I went hunting a labyrinth today.
If you’re anywhere near or over thirty, you probably instantly thought of David Bowie in REALLY tight pants and that giant, furry (and really kick-ass) Ludo-creature...what Sarah found when she wished the Goblin King would come and take away her baby brother, Toby. Ahh, 80’s cinema.
Real labyrinths are a bit different. I did a search and came up with several up in Alexandria...and one in good ol’ PWC. Drove out to Bristow and turned into the Linton Hall School, housed within the property of the Benedictine Priory of Gainesville, VA. The network of tiny roads and parking lots that wound through the complex was labyrinthine in itself. Lots of tall white statues on pedestals, with no explanation of who they were or what their significance was. I was competent enough to recognize Mary, but two or three others escaped me. I assume one was St. Benedict (but could have been Auggie or Francis or some other guy), and another appeared to be Mary with a young girl, and I would’ve liked to have some sort of story explaining that one.
On the grounds was the school itself, a small swimming pool, several little houses, and a large building I gather was where the convent actually was. Did not look convent-y. Looked like another old-fashioned, perhaps 60’s- or 70’s-era elementary school. Large front porch, rocking chairs. A couple red-brick mission-looking buildings, very small, with those bell-stands at the top that remind me of the adobe mission buildings in California. There was a “teaching garden.” A graveyard. Two boys playing basketball in the parking lot of the school. Lots of trees and big grassy areas. A sign pointing to “transitional housing” and B.A.R.N., which I didn’t get the long name for and looked to be a thrift store/donation dropoff point, so I suppose the Benedictine Sisters are, among other things, in the business of helping out families who are down-and-out.
After driving around for a while, and getting deeper and deeper into the complex, I finally wound my way back to the convent and parked. The door instructed me to ring the bell, but then to walk in if it was unlocked, so I did. Little old lady in the office...reminded me of my grandmother in a much smaller version. I told her I’d come hoping to find a walking labyrinth, and felt silly till I saw the labyrinth design on her mousepad. She gave me directions back past the teaching garden, where I’d already been, and told me to look for two large white silos.
I’d missed the sign the first time, but she was right...it was there. “Labyrinth Garden,” the sign said. The grounds are right off of Linton Hall Road, which is in a nightmare of construction that, I saw today, has merely morphed into new and equally neverending phases from what I’d seen before, but the labyrinth was buffeted from the noise of the road by some very thick conifer-type trees. There was a wooden fence, left open, and a little arbor leading down to the maze itself.
It looked just the way I figured it should. It was smaller than I’d hoped for, and I was sorry to see that, unlike the verdant, shady, contemplative grounds I’d been walking barefoot through earlier, the labyrinth itself was in full sun...which, at 2pm two days past the solstice, made the paving stones too hot to walk without my flipflops on. (They’re too big, and keeping them on detracted from my walk.)
So I dove in, tried not to hurry.
The purpose of a labyrinth is to quiet your mind. It’s a unicursal (one-path) design. There is no getting lost...it winds around from the outside and leads to the center, and then (as I found out later; I did not reverse the track) you’re supposed to walk back to the outside the way you came in. It’s a mediation thing. The site of Grace Cathedral’s labyrinth is a good one, and it explains the purpose of the labyrinth (which I won't bother to retype here, but check it out 'cause it's cool). I went there last summer with Ben, but as I recall, the indoor labyrinth was under construction, and I don’t remember why I didn’t walk the outside one, despite how taken I was with all the labyrinth stuff in the gift shop. Anyway...it’s meant to symbolize the twists and turns we take in life on our way to understanding...and how there is really only one path, and you can’t get lost, and there’s no dead ends.
“Off the Road,” the book I’m reading (and by “reading,” I mean “keeping weeks past the due date from the library without actually getting past page 40, then renewing it after paying a $7 fine, so that I’ll forget to return it before I go on my trip and wind up owing new fines far greater than the book’s original value”) is written by a guy who, like me, grew up Episcopalian, and it’s at once humorous, irreverent, and yet very heartfelt. He goes on the Camino and feels a desire to start the pilgrimage the way it was done in the Middle Ages, from his own front door, but alas, he is an American, and there is an ocean between him and Santiago...not just 500 miles of Spain. So he goes seeking some meditative undertaking on North American soil to sort of kick off his trip.
Which is why I went hunting labyrinths today.
The silos, by the way, looked like silos, but were really just large concrete cylinders. They had beautiful concentric paving stones on the floor inside them, and benches along the walls, and foot-wide, stained-glass panels reaching from above the doorways to nearly the tops, which were open to the sky. The curvature of the sunlight made the white, stony inner walls look really beautiful. You could sit on one of the little curved benches inside and look out the doorway over a segment of the labyrinth and the gardens beyond it. By accident (read: “Upon talking to myself”), I discovered the echo properties inside them, and was reminded of the time my mom and I stood on opposite sides of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and made it work its acoustic magic.
It was a decent experience. Not life-changing, certainly not cathartic in any way. But I’d like to go back a few times before I go. With shoes that don’t distract me. Early in the morning, perhaps. Maybe even get to go into the little chapel they have there. Maybe see a nun. (I know, I know, they don’t wear habits, and they’re probably not that exciting, but Catholic I ain’t, and this is my meditative aspiration, not yours.)
Besides, “So, today I went to a Benedictine priory and walked a labyrinth” just sounds cool. Mystical. Which ties right in with the Camino.
I consider the journey begun.
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