The new room at the yoga centre that was chosen for the event was large enough to hold a labyrinth event but had a couple of pillars in the center of the space. Early on we had an idea for how to incorporate the pillars and transform them into an elements of the event. But as we got closer to the installation and began to consider the room size and the number of people expected, we had second thoughts on exactly what would work well in the space. As we considered the options Vanessa suggested a hexagon labyrinth. While I knew there was an octagonal historic precedent in the St. Quentin Cathedral Labyrinth in France, we had always worked with circular labyrinths because they support the sense of community we seek to engender through our work. As we puzzled out what to do, I remembered the geometry of a snowflake is the same as the geometric basis of a hexagon.  So this was the perfect justification. And because we had never made a hexagon labyrinth before, this was an opportunity to learn.

Saint Quentin Labyrinth, France 12th century

Historic labyrinths may have been laid out using a system of relational geometry rather than by measuring. I had wanted to create an oversized compass and draw arches in order to divide the space but in the end we measured, based on the sketch that Vanessa had drawn. It’s always fascinating to see how things work out in a partnership especially when there is a time line. We each have our gifts and moments of clarity come as we work through the process. Vanessa has great patience for detail. On the other hand I can move through the process without getting bogged down in the detail. Somehow we manage to accomplish together what would have been more challenging for us to do alone.

Vanessa and volunteer Chris are figuring it out, the hard way

Barb trimming the corners.

After decorating the labyrinth with tea lights and creating a kind of receiving bowl in the altar space we greeted Kathy Armstrong and her husband and performance partner Rory Magill. I gave a brief introduction and then the ting-shaw bells created the opening of sacred time and space. As I greeted the participants and created a sense of pacing I offered each person a small pebble suggesting it could represent anything they where releasing or letting go of this evening. Participants were invited to deposit their pebble into an earthen bowl filled with water. This created a ritualized way of making intentional a desire to consciously turn toward the light.

Finished Hexagon Labyrinth

As I stepped back to make room for someone entering the labyrinth I bumped into a person. I turned around and realized the line-up of people waiting had encircled the labyrinth. This was the spirituality of waiting in action! I checked in with a few people and they seemed to be doing fine and after about 20 minutes the anxiety in the room settled. It is quite something to be the keeper of a labyrinth as you hold open the invitation never really knowing what it will be for those who participate. Kathy and Rory’s delicate rhythms held the space and helped to ground the experience for all.

It was a beautiful evening and a wonderful observance of the solstice. What a great way to blend ancient practices with contemporary life. It seems people are seeking opportunities to ritualize secular living. I am pleased to be exploring ways of observing and marking our days and making our living intentional.

In all it was a tremendous evening with approximately 80 people attending and $1500.00 raised for the Ottawa Food Bank. Thanks everyone!

It was not without a note of sadness that we hosted our last “Labyrinth as Sanctuary” at Christ Church Cathedral Ottawa. For the past two and a half years we have brought musicians and participants together in the creation of a peace-filled and creative series of encounters with the medieval labyrinth. “Our” labyrinth is situated in the church hall, which will soon be torn down to make room for condominiums and office towers. During these special evenings hundreds of people have come to walk the labyrinth and more than 20 musicians have been introduced to the very particular and engaging place to create music.

For our last “Labyrinth as Sanctuary” we invited the resident organist and director of music of the Cathedral, Matthew Larkin. He is a natural at the labyrinth and brings a wealth of musical repertoire, yet offers something uniquely his own. Playing for the labyrinth is a kind of musical marathon, as the musicians play until the last person has exited. Usually this runs an hour and a half or so.

As it was Remembrance Day, we acknowledging those who had given their lives in the service of our country and also those who had served and returned home, forever changed by the experience of war.

At the entrance to the labyrinth, along with a basket of poppies, there was a word-bowl, seeded with evocative printed words on the theme of remembrance. At the center of the labyrinth we set a cushion to receive the poppies as an act of remembrance. By the end of the evening there was a collection of poppies but also words. My daughter Willow framed some poignant pairings in the photographs below.

