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At St. Mary Central High School in Neenah, Wis., students will spend Lent going around in circles in search of God.
The school now has a prayer labyrinth, thanks to the efforts of its librarian, Anne Shelley, along with religion teacher Gail Hawley, former religion teacher Patti Christensen and students in its religion classes.
| Reflections for Lent from NCR |
Here are some reflections for Lent that appear in the print issue of National Catholic Reporter.
- Feb. 18 -- Fasting frees us from attachment. I watch the hawk circle, swoop and soar. Once again I am in awe, loving the way power and grace are outlined against a blue sky. Now Lent has arrived and I am also reminded of what Augustine said in one of his homilies: “Do you wish your prayer to fly toward God? Give it two wings: fasting and almsgiving.”
- Feb. 11 -- Lent and a spirituality of resistance, Ash Wednesday awakens me to the fact that I wear so many signs the other 364 days of the year that label me not as a Christian but rather as a conspicuous consumer.
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Shelley, who kept the project going from conception to completion, credits Christensen with the initial idea for a labyrinth as part of introducing students to different types of prayer.
"We're not all the same," Shelley told The Compass, newspaper of the Green Bay diocese. "Some types of prayer work better for people than others."
Based on a type of prayer dating back to the Middle Ages, the labyrinth has a circular pattern. Unlike a maze, it has a single, continuous path leading through winding circuits to the center and then back out again. A person walks at his or her own pace, praying -- and just being silent.
The most famous labyrinth is a 12th-century mosaic incorporated into the floor of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Chartres, France. Many cathedrals in Europe had labyrinths and some speculate that they were devised as a form of pilgrimage, perhaps when people could not travel safely to the Holy Land during the Crusades.
Christensen, now a consultant for family ministry for the diocese, first got the idea for a labyrinth when she was a campus minister at Alverno College in Milwaukee. She borrowed a cloth labyrinth from a parish, and the response of students and members of the general public, as recorded in a prayer journal at Alverno, was amazing, she said.
"When you're walking the labyrinth, along the path, back and forth, back and forth, something happens, deep in your heart," Christensen said. "If you go in, totally empty, and let God work in you, it's an amazing journey."
After she came to St. Mary, Christensen suggested the school get a labyrinth. She and Shelley began seeking funds for an indoor, canvas labyrinth.
"Our school year doesn't really coincide with using an outdoor labyrinth," said Shelley. Outdoor labyrinths are usually created by mowing the design into the grass.
Canvas labyrinths cost several thousand dollars, and a proposal written by Christensen to get a community grant to cover the cost was rejected. So, Shelley's brother, Steve, devised a scale model employing computer aided-design software, known as CAD, and using Chartres as a model. They then built a compass to draw large concentric circles.
Students raised $500 to purchase 12 drop cloths, which Shelley and Hawley stitched together into three panels, each measuring 36 feet by 12 feet. The panels are joined together by Velcro strips to create a square.
Using Steve Shelley's pattern and donated paint -- pink, white and purple combined to make a Lenten purple shade -- students from St. Mary religion classes painted the labyrinth on the cloth. Their teachers also requested that students suggest Scripture verses, hymn lyrics and the names of deceased loved ones to be sealed into areas around the labyrinth's curves. The whole labyrinth was blessed at an all-school Mass Jan. 26.
Hawley said a labyrinth is "a metaphor for the human journey toward God. We find God in the center of our being. The labyrinth has been called 'a maze in grace,' although it really isn't a maze at all. There are no tricky dead ends. It's just one path that leads to the center."
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