Paul Soupiset has a video online of our ongoing work on a prayer labyrinth at the back of our church property. It should definitely be done before anyone arrives this summer for the retreats. The video has a few people in it you've read about here.

Paul and his daughters, who narrate it.

My youngest daughter Lillian is the one with glasses who shoves her face in the camera and tries her best to sound stupid. She's the one I wrote about in those two bifocals pieces so long ago.

My middle daughter Shelby is the one who runs at the camera.

Chloe is practically all grown up now and wearing the pink rubber boots.

Tim, aka Tom, is the man in black coming down the path. His daughter is wearing the party hat. She spent the night at our house that weekend. I think she wore that hat non-stop from Friday through Monday.

And I, dear readers, star as the Grinch who stole the joy from all the children who were laboring so hard on the labyrinth. I really was embarrased when I saw this. There are all these flower children, dressed in such unique and cool ways, out there working away. And you're thinking, "Wow, this might be the coolest church EVER." Then you see the pastor dressed in the most uptight, "white guy" clothes imaginable, marching in to spoil the party. So then you think, "No, it's pretty much like every church I've ever been to."

Sorry. Sorry everyone. Carry on. Please do ignore the dreary man in the pastel shirt! ;-)

What I really like about this is our prayer path through the woods and the labyrinth at the back has been built almost exclusively by children. Very nice. It looks rather brown and dreary right now, but in a month or so, everything back there will be lush and green.

rlp

Paul Soupiset is keeping a journal about the prayer labyrinth we're building at the back of our church property. We've roughly leveled the ground now, though we have a lot of dead grass to clear out. Paul's latest post shows his ingenious way of laying out the labyrinth itself.

Our church sits atop almost solid limestone. There are thousands and thousands of rocks out there. I think it is fitting to build the labyrinth out of native materials. We already use these rocks for landscaping and forming various paths through the woods and between buildings. This thing is going to be cool.

A few days ago I mentioned the possibility of an open retreat for anyone in the world who could find a way to get a plane ticket here. I'll be talking to Tim and Paul about some details on this. I'm almost certain the labyrinth will be finished by then.

Stay tuned.

rlp

Note: The pictures at Paul's labyrinth journal look rather dreary. We're in Winter (or what we call Winter here). This Spring the land will be lush and green with wildflowers and all kinds of color.

Last March I wrote about someone stealing part of a prayer labyrinth at a church here in San Antonio. At that time Paul Soupiset was working on his Moleskine watercolor Lenten journal (which I HIGHLY recommend you seeing). One of of his Lenten pictures was inspired by his thoughts about building a prayer labyrinth at the back of the property at our church.

It looks like that dream is going to become a reality. A natural clearing has been levelled and some preparatory work done. There are a number of us who have volunteered to work on the labyrinth. Paul is blogging about it the process of this in a series of pictures during Lent.

This thing is going to be absolutely stunning. First of all, our church is buried in the woods. You'll have to follow a rather secretive and non-advertised prayer path out back that has no label and was made almost entirely by the vision and work of our 3rd to 6th graders. The path leads you through the woods to the back of the property where there is a simple pile of stones that forms an altar. And soon a labyrinth.

Here's a little video I made of the prayer path. The kids along with their very cool Sunday school teacher Ben have doubled its length since then.

Sorry about the video being jumpy

So now I want to let you in on a little secret. It's a dream that Tim Heavin (our other minister) and I have talked about. What do you think about having a Franciscan retreat at our church that would be open to anyone in the world who wanted to come? It would be rustic. We'd sleep on the floor and do contemplative prayers and singing at various hours of the night. Also hang out at the fireplace and talk about...everything. By then the prayer labyrinth would be finished, so people could try that too. What if all you had to do was get a plane ticket to San Antonio and you could stay at our church? We'd all eat together at the church, so you wouldn't have to worry about that. Then we would take people back to the airport and say goodbye.

Here's another cool thing. We wouldn't care if people were Christians or not. That's not the point. Anyone who is interested in exploring a monastic way of living could experience that for one night. We'd be thrilled if atheists and people of other faiths joined us. Imagine the conversations around the table.

I mean, do you think something like that could work? In this crazy world where we keep creating ideological and theological/philosophical barriers that keep us a part, do you think we could do something that would bring us together?

If we tried it, would you come?

rlp