• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I feel very honored to start each day this way, by connecting to the earth, the cycles of light and dark. I really notice the difference throughout the day between those mornings when I do the ritual and when I don’t; my work stays so much lighter when I take the time to welcome in the light.”

One couple I know, Mark and Alison each walk their labyrinth upon coming home from work to mark the transition between work time and family time. Mark tells me he goes over his workday, letting go of concerns and finding several things to be grateful for that happened during the day.

Alison uses the time to “change hats” from attorney to wife and mother. “The rules are so different between work and home,” she says. “I use the walk to let go of the hard-driving, competent person I need to be in the office and soften into being in relationship once more with the people I love—my husband, my kids. Before I step into the labyrinth I ask for help from my Higher Power for softening and relaxing. I stay in the center until the ‘hats’ are really changed. Then, on the way out, I ask for blessings for the evening with my family.”

Both Mark and Alison find that they can be much more present to each other, to their children, and to the graces of family life once they release their workday in the labyrinth.

Neal Harris advises corporate executives to do the same. After working with executives on stress reduction and centering in the workplace, he has them keep a laminated paper labyrinth in their desk. Before leaving work, he suggests that they pull out the labyrinth and “walk” it. “When you do that before you go home,” Neal says, “you can leave all your ‘stuff’ at work. It’s a way of taking good care of yourself, of destressing and relaxing. It’s also a way of caring for your family, by leaving all the stresses of work at work.”

LIFE TRANSITIONS

American culture is desperately poor in ways to mark transitions from one life stage to another, something tribal cultures know is vitally important, not just for the person in transition but for everyone else around them. Marking transitions such as puberty, menopause, or elderhood dignify the change, allow for the transformation to happen fully at all levels—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—and allow the community to recognize the one in transition as a new being, with new capacities, gifts, and responsibilities.

Our culture is particularly lacking, as many sociologists note, in marking the change from childhood to adolescence, perhaps the most important rite of passage in most tribal cultures. Using the labyrinth to mark and celebrate the change is a powerful way of recognizing a young man’s or woman’s shift from childhood to the beginning of young adulthood.

Thirteen-year-old Kyna, her mother, and their community integrated the labyrinth into a coming-of-age ritual I had the privilege to lead. Kyna used the labyrinth at the beginning and end of the ritual celebrating her first menstrual period.

Kyna, having walked the labyrinth many times before, walked it at the beginning of her ritual to signify the last walk of her childhood. After her mother had dressed her and blessed her, Kyna walked into the labyrinth and left a translucent blue glass egg, a symbol of her emerging womanhood, in the center.

During the women’s circle for the central part of the ritual, we read poetry to Kyna, sang to her, and blessed her. During this time, Kyna showed us, and talked about, a small cornhusk doll, a symbol of her childhood. To conclude the ritual, Kyna walked the labyrinth once more. After meditating in the center on all she had experienced during the evening, she left the cornhusk doll in the center, and carried out with her the blue glass egg, her nascent womanhood.

You can use the labyrinth to mark any sort of life transition. Doing so in a birthday ritual can be powerful. On your next birthday, try this:

Stand at the entrance to the labyrinth. Light a candle, a special one you have picked out for this occasion,