The annual event will begin at 4 p.m. New Year’s Eve and resume on New Year’s Day at First United Methodist Church

By Debora Gordon for Ashland.news

Ashland’s 26th Community Labyrinth Walk to New Year will take place New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Wesley Hall on the campus of Ashland First United Methodist Church, 175 N. Main St.

The “Sacred Walk to the New Year” is nondenominational and free of charge, and all are welcome to the event. Optional donations of any amount are also welcomed. The event will run from 3:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, New Year’s Day.

Elizabeth Austin, trained with the Veriditas International Association of labyrinth facilitators and founder of Ashland’s Sacred Walk, returns to lead this week’s event.

“Labyrinth walking, rooted in ancient cultural traditions, is a practice that benefits human well-being by combining movement-based meditation and mindfulness,” Austin said.

“The labyrinth came to Ashland in 1999, in response to worldwide unease about Y2K,” Austin said. At the time many feared that the arrival of the year 2000 would cause computers around the world to malfunction.

“It has become an annual tradition,” Austin said. “This year, amid worldwide turmoil and divisiveness, the walk offers a sacred space, an oasis of peace and beauty, an ambience created by community volunteers, musicians, artists, sacred space designers, ‘labyrinth angels’ and many people who include the sacred walk in their turn-of-the-year celebrations. All are invited to express and enjoy the values of peace, diversity, inclusivity and personal freedom.”  

Austin said the most important aspect of the experience is the labyrinth itself as the symbol: what it has meant to people in the past, what it means today and what it might mean in the future. Next is the co- creation of the labyrinth walk event by the Ashland community — how it happened and how it continues and what it says about the town. The labyrinth has been part of Austin’s life for 35 years. 

The event is called a sacred walk because it is apart from the ordinary and the labyrinth is a path through the world.

Austin is a student and colleague of Jean Houston, a co-founder of the Human Potential Movement. Houston adopted the labyrinth as a symbol for her international work in the 1980s. She has been most important in bringing the labyrinth to many different nations and cultures.

Houston has called the labyrinth a “dromenon,” a word that comes from ancient Greek for a path leading to the center, to wherever you’re headed. 

Austin elaborated, “You don’t run into a dead end, which is the difference between a labyrinth and a maze. In a maze, you hit a dead end and you have to back up and find another way. You may find the other way, but if you just stay on the path, you’ll get to where you’re headed, which is the center.

“It describes the fact that at the beginning it’s helpful just to think about what it is that you no longer want to keep in your life. The point is that you want to change something that’s on your mind. You have an intention when you begin to walk. The intention is what you’re headed toward: the center, where there’s a time and a space to just reflect on what you’re receiving — messages, intuitions, thoughts, memories. 

“You retrace your steps back to where you started. It’s a beautiful meditation in general. When it’s needed in the world, it tends to come back. It surfaces in some way through the centuries when it’s needed. We need it now. It provides a path that we can walk together, no matter what our belief system is, what our history is, what we want, what we think we want. We can walk this path together and in harmony if we so choose.” 

The time to walk the labyrinth depends on the person, of course, but the average is 15 to 20 minutes.

Austin spoke of “the spirit of Ashland,” which she defines as “inviting people.” When the Ashland labyrinth walk was first introduced, she said, it was recognized by many people as important. Many of those people have been involved in the annual sacred walk ever since, she said.

“There’s something about it that says, ‘Come together and be who you are, expand your horizons, do good,’” Austin said. “I think the spirit of Ashland invited it here in a special way and it showed up for the first time in 1993. Every year people come together and they are all volunteers. What is so significant, and especially in these days, is this is a volunteer co-created event.”

Austin cites a poem by Rumi that includes the lines: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” That is the theme for this year. “The labyrinth is that field for us for the New Year celebration,” Austin said. “The labyrinth is that field beyond wrongness, beyond right doing. We can walk the path together.” 

She said that about 500 people walk the labyrinth over the two days but “it’s never crowded and it’s always calm and beautiful.” 

Austin said, “There are the six ‘petals’ of the walk, which represent the realms of creation.”

“We will have symbols of those realms for the labyrinth for the new year,” she said. “The first one will have a symbol for the minerals of the Earth, the second one for the vegetables and plants and different plants. The third petal represents the animals of all kinds. The fourth is the human population. The Earth represents humanity. The fifth represents the angelic realm.

“The sixth is my personal favorite, the mysterious, unrevealed-as-yet divine plan. We are a part of that divine plan. And so it’s five rounds plus that unknown divine plan that is being unfolded, and we are helping unfold it.”

It can make for a beautiful experience, Austin said. “Walking the labyrinth, by acknowledging those other realms, honoring them, we’re unfolding the plan for the future. We’re joining together with the past.”

Debora Gordon is a writer, artist, educator and nonviolence activist who recently moved to Ashland from Oakland, California. Email her at [email protected].

Dec. 30: Dec. 31 opening time corrected.