Of Labyrinths and Lisbon

By Marisa Lapish

  August marks one year that I have been honored to serve as SSU’s alumni community coordinator, alongside my other roles as JFI’s teaching assistant, tutor, and spiritual director. While being warmly welcomed into the embrace of alumni, students, and staff, I find myself weaving my way through the learning curves—sometimes focused and straightforward, sometimes meandering—always on the journey as a learner, a disciple, a pilgrim. Circling back reflectively along this new path, I notice breathtaking serendipity and synchronicity that reminds me of the spiritual practice of walking a labyrinth.

      My point of entry into labyrinth-walking as a spiritual practice began with a monthly urban pilgrimage to sacred spaces that I facilitated in my city, Cleveland, Ohio. One of the most beautiful sites we visited was Trinity Cathedral Episcopal Church. It is home to an eleven-circuit labyrinth with four quadrants incorporating its cruciform image based on the one in the medieval Chartres Cathedral in France. In the medieval Christian tradition, labyrinths were used as alternatives to pilgrimages to holy sites in Rome or Jerusalem, when affordability and accessibility prevented them.

     Unlike a maze with its foils and dead-ends requiring problem-solving, labyrinths are unicursal with only a single unambiguous, albeit meandering, path to the center. While the left brain physically and mentally engages in walking the labyrinth, the right brain is released to engage creatively, intuitively, and spiritually. In this way, labyrinth-walking becomes an embodied, active prayer that is slow and contemplative, bringing a stillness in which one loses self to find self.  A labyrinth is a liminal space—a thin place on the threshold between the inner and outer life of the pilgrim who walks it. A labyrinth is a metaphor for our spiritual journey, which takes us on twists and turns in countless directions, yet still we move forward on the pathway to the Center, to the Light, to the Christ.

     Our alumni book club was reading Steve Mitchinson’s book, Dying for Life: How Jesus’ Passion Reframes Life and Death as Dying and Rebirth, when I sensed the nudge to navigate the coiling labyrinth at Trinity Cathedral. The previous time I had done so was a communal experience that seemed like a dance of solidarity—one of striding in synchrony with members of our urban pilgrimage group. While a few of us were in different places along the labyrinth’s pathway, we moved rhythmically as one, our steps paced in unison. This time, I came alone to the labyrinth. Or so I thought.

     Being an energetic eight on the enneagram, I have to consciously slow myself down to a snail’s pace to stay within the boundary lines of the labyrinth rather than view them as the lines of a racetrack and speedily bound through to the “win.” This is when I notice how unbalanced and uncentered I am physically, straining not to stray “out of the lines” at such a slow pace. With practice, the “boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” and I ease into a restful rhythm. Restful, that is, until I am startled to frightful attention by the booming of the powerful pipe organ in the cathedral nave, causing me to stumble out of the lines until I gathered my bearings and realigned myself.

     My body responds to the music outside of myself, showing me how my environment affects how I engage and interpret life. I prayed with my feet with passionate exuberance as the music whirled in a flurry of notes.  With the music’s decrescendo, I wove myself through the winding path, strolling to the calm, pastoral tune. A sense of peace in my body, soul, and spirit released the affirmation of divine presence: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Next, the music’s volume increased majestically and deliberately, punctuating with pauses as I approached the center with slower, heavier steps, surprised again by the labyrinth’s abrupt ending in the center. I stand there astounded by the synchrony of the cessation of my steps with the organ’s simultaneous, deafening silence.

     I’ve walked straight out before, forgetting that the center is really the beginning of the pathway’s outward movement. I savor the stillness and the silence to receive the integrating Light found only in the Center—in Christ. I ponder the mystery that what seems to be the end is the beginning…and this brings to mind Steve Mitchinson’s thesis in Dying for Life:

“Have we truly understood how life is intended to be a preparation for our physical death? What if death is something to be embraced, not avoided, a journey where we practice dying in stages until we are reborn from the womb of this life in which we grow?... Death is defeated and transformed from a terminal destination into the birth canal to true humanity.”

