the reading, the writing, the praying, the whatevering, and since I kept failing that I was a failure (recipe for depression). However, what if I kept the focus on why those things were useful as tools of God’s work in my life? What is the purpose of prayer and scripture reading? To spend time with God and growing in my relationship with my Beloved. What would be the purpose of journaling or writing? To remember and nurture what God is doing in my life. As I have been reminding myself of the primacy of living God’s grace, I have not only had less anxiety about what disciplines I do or do not practice, but paradoxically, the actions of the disciplines flow more freely and more naturally.

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us – 2 Corinthians 4:7 NRSV

I know that Paul is reflecting on the wonders of how our mortal, fragile beings can be vessels for the gospel, but I think it can apply to these other tools as well. Whether the clay jars are more “acceptable” like worship styles, words of scripture, church buildings, disciplines, or more fringe such as the Enneagram or the labyrinth, we need to keep our eyes on the extraordinary treasure which is the living presence of God within us, for the transformation of the world.

Tonight, I was walking the labyrinth at twilight. I had just finished reading a chapter in a book that talked about using a variety of gestures and postures in prayer to express without words the prayer that we wish to make. (a really good book that I will say a lot more about a bit later.) So my walk had no “intention” other than to try to use pauses and gestures in my walk to see how they felt and what they might express from my heart.

So when I reached the center, I just sat.

As I sat I noticed the lightning bugs. The weather has been great for them so as the sun was descending behind the horizon their glow became more prominent. So I watched them. As I watched, I had a couple thoughts come to mind.

One was a quote from a Desert Father that I read in Thomas Merton’s The Wisdom of the Desert.

Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire? [LXXII, p. 50]

That has been a challenge to me ever since I read it. I have to confess that for too long my attitude has been much like Abbot Lot, thinking that doing my small part is enough and not to rise above my “lot” in life. This confuses smallness with humility. So this struck me first because of the absolute importance of humility to the desert fathers. The challenge I see in Abbot Joseph and in the lightning bugs I was watching was that the important thing is giving our all to God and allowing God to use us as much as God wants, not as little as we think we should be (or bigger than our britches on the other side). Those little lights are only small to us, to the lightning bug they are brilliant. Why isn’t it appropriate for us to give our best to God instead of our mediocrity.

Then as I watched I noticed something. I sat and watched hundreds of little lights fly around the labyrinth and the neighborhood, and except for one, all the lights rose skyward. I could see that those closest to me would then float down toward the grass while darkened, but then when they were alight they flew up. Some only flew a couple inches, some would fly up a few feet, but they almost always flew upwards.

A great lesson for Christians who want to shine their light for God. We do God no justice when we use our lights to bring others eyes downward. There is no value in using God’s gifts to us to bring people down to despair and depression and fear and hate. There are enough people in this world who gladly market death in all its various forms. We in the church need to use our lights to draw people’s hearts and souls up. Up to God’s glory. Up from despair to hope. Up from hate and fear to love and grace. This is not a call for simple optimism or a be happy attitude. This is an invitation to follow Jesus who descended to our depths and the extremes of death itself so we might be lifted up to the heights of God’s Get Dirty but Lightened Up love.

A humble boldness? A reversal of the gravity of death? Impossible for us, but that is why God came, to use the impossible in us to light up and transform a dark world with Life!

…Video.

Last week, Anna and I finished painting the Chalice labyrinth for the Iowa Annual Conference (which begins meeting tomorrow). We set up in the garage and I had my video camera set for time-lapse (one second every minute). So the video is 2 and half hours of work condensed to less than 2 minutes.

!vb:yt,zDkDzlrpYVY,http://labyrinthine.gomorris.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/chalice-video.jpg!

Even though the painting took only 2 and a half hours, it probably took at least 15 hours of work to prepare the canvas, and the paper template for the painting.

I confess that I love the process of the design coming together before my eyes. Every once in a while while removing the paper path coverings and then as the colors began to be applied I just stopped and went, WoW! This is Fun.

I know that not all people enjoy the process like that, but I relish the whole thing from design to implementation to enjoyment. I hope you enjoy the taste from the video.

