Saturday, June 28, 1997

Church's labyrinth offers a walk on the spiritual side

By Terry Wilson / Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - As visitors prepare to enter the Earth-Wisdom Labyrinth, the last thing on their minds is Minotaurs, the half-human, half-beasts that menaced the lost in mythic Greek mazes.

Any Minotaurs hiding within the labyrinth would be small enough to step on because the rock walls that form the path of the meander are less than a foot high.

Still, the Earth-Wisdom Labyrinth at the Elgin Unitarian Universalist Church provides visitors with an ancient tool for modern-day contemplation.

The 92-foot-wide circle with its patterned pathway was dedicated Saturday.

The 25-ton stone structure, which features the concentric circular design like the indoor labyrinth at the Chartres Cathedral in France, is outdoors, just behind the barnlike church building.

It is a gift from Neal and Mary Harris, a couple who live in unincorporated Cuba Township, Ill., who first built the labyrinth in their back yard last year to use as a meditative tool.

"It's an ancient archetype," Neal Harris said. "Walking this way and meandering through it is analogous of the walk we take in life. There are a lot of twists and turns but no dead ends."

About 400 people visited their field stone creation in eight months, which prompted some neighbors to complain early this year. Faced with a choice of fighting with neighbors to keep it or finding a home where it would be accessible to the public, they chose to give it to the church, which sits on five acres of land.

"It's a unique gift," said Dan Brosier, pastor of the church. "I don't think anybody in this world has gotten a gift like this before."

After leveling the site and ridding it of weeds, members of the church covered the ground with landscape cloth and began moving the rocks from the Harris' yard to the churchyard, Brosier said.

"We had work parties," Brosier said. "We took cars and they rented a pickup truck" to move the structure piece by piece.

There is one mulch-covered walkway that leads to the center and back out again. Unlike the confusing mazes sometimes made of hedges that many fear becoming lost in, meanders have no dead ends or false paths.

"You can lose yourself in a maze, and you can find yourself in a labyrinth," said Diana March, chairwoman of the labyrinth committee at the church. "You're drawing on earth energy, healing energy."

Before entering a labyrinth, many people take a few minutes to try to quiet their minds of stresses from work or other parts of their lives, March said.

Some go into the labyrinth concentrating on a specific question. Some use it as a walking meditation exercise.

In the center, which has a six-petaled rosette design, people pause to feel the energy, March said. The petals represent the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, humankind, angelic beings and the great unknown, March said.

The labyrinth, with its multihued boulders, stands near a tree line and a berm. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes, to complete.

Brosier said the labyrinth is a welcome addition to the church.

Unitarian Universalism is a faith that embraces the world's religions and believes they all have something to teach us. Its members focus on the here and now and concentrate on how to live lovingly in the world, he said. Fundamental principles for the faith are freedom, tolerance and reason, he said.

Brosier and his congregation of 120 have been in the new but unfinished church for two years and have done much of the building work in the timber-frame building themselves. The timbers were pulled from a barn built in the 1890s, he said.

The labyrinth can be seen from the second floor of the three-story church, where the sanctuary will be as construction progresses.

"When you stand above it, you can see the pattern, and when you're inside (the labyrinth), you can see the pattern," Brosier said of the design.

"If you look at it from the side, it just looks like rocks. You can drive by and miss the thing."

No one knows the exact origin of labyrinths or why people created them, but they have been found in many cultures, from early European to Native American.

Rev. Lauren Artress writes in her book "Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool" that labyrinth designs were used to adorn ceramics and coins from early civilizations.

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