Marilynn Jennings is a woman on a journey – a journey with a mission to bring a public labyrinth to the North State. The Chico Community Labyrinth Project (CCLP) is a local initiative to build a permanent, centrally-located labyrinth at Children’s Park, near downtown Chico. Photos: (Top) A spontaneous stone labyrinth near Half Moon Bay, California built by Eduardo Aguilera, a well-known public labyrinth builder along the Northern California coast. (Bottom) The logo and ultimate design for the Chico Community Labyrinth Project.
According to most labyrinth scholars, notably Jeff Saward a well-known British scholar of labyrinths and creator of Labyrinthos.net, quoted here: “A true labyrinth has no false pathways or dead ends to deceive the explorer. Instead it consists of a single meandering pathway which leads inexorably from the entrance to the centre, and back out again. This symbol and its family of derivatives has been traced back some 4000 years; its origins are still mysterious….As many stories are told as mythologies exist, but in all the labyrinth seems to symbolise the path to be followed, in daily and seasonal cycles, in life, death and in rebirth. The expanding and contracting circuits mimic the path of the sun in its travels across the sky, a recognition of the perpetual rebirth of the sun each morning and every year and beyond this may exist a cosmology, an ancient understanding of the cycles of time, all safely concealed within the labyrinth, locked up in numbers and movements.” Photo: Three children walk a home garden labyrinth with intentions in their hearts and minds and joy in their feet.
Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church, in San Francisco has two labyrinths, one indoors and one outdoors. Both are open to the public. Their website gives a nice summary of how to walk a labyrinth as a spiritual resource: “There are three stages of the walk: Purgation (Releasing) ~ A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind. Illumination (Receiving) ~ When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive. Union (Returning) ~ As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is symbolic of joining the healing forces at work in the world and symbolic of how you walk in your life with what you have received. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for. Guidelines for the walk: Quiet your mind and become aware of your breath. Allow yourself to find the pace your body wants to go. The path is two ways. Those going in will meet those coming out. You may “pass” people or let others step around you. Do what feels natural.” Photo: The private labyrinth created by Marilynn Jennings at the White Lotus Center in Chico.
Marilynn Jennings is a marriage and family therapist by profession, she has long-running personal fascination with labyrinths and has seen some of the benefits the practice of walking a labyrinth provide to people. She walked her first labyrinth more than a decade ago and now has a labyrinth of her own creation which she makes available to her clients and to groups at the White Lotus Center in Chico. While Marilynn has walked many different labyrinths, perhaps the most inspiring experience for her occurred a few years ago. An “almost solitary” candlelit walk one evening around the circa 1200 labyrinth on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral in France, where she had gone to attend a labyrinth facilitation course, filled her with renewed energy to see the Chico Community Labyrinth come to fruition. Photo: Marilynn at the spot where the Chico Community Labyrinth will be placed in Children’s Park near downtown Chico.
In 2008, Marilynn went before the Chico Parks Commission and received overwhelming support for her proposal to have the labyrinth incorporated into the new design for Children’s Park in downtown Chico. Tom Phelps, the designer of the Children’s Park donated his time to work the labyrinth into his overall design. While labyrinths can take on many designs both classic and modern, the Chico Community Labyrinth will be based on the Chartres 11-circuit design and will be tucked into a grove of trees (which almost form a circle as if just waiting for the labyrinth to get there) along Chico creek, just north of the Children’s Playground and Bidwell Presbyterian Church and just south of the Bidwell Mansion and the newly completed Gateway Science Museum. “The Chico Labyrinth will be in the good company of institutions and destinations that help define our community and bring our community together,” says Marilynn, “and it will be included on the Worldwide Labyrinth Locator.” Photo: This old cut turf maze at a historic building in France shows the difference between a maze and a labyrinth – the pathways lead in different directions and sometimes have dead ends where you have to turn back.
