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SURRENDER

This opening into the greater story frees us to actively choose to surrender to, rather than resist, our experience in the present moment, trusting that there is always learning, and redemption, to be gained any situation.

Surrender does not mean giving up. Rather, surrendering to our pain, and our stories, while walking the labyrinth means no longer expending useless energy trying to control the outcome of a situation. By letting go of resistance to our own pain and to the reality of the situation that brings us grief, we open our hearts and souls to the healing power of Spirit and to creative ways to meet our life challenge with open hearts and clear eyes.

Resistance is like metaphorically closing our fists tight around the divorce, the bankruptcy, the job loss, the illness. Surrender means opening our hands so that the situation may rest lightly in our palms, allowing us to see it more clearly and also thus allowing the healing energy of Spirit to surround and fill it.

The first labyrinth at Harmony Hill was born out of executive director Gretchen Schodde’s experience of surrendering to, rather than trying to control, her pain and confusion over her mother’s cancer diagnosis.

Schodde went out to rototill her garden after learning her mother had cancer of the jaw. “I couldn’t concentrate enough to take the rototiller back and forth in any kind of orderly way because I was so caught up in this situation with my mom that I was going in circles in my own head. The harder I tried to make the rototiller work, the worse it got.

“At some point, I think it was total grace, the absurdity of thinking I had to till in straight lines occurred to me, just because I had done it that way all my life. I actually started laughing and said to the rototiller, ‘Okay, rototiller, I’m obviously incapable of controlling this right now, you take over.’

“What I was really doing was letting go of needing to control the whole painful situation with my mother. I remember this happiness at letting it all go, and started actually having fun because the rototiller started going in circles; I just held on and let it go where it wanted to go. It would go in a circle in one direction, and then I would nudge it a little and it would go in a circle in the other direction.”

To her surprise, Schodde discovered a year later that what she called the Circle Garden was actually a labyrinth when she read an article about labyrinths that included pictures. Many years later, and thousands of walks—both hers and others’—later, Schodde recalls the huge impact letting go and surrendering had upon her pain and confusion over her mother’s diagnosis. “The Circle Garden helped so much. The shifting of paradigms from straight lines to circles had a huge impact on me. I let go of all that struggle; creating the labyrinth helped me get a hold on my pain and stress in a way that was really life-giving.”

This is the essence of surrender: acknowledging, and opening to, what is in our lives. This is an act of power we can make while walking the labyrinth: saying yes to our pain, our grief, our confusion. When we say yes, we are also saying yes to the possibilities of healing, and new life, emerging from the depths of that same pain.

GRIEF

Stephen Levine, author of many books on working with emotional and physical pain, calls grief the great softener of the heart. What happens for so many of us, though, is that grief seems so overwhelming that we close our hearts to our own grief, halting the healing process. Walking the labyrinth can reopen our hearts and allow the grief, and the healing, to flow.

If you are dealing with a loss, any loss, then walk the labyrinth. Walk into your grief. If you have lost someone you love through death or divorce, imagine walking with that person beside you in the labyrinth into the heart of your grief. Sit with him or her, and your grief, at the center. Ask your heart and soul if there is anything that has been left