Walking A Sacred Path
Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Path
by The Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress
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The Great-grandmother's Thread, pg. 13
Guidance can come in many, many ways. It comes through synchronistic meetings, through being fully present in one moment or time, through informal
ritual where one spoken word can break open a riddle that has stumped us for months. Guidance also comes through forms, patterns, and symbols that impart sacred meaning. "That is precisely the great dignity of the symbol, that it ... leads from the truths of the physical life to those of a higher spiritual order." Not only are we welcome to participate in these patterns or processes, our life does not take on ultimate meaning until we do. To discover the thread is to realize that a loving presence or force behind all the world urges us to risk our comfort and reach for meaning in our lives.
The great-grandmother's thread is the God within who has long been ignored and forgotten, who awaits discovery in our own castles. It is easy to forget something that is invisible, and yet that is the spiritual challenge. We must keep alive the innate part of ourselves that holds on to the invisible thread. Historically, many forces have destroyed
the memory of the great-grandmother's thread. It has been destroyed through centuries of patriarchal domination, through fears of creativity and of the traits associated with the feminine, such as empathy, curiosity, community, and holistic thinking. Mistrust of the imagination has been
engendered through centuries of power politics that have little to do with
nurturing the Spirit within.
The challenge of discovery looms large because the thread is invisible. Educated in scientific humanism at the end of the twentieth century, we are
casualties
of our history in both the personal and the collective sense.
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Excerpts from Walking A Sacred Path ©1995 by Dr. Lauren Artress used with permission from the author. To purchase a copy of Walking a Sacred Path, visit the non-profit bookstore Sacred Path Books & Art. This link is provided as a service to explorefaith.org visitors and registered users.
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