It is such a delight to listen to Matthew Larkin play. I spent some time watching as well while taking the video below and I don’t know why I ever turned the camera off. Matthew was really in the moment both in the music and also with the participants. He is a keen observer and picked up on the mood in the room but also was able to influence the tone of the evening as well. There were not many minor notes or somber feeling, rather the accompaniment was energetic even though the participants walked fairly slowly. I did overhear someone say it was a bit like listening to Keith Jarrett. On a par, I’d say! It is always a great pleasure to listen to Matthew but especially so while walking the labyrinth, as the experience lends itself to deep listening.

Here is a short video clip of the evening. Not the same as being there, but a nice reminder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXuwdHsbZ8Q

It has certainly been a journey of great adventure to offer the labyrinth to our community. One of our musical collaborators once commented that we had created “a church within a church”. We do have a community of people who gather around the labyrinth.  The labyrinth can be seen as a touchstone or a well. It allows one to access a deep sense of peace and wellbeing which once known can be always be found within and revisited. If we all really knew this and allowed a deep sense of peace to inspire compassion for ourselves and towards others, with growing numbers I know we could create the kind of world we all seek.

One of the aspects of the experience especially true of the Chartres labyrinth is the path revealing itself one step at a time. While it is possible to look ahead and see a few turns it is usually not possible to know where you are within the whole pattern.

At this time of the turning of the path in my work with the labyrinth, I trust that the next steps will reveal themselves to me.

Farewell, until we meet again. Barbara Brown and Vanessa Compton

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canadianlabyrinthventures.com

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Almost immediately I heard two very well-trained voices and I wondered if she was using the looping function on her digital piano. It turned out to be one of the labyrinth participants who was a trained opera singer. This was not planned but somehow it led the way for the rest of us more tentative singers and opened a door to participation. Before long there were many people up on their feet walking and grovin’ and movin’ and singing along.

A most inclusive and inventive atmosphere began to grow in the room. I think there were quite a few people from Roxanne’s community choir, Big Soul, so it was no surprise that there were uninhibited singers taking part. It opens up the possibility for cross-pollination of ideas, as I like to see it. The actions and activities of one participant inspire something else in the next person and the whole thing has a way of building its own momentum. I have even seen this happen with the paintings and drawings that participants create, where a kind of theme will ripple down the table. This is community at its best!

My labyrinth partner Vanessa Compton offered these observations on the evening’s events:  The space between the musical passages was intriguing – as one piece drew to a close, and a single piano note held the space first a little tentative then with increasing certainty until a new expression emerged. That was literally “avant-garde” for me, “nouvelle vague/new wave” of energy and growth. I found it to be a powerful auditory image for the process of moving from old form to new. 

Leaving it behind me

"Spirit of the music flows in me"

The "C" within

We have never had so many volunteers, both official invited helpers, as well as unofficial volunteers who just happened by. The word goes out across the playground through the neighborhood kids and they come. With the strength of numbers we were able to set up the 65 foot diameter labyrinth with over 700 candles in paper bags in about an hour. The weather helped out as well. The chance of showers that was predicted did not happen. Some of our helpers were as young as three years in age and happy to see and learn the nuances of setting up the labyrinth. We borrowed a pop-up tent to serve as entranceway and Barb Roblin came by with hand-dyed streamers and glass jar lanterns which helped to transform the scene.

Volunteers help with set up.

Short helpers.

This year we choose to run this community gathering as a fundraiser for the new Cancer Survivor Centre, a project of the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. We asked participants to bring a clear glass jar and to carry a candle for all those who walk with cancer.

As the evening progressed a collection of candles grew at the centre of the labyrinth, and it was a poignant demonstration of remembrance of family and friends who have walked with cancer. I imagine there would not have been a person who had not been touched by cancer in some way, even including the kids.

Memories and prayers gathered at the centre of the labyirnth.

Our evening walk was led by a group of children who had spent the afternoon with Barb Roblin creating their own paper lanterns. It was enchanting to have a community led by a group of children…..how fitting in so many ways.

Leading the way with a paper lantern.

Perhaps next year we will set up the labyrinth on the grassy turf……..for a barefoot walk.

Lighting the labyrinth.

Sarah writes her name with a flash light!

