Holy Week 2021 (2 of 2)

The first labyrinth I walked this Lent was in a communal lot in Wilkinsburg. The second labyrinth was in the parking lot of Third Presbyterian Church. The third and final labyrinth is located is hidden on the campus of Chatham University.

Somebody in my Sunday School mentioned it one morning. The university's website has very little information, but with persistence, I was able to locate it on Google Maps. There is also a YouTube video. It is dedicated to Jessica G. Davant (1962-2006), sponsored by her family, and designed by Matthew "Brody" Little, a Chatham graduate student. At 60-feet wide, it is larger than the famous labyrinth on the floor of the cathedral in Chartres, but it shares the same four-leaf clover design.

After I helped Dear Husband capture clips for his Easter organ video on a gorgeous spring afternoon, we hiked up Murray Hill Avenue, kibbitzing about the big, fancy houses. Although the shady, rolling campus is not designed for walkers, we managed to find the labyrinth atop a small hillock across from Berry Hall.

We removed our shoes--this was holy ground--and walked the path, one after the other. Occasionally we moved in synch on parallel paths, but mostly we moved in different directions, apart yet together on this journey. I gave up the burden of house-hunting and instead prayed the Apostle's Creed. I considered the relatively minor yet repeated suffering of tiny bits of wood or gravel under my bare feet. I watched the flowers dance in the sunlight and listened to the birds and to the wind in the trees. I thought about the discipline of walking back out the long way after having walked in the long way, about "stealing" an hour of work to be "no earthly good," and yet connecting with and enjoying the earth this way was heavenly.