Last year, I painted a labyrinth on canvas to use for a conference and to have available for people to borrow. A fellow pastor saw it and wanted one for our conference center to have and to loan out. So I measured the rooms at the conference center to figure out the largest size and now I am working on it. I promised her that I would have it available for our Annual Conference which begins in 10 days. It isn’t done yet, but I am sure I will have it done.

The canvas is joined, hemmed and ready for paint.

Tonight, Anna and I started laying out the paper template that we will use to spray paint the lines. We will probably have that layed out tomorrow night. Then cutting the template will probably take another evening or two. I have a wedding on Saturday followed by Confirmation on Sunday. Anna wants to help paint this one, so that means we have to be ready to paint by Saturday. It will fit in the garage so the weather won’t be a really big factor. At least I hope it won’t be.

I love this process of putting it together. I have a friend who loves labyrinths but doesn’t enjoy the making of them. I enjoy the making of them as well as the using of them.

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[a little bit of raw reflection]

I just came in from a chilly, yet very interesting labyrinth walk. Eventhough it is only 31 degrees outside and the wind is blowing to bring the wind chill down it wasn’t too bad to consider a walk in my labyrinth. Besides, I needed it.

Mondays lately have turned out to be bad days. Days when the anxiety level skyrockets, my energy level plummets and while there are always things to do (I had to make a hospital trip today) it is hard to maintain concentration. Usually it ends up being a study day. Today started out as one of those days. Even the time in centering prayer only brought limited relief from the heart-ache I usually face on Monday. And as I drove up for the hospital visit (with a dear woman I love to visit, too) I had to fight a wall of free-range anxiety. But I made the visit, had a nice time and then drove through that same wall on the way home.

So when I stepped up to the labyrinth this evening, I formulated my purpose: I want to be free of this pain.

I anticipated that the walk was going to be a hard one and that with each step toward the center, I would be picking up the pieces of hurts and sorrows that I have buried in my unconscious for years. And I hoped that if I was able to bear the pain to the center I could drop them in sacred space and symbolically walk away from them.

The trouble with expectations is that they don’t always come true.

The first step-with that set of expectations-was very hard. But strangely enough my experience was anything but that. Instead of finding myself picking up more and more pains and sorrows, I found myself dropping them off with each step until I reached the center not overburdened by it all, but able to stand straight for the first time of the day.

As I stood in the center (I decided that while I could handle the cold air, sitting on the cold cement bench was too much) my eyes caught the cross that I have hung on the garage wall. And while I don’t remember the words what I “heard” was the idea that we were never meant to carry our pains and sorrows, that was what Jesus came to do on the cross. I was carrying them needlessly.

So with a strange look on my face as I considered that new yet old idea, I walked out. And then I remembered the promise.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [Matthew 11:28-29, NRSV]

So as I sit here writing, I find myself a bit bewildered, a bit hopeful, and a bit tired. Now I am wondering what the next moments will bring, but I now have a different perspective to bring to life today.

A few threads coming together in my life as I stepped into the labyrinth yesterday. Last Sunday’s lectionary had a couple passages that led me to consider the presence of idolatry in my life and in our society. Then over the last few days, I have had a couple conversations with people related to the almost consuming desire to see where are lives are going and wanting to know how everything fits together. In the course of the conversation talking about modifying that desire away from knowing the answers to opting to trust God in whatever direction the Beloved will lead us in. The concern needing to be more with the here and now task of living each present moment loving God, neighbor and self fully.

I had to laugh in the labyrinth when I remembered the old adage: what I find myself saying to others represents a word that I need to be accept for myself.

The thought that carried me out of the labyrinth was that I(we) have traded faithfulness in relationships (including our relationship with the Beloved) for the idol of Certainty. The Golden Calf of Certainty has now become the god whom we serve.

We want guarantees and reproducible results instead of the dynamic of being a part of growing and living relationships. We exchange the uncertainty of the normal chaos of life for the illusion
of control.

So, we clog the courts with lawsuits because someone didn’t fulfill the “guarantee”, even if that “promise” only existed in our internal expectations. We storm the gates of heaven with prayers demanding God tell us what we are to do “for the greater good” and to give us a guarantee that our lives will be long, enjoyable and meaningful.

