Post by Lucy Bunch.

One of the tools for spiritual practice at SpritRest is the labyrinth. The labyrinth is a walking meditation, a path of prayer and an archetypal blueprint where psyche meets Spirit.

The labyrinth is an ancient pattern found in many cultures around the world. Labyrinth designs were found on pottery, tablets and tiles that date as far back as 5000 years. Many patterns are based on spirals and circles mirrored in nature.
 
Walking the labyrinth is simple: it has only one path that leads from the outer edge in a circuitous way to the center. There are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The person walking it uses the same path to return from the center and the entrance then becomes the exit. The path is in full view, which allows a person to be quiet and focus internally.

Unlike a maze where you lose your way, the labyrinth is a spiritual tool that can help you find your way. Walking the labyrinth quiets the mind, opens the heart, and grounds the body. Some find answers to questions long asked, some find healing, creativity, a sense of wholeness.

I have been walking the labyrinth since 1995 and have found it to be an amazing tool for self-reflection and discovery. The labyrinth appeals to me because it is an embodied form of prayer – the feel of my feet on the ground, the awareness of the path, the sights and sounds are all part of the spiritual experience.  
 
I look forward to meeting all of you and helping you to discover the power of this ancient practice for yourself. 
 
Rev. Lucy Bunch
For more information about the labyrinth go to veriditas.org.

Post by Frank Placone-Willey

Spiritual direction, generally speaking, refers to the professional practice of providing support and guidance to those who are seeking personal strength, healing, and/or transformation via a conscious exploration and application of those traditions and rituals with which they identify.

The work of spiritual direction explores and draws upon life experiences, values, practices, ultimate questions, and beliefs in order to ennoble, elevate, heal, liberate and expand human consciousness in its particular embodied and relational contexts. As Kenneth Leech, author of Soul Friend, suggests, it is rightly concerned with:

• Living more consciously
  
• The needs and dynamics of the searching soul
  
• The development of whole persons vis-à-vis their current realities
  

Spiritual direction links contemplation and action as one of its essential aims. It helps people engage themselves and others in a more loving, just, meaningful, mutual and creative way.

It is not about persuading someone to conform to a particular theological orientation or soteriological formula. It is not about saving people for some doctrinally established afterlife. It is not so much about the “director” giving advice; rather it is about a “soul friend” who—using spiritual resources at her or her disposal—wisely companions others in order to help them salvage and find a truer, and truly more fulfilling, direction for their lives upon this earth.

The work of spiritual direction is a journey through which the one journeying may actually have an immediate experience of the transcendent ground of being from which we have all emerged, and to which we may yet all return.