After watching the movie “The Way” last night, I considered the importance of traveling a path…be it a Labyrinth, like the one I walked at Grace Cathedral yesterday afternoon after delivering a re-order of my cards to their Gift Shop, or the Camino de Santiago that Martin Sheen’s character walks in the movie. Both have to do with “Transformation”. Both offer time for reflection, connection (with the Divine) and a peace to enter one’s heart.
Since meeting Bruce Bearden, Canon for Administration for Grace Cathedral, at the SF Gift show in August I’ve been considering creating a card of a Labyrinth. Bruce told me about their Labyrinth’s at Grace Cathedral (one is indoors;one outdoors) which are modeled after the one at Chartes Cathedral. When I delivered my first order of cards to their shop he took me upstairs to view the Labyrinth from an interesting vantage point. He encouraged me to create a card by telling me that anything that has a Labyrinth image on it sells in their Shop. I was interested in the transformative nature of the Labyrinth. I had walked one earlier this year when at Mercy Center in Burlingame (also an outdoor version) and have heard of people who make it a spiritual practice to walk a Labyrinth. It’s akin to saying the rosary, I thought. I wonder if it is the repetitive nature of the circling round the path that, like the rosary, is repetitive in nature. Be it the prayers of the rosary or the beads that one holds that brings one to peace or allows one to offer up their thoughts/worries/joy/pain etc to the Divine or the footsteps on the path…either way a transformation happens. (I’ve not said the rosary since probably sometime in parochial grade school but my Mom is a devout Catholic who prays the rosary on a daily basis).