Enter your center.
Emanating from this mission and motivation, Patricia Lohman of Blair Township is sharing her portable labyrinth tonight at the Unity Church. Welcoming church members and the public to walk, mediate, share or just be on her lightweight-canvas, rainbow labyrinth, the Coptic teacher and minister will also talk about the history of labyrinths, their meaning and potential as healing energy.
To Lohman, the labyrinth provides an infinite opportunity for spiritual experiences.
"Mostly I let the labyrinth do the work, the symbols are so powerful on their own,” said Lohman, who designed the 20- by 20-foot, seven circuit portable labyrinth herself. "I'm just the midwife, the caretaker.”
"It's very humbling, watching people walk the labyrinth can be as powerful as walking it,” she added. "I'm honored by it.”
Crystal Yarlot, minister of the Unity Church, invited Lohman to share the labyrinth with her congregation after the pair were discussing another project for the fall. The roots of labyrinths are steeped in Christian history and Yarlot noted that many old cathedrals have them.
"It is really part of the mystical Christian experience,” said Yarlot, who has been an ordained Unity minister since 1989 and the local pastor for two years. "Unity is very open minded; we don't do crystals and magnets, we do have a Bible-based philosophy, but we are open to other things as well.”
For the past two years since she developed it, Lohman has taken her labyrinth — which she can roll up and carry — on the road to points around the region and state. She also has placed miniature wooden, or "lap labyrinths,” in healing institutions, including ten of them in the cancer treatment area of St. Mary's Health Center in Grand Rapids.
"I can put it in somebody's yard, in somebody's church, a hotel room; it can go inside or outside,” Lohman said of her 400-square-foot labyrinth. "This one I can roll up into a big roll and put it on my shoulder and then unroll it wherever I want a magic circle.”
"I just provide socks for everybody — you don't wear shoes, it's a sacred space,” she added.
Lohman developed her labyrinth during her three years of training in Coptic ministry, which she just completed this summer. The training required that students develop a healing modality workshop to share with others.
After many hours of meditation, she conceived of a labyrinth to take to people and share the healing energy and symbols she felt it provided. Lohman chose the seven-circle labyrinth, which is also referred to as a cretin labyrinth because if you look at it from above it looks like a giant brain with the seven neural circuits.
"It's becoming more and more common, I think people are really starting to connect with symbols, archetypes and myths every day,” noted Lohman. "My theory is you don't have to understand how it works for it to work.”
Her portable labyrinth is still a work in progress as she decided not to paint every square herself. Instead, after a workshop she doles out colored Sharpies and invites participants to fill in their intentions or thoughts on a brick.
"Originally, I wanted to paint it myself but it's too big and too hard and to me there's an urgency to get it out there,” said Lohman. "If it were up to me, I'd still be painting.”
The labyrinth workshop will be held tonight at the Unity Church, 3600 Five Mile Road, at 7 p.m. The public is welcome and a love offering will be taken. For more information, call the church at 938-9587.