Gardens have a long history of association with cultivating the emotional and spiritual, of providing peace in a chaotic world. For us gardeners, this late-fall/ early- winter window of time might be when we most strongly feel this deep connection between the physical experience of our hands in the dirt and the spiritual experience of the mental and emotional grounding the garden can provide. “Labyrinths have a long association as elements in gardens and other places of a spiritual, religious or medicinal nature precisely because the point of labyrinth is to help the person who chooses to walk it with intention find mental and emotional peace for themselves, and in turn to carry that peace out into the world.” Marilynn explains to me. Photo: This is neither a maze nor a labyrinth but rather a parterre design at Versailles Palace in France. Labyrinths, mazes and elaborate designs are all age-old elements in gardens, but labyrinths have a very long history in many, many cultures around the world and throughout history. The ritual and mindfulness-promoting intention sets labyrinths apart from the entertainment or aesthetic value of the mazes and designs.
People attribute many mental and physical benefits to walking a labyrinth with intention and the action of walking a labyrinth has been described by many to be “walking prayer” or “moving meditation.” According the CCLP website, benefits of walking a labyrinth with intention include: promoting cooperation, stimulating creativity, reduce stress, lowering blood pressure, helping with personal conflict resolution, improving mental clarity, and reducing chronic pain and insomnia,” and Marilynn can see working with regional hospitals, children’s groups, senior groups, hospices, etc. As the Labyrinthos website points out: “More labyrinths have been built in recent years than at any time in the past, and the current fascination with the labyrinth as a contemplative and spiritual tool, a path to represent the course of life, an expression of soulful intent, is truly remarkable and has taken the concept worldwide, helped, of course, by modern technologies.” Photo: Children walking the coast labyrinth near Half Moon Bay.
Marilynn and the CCLP supporters envision the Chico Labyrinth as a non-religious focal point for communal celebrations as well as for daily use by individuals or groups for their personal reasons. “The Chico Labyrinth will be open to the public as a communal and therapeutic resource for everyone.” Already the communal celebration aspect of the CCLP is underway and temporary versions of the Chico Labyrinth have been constructed for two different events over the past year or so, the first in honor of World Labyrinth Day last May (look for another event this coming May) and the second for a Peace Walk during Chico’s Artoberfest ’09 earlier this fall. Both events brought supporters out and introduced the CCLP to many new supporters. Marilynn hopes to see the permanent labyrinth under construction in the next six months or so. “We all need – our whole world needs – more places in which we can walk in peace,” Marilynn finishes, her blue eyes and calming demeanor radiating positive energy. Photo: People walking a temporary Chico Labyrinth set up at Children’s Park in Chico in honor of Artoberfest ’09.
I have seen labyrinths the paths of which are delineated by plants in small gardens, cut out of turf in very large gardens and out of simple rocks laid out in spontaneous displays in public parks. Each fall, my family and I try to attend the Celtic Festival in Grass Valley where each year a temporary labyrinth is laid out around a tall old ponderosa pine. Where you enter the labyrinth a small tent is set up with a table, a basket of small paper slips and pencils for you to compose your intention or prayer and then hold it – literally – in your hands until you reach the center. Upon reaching the tree, you are able to “lay your intention down” by tucking it under some twine wrapped gently around the tree trunk and there it joins the many, many other intentions laid down by others. It is such a simple and yet elegant exercise in concentration and mindfulness – it leaves my girls and me more peaceful each time we walk.
May we all walk towards inner – and world – peace wherever we may walk – in and out of our own gardens.
Want to get involved? The CCLP has a Legacy Brick initiative for people to make donations and see their dedication as a permanent part of the Chico Labyrinth – there are even gift certificates PERFECT for holiday giving. Donations and legacy brick requests are available at the Chico Community Labyrinth Project website: chicolabyrinth09.blogspot.com and more info is available by calling Marilynn Jennings at: 530-345-6087.
Some additional labyrinth resources include:
Caerdroia is the independent journal for the study of mazes and labyrinths, published annually. Subscriptions are available through Labyrinthos, an in-depth website created by well-known labyrinth scholar Jeff Saward. Photo Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth, copyright Jeff Saward.
In a North State Garden is an outreach program of the Gateway Science Museum – Exploring the Natural History of the North State, based in Chico, CA. In a North State Garden is a weekly radio and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region. It is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell – all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here.
