As I left the restaurant, I observed a sheet of paper on a kiosk outdoors promoting a neighborhood candle lit labyrinth stroll scheduled for sundown. I appeared up on the sky above me and noticed that it was the truth is nearing that point. So as a substitute of heading again to my room, I turned and walked in the direction of the labyrinth.
The neighborhood in Harmonie, Indiana was based by a German zealot named Johann Rapp in 1814. The Harmonists had been a separatist group of Lutherans who dreamed of dwelling out their religion in a harmonious utopia. Once they came to visit from Germany, they first settled in Pennsylvania, and after promoting their neighborhood to Mennonites, they moved down what’s now New Concord, Indiana. The labyrinth was a key image and observe of their religion. They constructed one in every of their areas. Their neighborhood modified arms after a couple of decade. After which after a number of years, that neighborhood, the Owenites, additionally moved on. However the historical past and legacy of New Concord was resurrected by Jane Baffler Owen within the mid twentieth century.
It was Jane Owen who had the imaginative and prescient, and albeit the funding, for what New Concord is in the present day. She wished to seize the imaginative and prescient of the Harmonists and the Owenites and adapt it for generations to come back. So she integrated intentional artwork and structure into the historic design of the city.
One in all Jane’s tasks was to design and create a second labyrinth in New Concord, the Cathedral Labyrinth, on North Avenue. Made out of granite with the sting of the pathway etched, the labyrinth is meant to be walked barefoot, sneakers left on the entrance, the heat of the solar felt beneath toes, the coolness of the evening chilling soles after the solar goes down.
Rising up, going to church was a household factor. We did it collectively. There was programming for us–children church, grownup Sunday faculty for my mother and pa. We sat collectively within the pews. We bought to know different households within the church, my brother and I making associates with children our age, our mother and father making associates with the opposite mother and father. However now that I’ve no household, it’s simply me, and as a chaplain I’m not normally main worship. I don’t know the place I belong. I keep in mind certainly one of my first Sundays on the church the place I attend commonly and Cathy rotated within the pew in entrance of me to ask me to dinner. “It is going to be {couples}, however you’re greater than welcome to come back, too,” once I instructed her I don’t have a plus one. Her name with the main points about dinner by no means got here.
I walked by the gateway to the labyrinth and noticed that individuals had been starting to assemble. Some had been lighting candles and putting them across the edges. Not realizing what to do with myself, I supplied to assist. Folks trickled in and shortly we had a gaggle of about 15 to twenty folks all chatting with one another.
Mary opened up a cardboard field and inside was an entire set of chimes- no less than two octaves value. She handed them out. I attempted out a number of tones, undecided which one I wished to be for the night. I wasn’t even positive what we had been purported to do with them. I’ve performed bells in church, so I knew what they had been, however I didn’t know what they needed to do with a neighborhood sundown labyrinth stroll.
Lastly, all of us gathered on the mouth of the labyrinth. We took a number of collective deep breaths after which started our journey collectively. Periodically, somebody would play their chime and another person would reply. Whereas we walked, we chimed, we adjusted our pace for one another, and we listened.
