'We would like to suggest that it might be helpful to think of Quaker silence as a labyrinth.' Photo: Ashley Batz on Unsplash
A maze in grace: Friends from Luton and Leighton Area Meeting follow a thread
‘By following the path conscientiously one arrived at the central destination.’
What is the difference between a maze and a labyrinth, and why should that matter to Quakers?
In English the two words are often confused, and are even offered as synonyms in some dictionaries. The word ‘labyrinth’ was current by the fifth century BCE, and was used most famously to describe the building that housed the Minotaur, the savage bull killed by Theseus. He escaped with the help of Ariadne, following a length of string she had thoughtfully provided. This implied that there were multiple routes he could have followed.
As with many symbols – and there is evidence of this type of design going back several millennia – the labyrinth was adopted for Christian use, notably in the middle ages. Perhaps the culmination of the Christian design is the great labyrinth at Chartres cathedral (c.1220 CE). It is designed as a walking meditation, a spiritual tool that enables us to focus our feelings and lives. In the rose-shaped centre, representing the Holy Spirit, pilgrims would be still and wait for illumination, healing, and a sense of God’s presence before returning to their everyday lives. By this time the labyrinth, although prescribing a complex route, did not offer any actual alternatives on the way: by following the path conscientiously one arrived at the central destination.
It is interesting that the innermost part of the human ear also has an anatomical structure called the labyrinth, which is responsible for the faculty of hearing. During the silence of Meeting for Worship Friends can hear something, and are led by it. This is the remarkable quality of Quaker silence, which is much more than simply the absence of sound.
We would like to suggest that it might be helpful to think of Quaker silence as a labyrinth. We do not get lost in it, troubled, confused, or puzzled as one might do in a maze. Rather it is the very experience of shared silence that provides and creates a sort of spiritual thread, or path, we can all follow out of confusion. Remarkably, silence leads through the feelings of self-absorption and entrapment by the hurly-burly of life. It helps guide us out from the dead ends that may have snared us. Our inner ear, and our inner life, is supported by the silence, and thereby enabled to find the path which then leads to what is calling it. Many feel this involves a real, but ineffable, contact with something in the silence, which they describe with various names.
Taking our first steps into the deep space of Quaker silence can allow us to find a path out of confusion, even of chaos. This silent space is analogous to that of the Chartres labyrinth. If we wanted a more secular analogy, our own minotaurs are put to rest there. It is an extraordinary Quaker discovery, made and tested over time, that silence provides a real spiritual structure, and a clear way forward. It is more important, at first, to experience it: to walk the path rather than worry where it leads. That will emerge over time.
Heather Birt, Valerie Coast, Freda Colyer, Douglas Davidson, Neil Morgan, Naomi Randles, William Randles and Ian Waller
