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Excerpts from LABYRINTHS—A new and ancient way to pray (The Mennonite 6/1/2004):Marlene Kropf, who teaches Christian spirituality and serves as spiritual director at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., is probably responsible for introducing more Mennonites to [Catholic mystical prayer] labyrinths than any one person. In 1998, when she was a staff person for the Mennonite Church’s Board of Congregational Ministries, Marlene included the labyrinth as a prayer discipline in that year’s Lenten material for congregations.

Gwen Groff, pastor of Bethany Mennonite Church in Bridgewater Corners, VT, also uses her church’s “lawn labyrinth” as a personal prayer discipline....She has used it as part of a Communion service, too.

Michele Hershberger, chair of the Bible department at Hesston (KS) College as well as director of youth ministries there, discovered labyrinths at a Youth Specialities convention in Nashville, TN. There it was called a “prayer walk” and was set up in one of the convention halls for people to try. “It was just wonderful,” Michele says. As a result of her experience, she ordered a kit from Group Publishing that told how to make a labyrinth on a large piece of cloth or a tarp.

Joetta Schlabach...works with daily access to a labyrinth as Wisdom Ways, a resource center for spirituality that is a collaboration between the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and the College of St. Catherine. [In the Middle Ages the ritual was introduced so that Catholics, who could not make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, could obtain the same indulgences (time off from suffering in purgatory).]

What she finds as meaningful as walking is reading the entries that people write in the journal left at the labyrinth’s entrance. “One 9-year-old wrote, ‘I was afraid I’d get lost and have to start over, but when I got to the center, I knew I could trust myself.’ I think that’s a paradigm of Christian life.”

[TBC: No, that’s a “paradigm” of mysti-cism and occultism. It’s a path that directs one inward to self. Ultimately, it leads to realizing that self is God or a part of God. The article attempts to rally biblical support: “Jeremiah:6:16Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
See All... says, ‘Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’ I think that’s emblematic of the labyrinth.” No, the labyrinth is “emblematic” of occult ritualism.]