The last Sunday in July saw us braving the grey clouds and threatening rain for another meditation on the Fingermaze in Hove Park. Last year we concentrated on the theme of identity and this year we thought we'd expand on that by looking at the relationship between individuality and community.
Taking our cue from the Greek myth of Theseus and Ariadne, we gave everyone a ball of wool to trail behind them as they walked the labyrinth leaving their own individual path behind them in their choice of colour. We also provided the walker with an iPod playing an audio meditation about walking with God featuring the voices of Ben and Maggi Dawn who had joined us for the weekend. You can listen to the audio meditation here. So that the walker could focus on the meditation and the walk they also had a helper (a 'woolwalker') who trailed behind them helping to lay the thread.
In the centre of the labyrinth we placed a dead tree which would feature later in the event.
There were many things to learn from the walking - how difficult it was to keep the thread running between the lines of the Fingermaze, how some people outstripped their woolwalker with the speed of their walking, what people did when the wool ran out before they reached the centre of the maze (some stopped, others continued, some fetched additional wool to complete the trail). All of us learnt a lot about ourselves as we focussed inwardly through listening to the meditation and walking.
Once we'd all walked the Fingermaze it was transformed by the coloured trails that now spiderwalked their way around the labyrinth, adding a track of bright colour in the gloomy evening light.
At that point we all spaced ourselves round the Fingermaze and gathered up the wool from the ground together and draped it on the dead tree in the middle, as a communal act transforming it into a symbolic burning bush.
Though we walk through this life on a single path it criss crosses the paths of others and joins with them in community. It's in these communities that we often experience God's Holy ground which underpins this all and is the foundation of the world.
You'll find us at Greenbelt next (www.greenbelt.org.uk) doing lots of things over the August Bank Holiday and then we start up again here in Brighton & Hove on 27th September when our theme will be 'Reflections'.
