Lyrics & Story Behind Song #14: “Labyrinth Walk”
“Walk across the threshold and begin, step by step a journey deep with.
Pausing at the center to receive, step by step more sacred as we leave.”
I fell in love with walking labyrinths decades ago. Of the two most popular types (11-circuit and 7-circuit), my favorite is the classical or 7-circuit labyrinth. This pattern of loops and spirals dates back to the bronze age. Archeologists still don’t know exactly why primitive cultures created this pattern, but it is found worldwide. The classical labyrinth design has been used in art, carved in doorways for protection, and built outdoors for communal gatherings and ceremonies. Some believe the pattern is “archetypal” in human consciousness, like circles, triangles and squares. Likely, ancients believed the pattern had “power”. Whatever you believe, walking a labyrinth repeats a ritual humanity has passed down since ancestral times. As a tool for walking meditation, labyrinths seem part mystery and part miracle to me.
A labyrinth is not a maze. A maze is designed to trick you into getting lost. Mazes typically have several entrances, exits, and “dead ends”. Only one path out of many leads you to the goal. By contrast, a labyrinth consists of one entrance that leads you on a continuous path into the center and back out. Labyrinth patterns are designed to guide you on a journey. Trust the path and it is impossible to get lost.
Modern medicine has confirmed that labyrinth walking actually has a calming, balancing effect on our brains. During a walk, you spiral toward the center, making equal numbers of left or right 90-degree and 180-degree turns that make no sense to your left and right brain hemispheres. As your brain lets go, your feet begin to trust the path. By the time most people reach the center they feel grounded and calm. Walking back out, the pattern of loops, spirals and turns reverses, creating a perfectly balanced walking meditation experience.
I was thrilled when Faith Bost decided to create a 7-circuit labyrinth on her organic farm at Faith in Wellness Retreat Center in 2019. In a fenced-in field behind one of the lodges, her husband Rick laid out the 40-foot wide classical labyrinth pattern. It quickly became a community project involving gravel, river rock, landscaping, benches, a fountain and a fire pit. I loved that we had all the four elements represented. Endearing farm animals surrounded the space. A statue of St. Francis had stood in that field for years before the labyrinth ever appeared, so Rick and Faith built the labyrinth around it. At first it struck me as odd to have a religious symbol in the center of a pagan labyrinth design. I had walked classical labyrinths that had space in the center, a tree of life in the center, an empty altar in the center—but I had never seen a 7-circuit labyrinth built around a Christian statue. Still, Franciscan priest and spiritual author Richard Rohr writes of how nature was St. Francis’s “outdoor cathedral”. Anyone who’s ever read the Prayer of St. Francis knows Francis was all about surrender, love, and being an instrument for divine consciousness. Anyone who has studied the life of St. Francis, knows how many times he reinvented himself, always in search of deeper spiritual truth. In the end, I imagine the combination we created, building that labyrinth the way we did, was more perfect and magical than we know.
When Faith invited me to host a public dedication ceremony for the labyrinth in May of 2019, I went in search of a song to use for the unveiling that would include everything labyrinth walks meant to me. I realized labyrinths invite me to slow down, step by mindful step. They allow me to let go, reflect, and center. They remind me to surrender and receive. As I walk I am also conscious that I am repeating a ritual that connects me with generations of humans who have walked before. There are so many life lessons I have learned from labyrinth walking. No two walks I have ever done were the same. Even when “nothing” seemed to happen, I know something happened! What looks like the way in, can suddenly take you out. There are unexpected twists and turns. You have to stay present and trust the process. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you can’t get this wrong! The more I reflected on everything labyrinth walks mean to me, the more I realized there just wasn’t a song “out there” that covered it all. As It turned out, the song I required was inside me. A few weeks before the dedication I finished Labyrinth Walk.
Lyrics: Labyrinth Walk
Verse 1: Step by step along this path I go. Twists and turns I’ll trust, and take them slow.
In or out, I walk this path alone, winding ‘round until it leads me home.
And what I bring, is everything I have. Body, mind and spirit, I stand.
Hear me now. I surrender. I surrender all that I am.
Verse 2: Walk across the threshold, and begin, step by step, a journey deep within—
Pausing at the center to receive, step by step more sacred as we leave.
And all we bring is everything we are. As above, so below.
Hear us now. We surrender. We surrender, trusting love to show us how.
Bridge: Like generations who’ve walked before Into this holy mystery,
Each step connects us. Each step’s a prayer, a call to be all we can be.
Verse 3: Step by step, with nothing left to hide, make the call for love to be your guide.
Say, “Amen and thank you” as you go, grateful for the grace you feel inside.
Say, “All I bring is faith and will in me, will to stay and faith—where I can’t see.
Hear me now. I surrender. I surrender. Every moment, blessed be. Every moment blessed be.
©June 2019 by Ann S. Bugh