Sharing Time with Sharon: Making Your Pilgrimage

March 2010

During the season of Lent, the New Testament scriptures place Christians with Jesus on a path toward Jerusalem. The journey that stretches before us is meant to provoke self-reflection and deeper spiritual connection with God. It will not necessarily be an easy one. Struggle, temptation, confession, self-discovery, self-sacrifice, and love will likely be the stones paving our road, as they were for Jesus. Some may stumble and fall, only to be helped up by a fellow traveler. Others of us may need to stay penitent upon our knees for a time, while our hearts find healing.

Christian pilgrimages have always been risky. As far back as the tenth century, faithful Christians were expected to make the journey at least once in their lifetime to Jerusalem. But over time, war and politics made it too dangerous to travel to the Holy Lands. As an alternative, church leaders designed cathedral labyrinths –stone or marble paterns. built into the floor by talented masons—by which Christian pilgrims could make the journey to Jerusalem symbolically, walking the narrow path upon the floor while meditating upon scripture or offering up prayers.

Well, not everyone could travel to a cathedral either. So over the centuries, personal prayer labyrinths began sprouting up out of bricks, flowers, paper, wood, canvas, spray-painted grass, and even on computer screens. While I was in seminary, a group designed and cut a labyrinth into the grass upon the lawn of the school, under the trees. There in the quiet of the morning, with the sunshine streaming through the newly budding trees of spring, I walked the labyrinth slowly, deliberately placing heel to toe, listening for God’s small, still voice in my heart. It was a profound experience.

As with all prayer practices, the labyrinth offers a prayer path for all times in life. Yet for me, there is remarkable power in traveling the labyrinth during the introspective season of Lent. Both Lent and the prayer labyrinth is about a faith journey, with clear beginnings, centers, and endings. Both draw me into a deeper faith connection through movement and prayer. As I move toward center, I prepare myself to be opened afresh to God’s promptings, perhaps discovering a word, a thread of scripture, or a nudge to action revealed. From a cloistered center of rest, I am drawn back out again, to return to the world with my new nugget, my blessing, from God. By the time I have completed my return journey, my heart is prepared to re-enter life again, only now changed a bit by my encounter with God’s divine presence.

During this season of Lent, I invite you to make use of the labyrinth that will be lovingly created at the church, as well as the prayer centers that will be set up in the Sanctuary that will provide multi-sensory places of rest and reflection. They are provided to stimulate and enrich your pilgrimage of faith to your “Jerusalem”.

Good journey, my fellow travelers
- Pastor Sharon