Labyrinth can be a metaphor for life

Photo Courtesy of Carlos Monteaguodo
The labyrinth at the Church on the Green, looking down from an upper window of the manse.

The Church on the Green will have an illuminated labyrinth walk Friday, Dec. 1, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Occurring on the first day of Advent, as Christians begin their spiritual preparation for Christmas, the walk is intended as a way for people to center themselves in preparation for a busy holiday season.

The labyrinth is located at the intersection of Beach Street and Park Place.

It was built by Carlos Monteaguodo, the husband of the Rev. Ruth Boling, the church pastor. On a recent visit to the site, Monteaguodo explained the labyrinth’s purpose.

“You can’t get lost in a labyrinth,” he said. “It’s not a maze. In a maze, you have choices to make. For a labyrinth, the only choice you make is: Are you going to enter it or not?”

The labyrinth at the Church on the Green is behind the manse with its brickwork flat to the ground. The area is surrounded by a wooden fence, but easily accessible.

“The path of a labyrinth will meander, like life,” he said. “It’s wonderful to do with a group. Sometimes you’re going parallel to others and then you’re not. You get close to people and then you move away. It’s a metaphor for life and how you chose to walk your path in life. Are you deliberate without much thought? Do you race through it?”
The center of the labyrinth is a circle.

“For me, the center is a special place,” Monteaguodo continued. “It’s kind of like a goal. It’s where you become most grounded.”

He said there were different ways to walk the labyrinth.

“Kids come with their parents and make a game of it,” he said. “Others come with packages that they hold as they walk — their burdens of the world.”

Monteaguodo, who is a psychiatrist, said lately when he has entered the labyrinth he has been distracted with thoughts he referred to as mind monkeys.

“In meditative practice, you try to quiet these mind moneys,” he said. “It usually takes me 20 minutes to get to the center.”

The idea for the labyrinth initially came from his wife, who blurted it out, he said. But curiously, he had thought about them for some time and had already walked them.

So, in 2018, they borrowed a fabric labyrinth and spread it out in the Parish House and had an Advent walk toward light. Fifty people showed up and they decided to build one.

In 2019, for the start of Advent, Monteaguodo laid out the design with broad chalk lines like on football fields and placed bricks on top of them. How many bricks he used he did not know or care.

“That was pretty cool,” he said. “Then Covid hit.”

During the lockdown, he put the bricks into the ground. When it was completed, he mostly walked it alone and sometimes with his wife. The design is a replica of the one at Chartres Cathedral.

“It’s a tool for spiritual growth,” he said. “In the 1990s, labyrinths started getting attention again. People were finding themselves spiritual, but not religious. It certainly pulls people toward reflecting — what’s good in their life. It’s a centering tool.”

Monteaguodo has given some serious thought to the importance of spiritual life. He is a former Kellogg National Leadership Fellow, a distinction he received while on the faculty of Dartmouth Medical School.

“I received a fellowship for leadership training,” he said “I concentrated on the importance of one’s spiritual life as an important part of leadership. For three years, I explored ways and came across a labyrinth in California.

“During the fellowship, I was traveling every two weeks to somewhere else amazing,” he continued. “I believe I walked my first labyrinth near San Francisco when I did a retreat at Green Gulch Meditation.” Center. They don’t have a labyrinth per se, but there are at least seven in the San Francisco area.”

Notwithstanding the fellowship, he said corporations are loath to consider the spiritual life of its leaders. But the fellowship changed his life by helping him discover the importance of labyrinths and the significance they can play in one’s spiritual development.

“I hope people learn this labyrinth is here and they learn to use it for their growth,” he said. “It is a powerful tool and invites a transformative experience.”