John Burke was the first musician we invited to work with our Cathedral labyrinth back in October of 2009 and in the past two years we have created several opportunities to collaborate with him around the theme of the labyrinth. John is primarily a composer whose interest in the labyrinth has drawn him into the role of performer. Now he finds himself composing in the moment and collaborating with a vocalist who performs in the moment.  Antonia Pigot is a trained and practiced improviser, who is very much at home responding and creating in the “present tense”. It was fascinating to watch them work together, developing strategies and trying out musical ideas. I sat in on one of their early rehearsals and was intrigued at how quickly they established common ground and working strategies.

The Hero’s Journey is a longtime theme of John’s, he sees it paralleled in the experience of walking the labyrinth. John uses a seed pattern of twelve chords which  he created to set out in musical terms the stages of the hero’s journey. These twelve chords formed the pattern and basis for an improvised collaboration between piano and voice. The structure of the seed pattern is based in the notion of the transformative archetype which has a definite trajectory from beginning through challenges to resolution. But it is the improvisation that brings it to life and gives it newness and a customized platform to support the real life journey of the participants who are walking the labyrinth.

(link to John’s Burke’s website)

http://earsay.com/labyrinthmusic/composer/interviews/interviews.html

The music helps to lulls the participant into the liminal space between two worlds, where it is possible to make a shift, to see things in a different light and to integrate this new aspect of the self into our ongoing journey of life.

Antonia created a complimentary choir effect using an electronic sound looping device. Without words she created a personalized story line, not unlike listening to someone sing in a foreign language. Her delicate and inventive touch was like hearing the voices of the mystics or perhaps the angels. Emotive and expressive, longing and hauntingly beautiful.

A better pairing I can’t imagine. A labyrinth walk is to a great degree an unknowable thing. We never know who will show up, and exactly what will happen, so given those parameters, improvisational music is the way to go.

I was quiet tired from my busy day of facilitating and preparing, yet had a desire to experience the effect of the music while walking the labyrinth. By the time I had finished I was refreshed with renewed energy and further intrigued to take in the dynamics of the music. What a gift on a rainy Friday night!

 
The harmony of music is always relational, as are the proportions of the labyrinth. My ears are still ringing with the close harmonies of our Labyrinth as Sanctuary evening with Songmen Six on Friday March 18th.

The Songmen Six come together in their love of making music to form an a cappella group of young men. They are all current members of the Christ Church Cathedral Ottawa Choir of Men and Boys. Michael Carty, Nicolas Piper, Jaime McLean, Andrew Robar, David Houston and Andrew Day are a very talented and dedicated group of singers having formed as a group a little less than a year ago. The sextet performs an eclectic mix of both ancient sacred music and contemporary pop as well as their own compositions. Nicolas Piper premiered a most hauntingly beautiful Lenten piece he wrote and scored for the ensemble.

It was interesting to hear how the Songmen were able to blend the various pieces they sang. Their repertoire was circuitous and very much in the spirit of the labyrinth. The music was for the most part sombre, plaintive and slow, and it set the pace for the walkers. I wanted to listen while walking and so took the opportunity towards the end of the evening to walk the labyrinth myself. I don’t alway have an opportunity to walk the labyrinth when we are hosting and facilitating. I am often struck by how profound the experience of listening is while walking the labyrinth. It’s as if the sound is somehow amplified. This evening the Songmen Six were singing prayers of peace to God for forgiveness, some taken from the evening prayer Service of Compline, others were Lenten meditations. It seems I can only write of my own experience and would say after attending years of services at the Cathedral that this evening there seemed to be a pipeline directly from my ears to my heart. Not always, but at moments my discursive brain was bypassed and the possibility of the message became real, as if a direct invitation was received to step into a new reality. I’ll call it profound listening. The fact that it was delivered with close and complex harmonies in the clear acoustics of the hall helped tremendously.

I do wonder how others experienced the evening. I did noticed some tears . Perhaps not so much tears of regret but possibly just being overwhelmed by the beauty of both message and medium.

The evening was seeded with a quote from Albert Einstein and I found it became a kind of filter for the perception of my experience.

 “A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”  Albert Einstein, 1954

It certainly rang true when I watched how closely the singers worked together and how their individual voices were simultaneously undifferentiated and individual, separate yet blended to create the whole effect. In all it was a gratifying evening and went a long way to creating reassurance of the promise of peace in our time.

