Ever walk around wondering what to do about your problems? While visiting Katie and family last month, we went to Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland. Brookside Gardens has a labyrinth. It looks like a patio, but it’s designed for meditation, a spiral path that you walk toward the center. As you walk you are supposed to disengage from your daily worries and focus your mind on what’s most important. This particular labyrinth has a plaque telling how to do it.
"Before you start your walk you may want to pause and take a few moments to quiet your mind and release the thoughts and feelings that are distractions of everyday life, so that you can focus and be present in the moment…. As you begin your walk, find your own pace; pause for reflection whenever you wish. Be open to any insight or feeling you may have. When you reach the center, be still and aware of what thoughts or feelings you may have. Stay as long as you wish. Using the path, the journey out from the center can be seen as a return to one’s life. Reflect on any insight with a sense of empowerment and a refreshed spirit."
Did you catch how it tells you to focus on yourself? That’s spirituality today, the answer is within me. Christian meditation is different because it focuses outward to God who meets and leads us through Jesus Christ. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:7). Dr. Travis Scholl, my colleague at Concordia Seminary, writes about the Christian use of a labyrinth. “The path of the labyrinth is Christ. Christ is the path. Because he is the path…any one of us can find him in the singular walk that is our own life. Or rather, he finds us. Come, follow me.” (Intervarsity Press, 2014; 43) Have a great weekend, thinking about life, simplifying life, as you walk the path of Christ!
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