Blog,  Non-fiction

Walking Compline

 

The BoardwalkI had a theater director in college who began his day walking from his home to the college where he taught. He would pray the alphabet as he walked. He would begin with A and then he would pray for all the students whose first names began with A. By the time he reached his office he had offered up his “lauds” for each student who was studying with him and acting in plays. It seemed to me a creative and active way to pray. It was as if the alphabet was a “rosary” and he was praying  one step and one name at a time.

I find myself walking a “prayer,” but it is silent and best walked without purpose. I go out and walk 3-4 miles quietly taking in the sea, seagulls, geese, swans, and anything else that I see.  I call it “compline.” And while strictly speaking it is a bit too early for compline and it does not involve the chanting of evening prayers before bedtime, it is compline to me. The Old French means “to complete” and the Latin means “to fill up.” This is not a time of intercessions, but rather a time when I simply allow myself “to fill up” my being with the mystery of life, nature, humanity, mercy and forgiveness.  This is the time I have to reflect in a way that takes me out of my active world of doing and into being. I owe this wonderful walk to the slowing down of my body since injuring my foot. Normally I would be running at this time. It is impossible to “walk compline” while running.

There is also the way of labyrinth walking and meditating. When I first walked a labyrinth in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral, I thought it was a maze trying to trick me. It is ancient and really about opening one’s heart to putting one foot ahead of the other slowly. There are three stages. There is release on the way in, receiving once you are in the center, and then returning on the way out. Some would say you take out what you have received. I often inhabit the world of “doing things right ” which makes labyrinths challenging for me. The labyrinth is about wholeness, but it is not about one way to that wholeness. It is about meandering and stopping along the way. Whatever your beliefs, “praying the alphabet,” one name at a time, walking compline, and walking a labyrinth, can release the burdens of life in order to experience healing.  Often there will be wholeness when one’s feet and heart return to the world.

Labyrinth Walking

Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth

 

3 Comments

  • Rev.Marjorie Lipari/AKARev.Mudra

    Labyrinth

    As she walked the Labyrinth
    She saw herself in deeper ways
    She heard her footsteps landing
    She watched both feet deliberately
    She felt the earth beneath them
    She was a wanderer attuned
    In present time awake, aware
    She went where thoughts can’t go
    A stillness held her mortal mind
    Her eyes fixed loyally upon the pathway
    With focused heart
    With body’s grace
    With Sun’s delight upon her face
    She found within a holy quieting
    A tender spirit’s peaking
    When she walked the labyrinth
    She had no need for speaking

    Marjorie Lipari©2013

  • Rev.Marjorie Lipari/AKARev.Mudra

    I thought I would share this poem I wrote with you.
    Thank you for your wise musing today.
    Blessings,
    Mudra

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