     “Involuntary kenosis” was one idea that Steve brought up in his book that resonated with those in our book discussion group.  Coined by a palliative care physician like Steve, Daniel Hinshaw uses this term to describe the aging process and chronic disease where an “emptying of the body’s function and resources” has not been chosen by the individual. As I age, I am aware of these un-sought-after afflictions that remind me of my earthly finitude and the brevity of life’s breath in those I love. I am also aware of the kenotic moments in my life where I have consented and participated in the Spirit’s invitation to “self-empty,” to grow as a divine image bearer into one being shaped and formed into Christ’s likeness. Since the center of God’s heart is love, “to love as a human will involve loss and grief,” and the process of “becoming human” requires enlarging our hearts to love more deeply through the griefs and losses in life. As Mary Oliver illuminates, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Steve Mitchinson takes us more deeply into the loving heart of God and challenges us to see the existential question this way: “If I reframe death as rebirth, how do I now live to embrace the process?” I simply hold the question in my heart as I wind my way out of the labyrinth and back outward into my city.

     As the spring rounded the corner toward summer, I was invited by a dear friend to accompany her on a weeklong trip to Lisbon, a city I had yet to set my feet to walking. Our alumni book club had just begun reading Peri Zahnd’s book, Every Scene by Heart: A Camino de Santiago Memoir. Peri and our small group of seasoned pilgrimage walkers had already inspired me to “set my heart on pilgrimage.” The possibility of even walking a day or two on the Camino de Portugues, where Lisbon is the unfrequented but official starting point to lead pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela thrilled me. Of course, I said yes! Remembering Peri’s words, “The Camino will provide what you need,” I packed lightly. Although I had no assurance that we would even be walking a portion of the Camino, I was reminded again by Peri, “Everyone has to do their own Camino.” Camino or not, I would walk the caminhos of Lisbon as a pilgrim.

     I was in love with the beauty of Lisbon the moment my feet hit the ground. Lisbon’s steep, narrow streets and sidewalks are cobbled with wavy mosaic stone tiles fitted together like a puzzle. White houses with red roofs adorned the streets, and the bright, colorfully patterned facades of buildings evoked the Islamic influence from its Moorish history.

     We met our tour guide, Vasco Magellan (seriously!), who in the spirit of his namesakes, led us on an 8-hour exploration of his beautiful city. We began the tour with our two Muslim companions at the largest park in the center of Lisbon, the Eduardo VII Park and Gardens with a full view of its green hedged cruciform labyrinth where one cross-shaped hedge self-emptied into the next one as it flows downward toward the Tagus River! As Vasco shared the earliest history of Lisbon, I noticed the care with which he held interreligious hospitality for our tour companions and ourselves as, with sensitivity, he told the stories of both of our religious histories of violence toward the Other.

     As I paused to turn around 180 degrees from the labyrinth, I faced the 25 April Revolution Monument commemorating the day of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which abolished years of dictatorship in Portugal in favor of democracy, also bringing political independence to its other colonized countries. Most impressive, however, is what its name stands for. Hardly any shots were fired in any direction and there were only 5 deaths in this revolution. When the dictator was quite peaceably overthrown in a coup, the people started sticking red carnations into gun barrels and soldiers’ uniforms who took part in the revolution, marking the beauty of nonviolent resistance with its preservation of human lives. “Superpowers come and go, but the kingdom of God, whose power rests in self-sacrificing love rather than conquest, will never cease.” I offered a brief prayer of thanksgiving for the beauty of intersecting with the lives of peacemakers at St. Stephen’s University from around the world who embody kingdom of God values, interreligious hospitality, and nonviolent resistance.

     Rounding the bend, we navigated our way through the inclines and curves of the city of Lisbon’s oldest quarter, the Alfama district. This district leads up to the Castelo de Sao Jorge, an ancient hilltop fortress used by the Romans, Visigoths, and Moors. With its Moorish and medieval origins, the cobbled narrow streets, winding stairwells, and hidden alleys are full of winsome surprises like sweet floral courtyards, tiny alcove shops, laundry hung out of windows and drying in the sun, and cafes selling only pasteis de nata (little custard tarts) or bacalhau (salted cod).

     What got my attention was when Vasco described the serpentine streets as labyrinthine. I came to Lisbon expecting a Camino experience, but I found myself walking a labyrinth of caminhos in Lisbon. As we strolled through the twists and turns of the narrow Alfama streets, “each step became a prayer.” The physical movement of walking this “labyrinth” of pathways facilitated stillness in my soul. As I walked upward toward the castle—Castelo de Sao Jorge—these wandering streets began to reveal to me the contour of my heart as the labyrinth morphed into a metaphor of the spiritual movement into my “interior castle,” in the words of Teresa of Avila.

