A Meaningful Knot

During our time in Ireland last May, my co-leader Claire Davidson Frederick guided our students through walking the prayer labyrinth at Glendalough.

Growing up in a low-church Protestant tradition, I was never exposed to prayer labyrinths. But they've become very popular. Our campus has one on the grounds.

Labyrinths pre-date Christianity, but they began to show up in the Christian tradition in the Middle-Ages. The most famous of these is the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, built around 1200 CE. The Chartres labyrinth is unicursal, one continuous path to the center. This is the most common form for a prayer labyrinth, which generally aren't intended to be a maze with dead ends. Here's the layout of the Chartres labyrinth:

The labyrinth at Glendalough takes its pattern from the famous Hollywood Stone. Discovered in 1908, the Hollywood Stone depicts a labyrinth carving. The etching is generally dated to the Middle-Ages, though its actual age is impossible to determine. Here's a nifty 3D model of the stone you can examine.

After the Holy Lands were lost during the Crusades, Medieval Christians increasingly began to use labyrinths as a substitute for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Walking labyrinths became a spiritual practice—a symbolic journey toward God. Generally, people use labyrinths as a contemplative practice of walking prayer. There's no standard or "correct" way to walk a prayer labyrinth, so you're free to adopt or create a practice of walking that suits you.

After Claire's presentation to our students, I added some brief reflections about my own experiences with labyrinths. When I look at labyrinths, I shared with the students, I see a knot. A knot that looks like my life. I thought I was heading in one direction only to find myself backtracking and going in the opposite direction. Just when I thought I was making progress, getting closer to my goal, I found myself further away than when I had started. And for most of my life, I've never had a long view stretching out ahead of me. I've never seen the horizon. A sharp turn, a short way ahead, would always appear. And I've never been able to see around the next corner.

Like I said, a knot.

And yet, though the path has felt like an inscrutable maze, I was always making progress, always moving toward the center, always being drawn toward God. I was not lost, though I felt like it. I was on the path. I only needed to keep walking.

So that's what I told the students. The labyrinth looks like a knot, but it's a meaningful knot. Just like your life. Snarled and twisted, you double back and reverse direction, you can't see what's around the next corner, and you often seem farther way from the goal than when you first began. But as Tolkien said, all who wander are not lost. Life is labyrinthian, but labyrinthian doesn't mean lost. God is drawing you. You've always been walking Home.

So, yes, your life has been a knot, but it is a meaningful knot.