A couple months ago, I took that question into the labyrinth. And when I got to the center and listened for God’s answer to my desire for knowledge of my future, I was sure I heard laughter. God offers no such guarantees. The Beloved offers a relationship and comes to invite us into that relationship which is based on love and faithfulness. God does not enter into a contract based on lists of obligations and certainties.

The more I focus on the results, the more I find myself missing the Beloved in my life. In looking for specifics I miss the surprises of grace.

Time to cast off the fear of uncertainty and embrace the awe of Love, wild, rich, abundant and free.

I’ve been on an interesting spiritual journey since yesterday afternoon. Somehow how left ankle began hurting. I am sure I twisted it, (have a couple times lately) but I just don’t remember doing it yesterday. We had Trunk and Treat at the church yesterday afternoon and I put Caution tape on the labyrinth and had the kids walking through it. I am sure it happened while I was setting it up. I just don’t remember.

I have found myself having to slow down today. It isn’t bad enough that I can’t walk, but I can’t walk very fast. I still walked to the post office today and found I was noticing things more. There were great wispy clouds. Of course leaves galore, not too many trees left with trees here.

I try not to think of myself as an impatient person, but I discovered that I do rush around too much. So instead of cursing the ache in the ankle, I am choosing to see what kinds of things I will notice now that I have to take my time getting places. (though I have a feeling I will still be able to zip around in my red car).

What might you see if you slowed down in your normal routine?

I know I mentioned here that I was spray painting a Chalice Labyrinth on Canvas, but I don’t think I have actually said much about it being done. Well, I did finish it in time for the Five Day Academy at the end of July. I was flattered by how well it was received. Since then, I have taken it a couple places (it is sitting in my trunk at the moment) and shown it to a couple people who share an interest in labyrinths.

They have liked it and found it meaningful. So it looks like I will be making another one in the near future. That’s nice. I learned a few things to do differently next time.

For some pictures of my process in making the Rainbow Chalice, please go to my labyrinth page and go down the page.
But if you just want the final product, here is a picture.

Last year the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church built a new Conference Center by the airport in Des Moines. It was finished this spring and it a very very nice building.

There were a number of parts to the design that were pulled out by the Conference Trustees as “very good things to have, but need to be funded by donation.” A fountain, a bell, and a labyrinth are some of those things. The architect came up with a design, but the cost was a bit high for many of us. So this fall, the Chair of the Trustees asked a couple of us labyrinth people in the conference to work with her to come up with a less expensive alternative. We met just before my vacation and looked at the space and talked about thoughts and ideas. We will meet again next month, but we each have things to research.

My task was to learn more about an alternative design to the more common Chartres Cathedral 11 circuit pattern. In looking at books we all were attracted to the The Santa Rosa Labyrinth Design.

I had a delightful conversation with Lea Goode-Harris this morning and I have the material on doing the design on the way to me. This will be good.

As reported a month ago, I had ordered and recieved the canvas for the
portable Chalice Labyrinth I will be painting for the summer. The
canvas arrived at the start of a week’s vacation with the first few
days being at home. After taking a day of vacation to get caught up on
some other home projects, I took a day and a half unrolling each
section, cutting off the corners to make a large octagon and hemming
the exposed edges with heat-tape. I did have to redo one end when I
unrolled all three sections and found that I had three different
lengths of canvas (should have checked that first).

So now I have three 6 foot long rolls of canvas standing up in my
office/studio waiting for the next step. That step will involve a very
large floor space (probably here at the church), and a very large
compass to draw the line edges. Once I get that done I will be able to
start painting. But I will need help in order to draw the
circles. Some of the them will be over 16 feet in diameter. I hope I
don’t have to wait too long for that.

I am still trying to decide on colors. I have moved away from a strict
rainbow affect. I am moving toward using colors related to the basic
elements of earth, sky, fire and water. One source I am intrigued by
is the pictures of earth from space and what colors are present
there. I am still reflecting on that issue.

Now back to playing catch-up in my office.