      Approaching the courtyard inside the Castelo, I contemplated Teresa of Avila’s, The Interior Castle, depicting the human being as a castle and the spiritual journey as a pilgrimage into the center where God dwells. This journey is a movement away from egoic control into the loving embrace of God’s mercy where true happiness is found. Entry into the castle is an inward movement through prayer. This movement to the center is complex and nonlinear, and unfolds in layers with ever-deepening awareness and acceptance of God’s love. Every step of the way is about self-giving love.

     Henri Nouwen states, “One of the most radical demands for you and me is the discovery of our lives as a series of movements or passages.” Often this recognition begins with contemplation of an existential question. “Is this all there is? There must be more.” These expressions of our mortality make me think once again of the question I have held in my heart from Steve Mitchinson’s book when I last walked the labyrinth at Trinity Cathedral: “If I reframe death as rebirth, how do I now live to embrace the process?” Nouwen ponders the question this way, “The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?” He continues, “We, like Jesus, are on a journey, living to make our lives abundantly fruitful through our leaving…This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.” The divine urge on this earthly pilgrimage is inward toward the Center who is Love and outward toward others in that spirit of love—like the movements of a labyrinth.

     Standing in the center of Castelo de Sao Jorge in its highest tower, holding onto nothing and waving to my friend, I felt vulnerable, yet freer and lighter. I descend the winding castle steps softly to the Alfama labyrinth of streets below…a metaphor for my movement outward back into the world. I know the reality of the world that greets me below: political division, the darkness and injustice of war, loss after loss for people I love. Nouwen offers an alternative view that instead of embodying loss after loss, “we can choose it as a passage to emptiness where our hearts have room to be filled with the Spirit of Love overflowing.” Our “involuntary kenosis”—the self-emptying we do not choose—can be welcomed and received interiorly in the womb where divine love grows within us to be birthed as fruitful love to the world. Love received, grown, borne, and self-given is the fruit of divine union that remains after our earthly existence. “Today, may Your gentle and fierce love expand my heart to full capacity and flow out unhindered to drench the waiting world,” I pray as I move outward.

     “How now do I live my one wild and precious life?” I ask myself as I look at the unknown paths before me as I leave the labyrinths of Lisbon. My mind flashes back to our first alumni book club discussion with Mercy Aiken and her book with Bishara Awad entitled Yet in the Dark Streets Shining. I distinctly remember the dark book cover with similar cobbled narrow streets leading outward to the unknown. That’s it! I walk in the dark streets shining! “To be a co-laborer in his creation. To participate in restoring all things unto himself. To be a part of finishing what he’d begun. To face the challenges of life with faith, hope, and love, not to escape them.” As I take my final steps back into my everyday peacemaking adventures with the SSU alumni community, students, and staff, my hope is that our journey together would be centered on and energized by Love!

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1. Lauren Artress, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006), p. 32.

2. Ibid., p. 50-64.

3. NIV, Psalm 16:6

4. Steve Mitchinson, Dying for Life: How Jesus’ Passion Reframes Life and Death as Dying and Rebirth (Abbotsford, BC: Macrina Press, 2023), p. xi.

5. Ibid., p. 22 – 23.

6. Ibid., p. 16.

7. Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day.”

8. Mitchinson, Dying for Life, p. 28.

9. Psalm 84:5.

10. Peri Zahnd, Every Scene by Heart: A Camino de Santiago Memoir (USA: Spello Press, 2017), p. 37

11. Ibid., p. 64.

12. Ibid., p. 140.

13. Ibid., p. 187.

14. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004).

15. Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001), p. 134.

16. Mitchinson, Dying for Life, p. 28.

17. Nouwen, Finding My Way, p. 127.

18. Ibid., p. 138; p. 141.

19. Ibid., p. 144.

20. John 15: 1- 17; I Corinthians 13

21. Zahnd, Every Scene, p. 94.

22. Ibid., p. 52

23. Tara Boothby, Love and Love’s Energy (Brisbane, Australia: Ravensound Publishing, 2024), book cover title. NOTE: Please stay tuned and join the next SSU alumni book club discussion with Tara Boothby and her new book!