The art tables were busy. However I didn’t see any of the things people were making but my husband came home with half a dozen water colours that were pretty impressive. It’s always interesting to see what happens in the setting of the labyrinth. I would like to believe it opens doors to creativity, where we can remove our blinders of fear and self criticism and just be

The evenings when we open the Cathedral labyrinth to the public have become real focal points in my life.  Each month we welcome a different musician to warm up the labyrinth and create a meditative soundscape.

Kevin Hassell and Bruce Nicol are long time friends, both well skilled musicians, both with considerable depth of knowledge and experience with liturgical music. Working from various historic pieces of plainchant they wove together an evocative contemporary feel using a portativ organ, cello, guitar and alto recorder along with voice, creating a musical setting befitting our Cathedral Labyrinth.

Bruce and Kevin moved between instruments each taking a turn at the organ. They played the organ in the usual manner and then at times would slip a pencil between one or two of the organ keys to create a drone as harmonic baseline for the other instruments. They rotated the instruments in a well coordinated way offering a gentle blend of instrumental along with moments of sung plainchant. I think they were using a taizé chant, repeating the same line over and over in a meditative wave of sound. I found myself quietly singing along, adding my own harmonies as I felt the urge.

The music carried with it an embedded narrative, however it was not accessible to me. For Kevin and Bruce the music told specific stories but for me it brought layers of images. I imagined generations of devoted monks processing and chanting in the hallowed spaces of stone churches from the past. It brought back many memories of my time at Chartres Cathedral in France.

There was quite a bit of traffic at the art tables and by the end of the evening there was a collection of paintings that illustrated the richness and quality of what participants had experienced. After all it was a most satisfying and peaceful evening. A wonderful and welcome pause in the midst of a busy life.

Have a look at the Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/user/creativelabyrinth?feature=mhee#p/u/2/ekpBMXwOpwY

We invited Kathy Armstrong, Founder and Director of Baobab Community, a well known percussionist specializing in african drumming, dance and song. Perhaps this was a well informed intention based on our practice of hosting labyrinth walks and our growing experience with intentionally created music to accompany the labyrinth experience. We have come to know that there is a great variety of music that “works” with the labyrinth.   We have also learned that the space of the labyrinth can be held musically or energetically by very little means. A few simple beats by a talented musician can help to establish the container for participants.

While I don’t know Kathy well, I have great respect for her creative work as well as her skill in building community through her musical offerings. Kathy leads, not from an ego centered place, but with a gentle heart. She is an attentive observer who uses her creativity to reach out to participants through sound. The beat of the drum is compelling and it was not possible to remain still. Several time during the evening while I was trying to take photographs in very low light I had to tell myself to stop moving so that I would not jiggle the camera. People swayed, tapped and clapped along, the whole room seemed in motion, gently moving to the beat of the drum. There is something irresistible about being in the presents of a drummer. The body responded in spite of my myself. Add to that the occasional chant and it didn’t matter that we couldn’t understand the words, the sentiment came through loud and clear.

Kathy had brought her friend Jennifer, who was visiting from London Ontario. I noticed from the very first tentative taps and clacks that Jennifer was a musician. I found out later she is very well trained in the choral tradition.  At one point Kathy created a conversation, musically that is, with the use of simple rhythmic instruments. While walking the perimeter of the labyrinth Kathy pecked out a call and her friend Jennifer answered in a different instrument voice. The effect was like listening to animals or birds in the night, talking to each other across a valley. Fascinating, what is created with such simple means in the hands of talented musicians.

A conversation through Call and Response

We ended the evening by joining hands and threaded our way into the labyrinth in an ancient form of the crane dance. In no time at all we were all laughing and improvising as we followed Kathy into the centre of the labyrinth. Things picked up even more on our way out as we gave a high five to everyone we encountered. It’s very dynamic when you find yourself sandwiched, with eager hands greeting you on both side at the same time. What a delightful way to warm up the winter.

Seven Circuit Classical Labyrinth

While walking my daughter to school this morning I noticed the conditions were just right for tracing a labyrinth in the snow. Started out with the idea of making a 5 circuit but the initial circle was pretty big and so it became a 7 circuit. I’m awfully fond of the rose pattern found at the centre of the Chartres Labyrinth so made a replicate which became a 5 petal pattern. This is all done without the aid of tools, just walking and drawing with the body and my new bog boots! The circles are “drawn” in reference to an imagined centre, a very peculiar experience.

Five Petal Centre