LENT PRAYER LABYRINTH
This prayer labyrinth marks the 46 days of Lent, 40 week days of fasting & 6 Sundays of feasting, beginning at Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Saturday.
Download it here & print it your personal use.
Use this resource in your meditation time. Fill, color or sketch in the circle for the day & then slowly trace your finger from today's circle in & around the prayer labyrinth to the center through the empty circles.
In the liturgical planner "Sacred Ordinary Days" Jenn Giles Kemper writes:
For some, the circuitous path represents our life-long journey towards Christ-likeness and for others it is a way of entering into a pilgrimage of imagination without going on a long trip. Using a labyrinth helps me approach God with humility, curiosity, wonder, and undistracted presence.
Walking a labyrinth with your feet or your finger, as you can do here, is meant to be a meditative practice to draw you into the mystery of God, to a place beyond words, images or other mental content. Apophatic prayers such as these are about resting in and being present to God, paradoxically, through the absence of what we normally consider to be prayer. Using a labyrinth is one of many methods of entering into apophatic prayer. Surely we recognize that while God is unknowable, we cannot fully grasp all that God is. Experiencing grief and even joy can give us glimpses into parts of God and ourselves that lie beyond what our senses and faculties can comprehend, How comforting, then to know that those places, too, are doors that open to realms of God we cannot discover, otherwise.
Given how foreign the apophatic approach to prayer still is to me, I find walking labyrinths helpful, because it gives my "outside" self - my physical body - something to do. This employment allows my "inside" self - my heart, mind, and spirit - to simply be present without having a responsibility in the moment. While labyrinths look like mazes, the path is singular and without deception. They do not require decision-making or problem solving. Once you enter, you simply continue moving forward ... each step draws you inward to the center.
We hope this practice allows you some emptiness and slowness in this season of Lent.
Use this in conjunction with other resources such as "Seeking God's Face" or "unhurryUp!"