The Middle Ages showed a renewed interest in labyrinths
and a design more complex than the classical seven circuit
labyrinth became popular.
This was an eleven-circuit design divided into four
quadrants. It was often found in Gothic Cathedrals but
over time many of these eleven-circuit designs were
destroyed or intentionally removed.
The most famous of these remaining labyrinths is at
Chartres Cathedral near Paris, France.
Yehuda Leib and Mark play together, guitars, on the
Labyrinth here Sunday December 1st anno domini 2003
A strange spectacle: two Russian exiles, singing Hassidic
music on a Dominican mat in a convent!
This was to be my substitute pilgrimage to Jerusalem this
sunny Sunday in Wisconsin.
The labyrinth at Chartres was built around 1200 and is
laid into the floor in a style sometimes referred to as a
pavement maze. The original center piece has been
removed and other areas of the labyrinth have been
restored.
This labyrinth was meant to be walked but is reported to
be infrequently used today. In the past it could be walked
as a pilgrimage and/or for repentance. As a pilgrimage it
was a questing, searching journey with the hope of
becoming closer to God. When used for repentance the
pilgrims would walk on their knees. Sometimes this
eleven-circuit labyrinth would serve as a substitute for an
actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and as a result came to be
called the "Chemin de Jerusalem" or Road of Jerusalem.
In walking the Chartres style labyrinth the walker
meanders through each of the four quadrants several
times before reaching the goal. An expectancy is created
as to when the center will be reached. At the center is a
rosette design which has a rich symbolic value including
that of enlightenment. The four arms of the cross are
readily visible and provide significant Christian
But the music moves me to stand and dance
I am dancing with the Lord
Like David
A rapture
Fills my heart
My legs are at one with the tempo
Now high notes and I tiptoe
Now low ones and I thump like a Cossack.
I am dancing with You Lord
I open my arms wide to embrace you
Then raise them
In praise
Of Your world
The green grass outside
The wind on the bluff
The lake and the whiffs of cloud
Paralleled like the paths of the labyrinth
The water laps up slowly and rhythmically
The patterns of nature
Below as above
Gone are the worries
The surgicenter
The powerlessness
Now all is warm sun through the cloud
The sun as begun to set slowly
So mincha faces another direction. Away
As if after High Noon no longer do we pray in her direction
For she is dying too
And our worship must face East
To life
And Jerusalem
And the future
The lake the bluff the green the blue sky
The setting sun
My life
My words
My embededdness in the world
Away from home
Here-Right now- I am
Alive.
This labyrinth is the very key
For each obstacle standing on the path from the periphery
to the center
Looks as if it forces one away from the center
Forcing one to take a right angel or even 180 degrees...
Yes if one perseveres and sees this as part of the very
nature of this path
Then eventually, but only eventually
One will arrive at the center.
Ye, you may ask why the bother...
Why such a tortuous path...
But then at the center it forces you once again to turn
There is no stopping
And once again you twist and turn at every obstacle
Only to find yourself at the periphery once again
Where you began.
Yet looking back you slowly realize that the purpose was
never to merely reach the center
Never to have gotten there as soon as possible
In the shortest distance possible
No
Far from it
The real goal was to have covered the entire map of the
circle
To have trodden the entire field of the circle
Leaving nothing out
As if everything on the circle was equally important
As if you had to have visited every inch of this area.
My dancing was circular
Like a dervish
And my field was my life
And the goals I thought I had in place initially some 30
years ago
I met with only gates and fences and high wired obstacles.
Each step along the way I met resistance
And only now so much later
Do I realize?
In this dance
The obstacles were my truest friends and spirit guides
That in the very obstacles and traumas
The rejections and the failures
I was forced to make about face turns some 90 degrees
and some 180 degrees
So that by now I have covered most of the field
The light and darker side of my soul
And that this was my greatest gift.
