I've created a new, public labyrinth calendar for the Washington, DC metro area:
Washington DC Metro Area Labyrinth Events Calendar
Let me know if this is useful to you. I'd love to hear your ideas on how to make it more relevant to the local labyrinth community.
You can subscribe to it with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook 2007 (or later), and other applications that can connect to web calendars.
UPDATE (9 Feb 2010): I've canceled this event. Given the amount of snow on the ground and that expected in the next 24 hours, I think there's little chance that the labyrinth will be clear enough for a safe walk. And I'm not in a position to do any shoveling (doctor's orders).
I do plan to mark the one-month anniversary, though, with a finger labyrinth at home. You can do the same online at either of these sites:
http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/interactions/index.shtml (Chartres design)
http://www.lessonsforliving.com/finger_labyrinth.htm (classical design)
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To mark the one-month anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, I am organizing an open labyrinth walk on Saturday, February 13, at Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, DC, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
I will be present to facilitate the labyrinth walk, which will take place regardless of the weather (unless the labyrinth is buried under snow).
If you'd like more information or want to help with this event, please use the Contact Us page to send an email message.
As I was winding up my M.A. program at Pacifica Graduate Institute about this time last year, I realized that if I were going to explore the relationship of people with place, I would need to contend with both space and time -- and a big part of the time component had to be the passing of the seasons. I felt the pull to participate in the changing light and temperature, in the ebb and flow of sunrise and sunset that sometimes seems out-of-sync with the official holiday calendar.
Many mornings last January and February, as I was slaving over my portfolio and my final papers, I rose before the sun and saw that "rosy-fingered dawn" beloved of the poets. During the same period, I met Esther de Waal, a scholar and teacher in the Benedictine and Celtic traditions, who makes her home in the Welsh borderlands and visits the U.S. for a few weeks each winter. In her tiny book, To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border
;)
We breathe a new air,
No longer cold with seeming death.
The flowers respond
to the strengthening Sun, your light.
So may our hearts respond to your love and grace.
The birds break into song and call us to your praise.
So may our hearts give praise at all aspects of our lives.
The frozen earth and water melt to new life:
So may our hardened hearts be softened
to gentleness and love.
We are overwhelmed with images, symbols,
confirmations of your resurrecting, your enlivening.
Image from Ancient Order of Hibernians web site at aoh.comAmong those symbols is the perpetual flame of Brighid, relit (in 1993) and tended once again in Kildare, where St. Brighid established her monastery in the 5th century. Not only do the Brigidine Sisters maintain the fire at their center, Solas Bhride, but the county of Kildare has found a home for the flame in the town square and offers it to a new millennium as a beacon of hope, justice, and peace.
May the peace of St. Brighid rest on you, enflame your heart for justice, and offer a hopeful reminder that the light has turned and the first signs of spring will show soon.
Mowing the lawn a few times this year -- a chore previously enjoyed exclusively by my husband, Robert -- gave me a new appreciation for the small bit of land that our house sits on in northern Virginia. I'm not skilled enough with the mower to carve neat patterns in the grass. I'm more tempted to take a tiller, shovel, and hoe to one corner (where the grass hardly grows), terrace it, and put in more stepping stones.
But yesterday's 6" snowfall offered an opportunity to sculpt the back yard on a large scale, with tools that I handle more easily than the mower -- a broom, a dustpan, and my own two feet. The result is a 7-circuit classical labyrinth. I can't wait to walk it under the full moon later tonight.
And what do you know? That unobstructed part of the back yard -- far from the bamboo -- is just about the right size for a labyrinth with 10" path.
My motto, "Connecting People with Place," has taken on new meaning, as I volunteered and was empowered to create a Facebook page for the Arlington Sister Cities Association, which connects my northern Virginia community with people in these cities:
