This is one of a series of posts about a trip I took to walk labyrinths in July 2022. See this post to see why I refer to these labyrinths as my “Emmaus labyrinths.” Note: the numbering refers not to how many labyrinths I walked on this trip, but to the total number I’ve blogged about so far.
This is a seven-circuit medieval labyrinth, which tricked me at first. It’s such a large labyrinth I just assumed it was an eleven-circuit. But no – the path is very wide, open, roomy. It was a joy to walk! This labyrinth, made of different colored bricks, is located at the UU of York.
It was Sunday morning, and I decided that I would skip worship today. Instead, I would explore praise by walking a bunch of labyrinths. So the question I brought into this first one was this: “How can I praise you [God] through my work with Darkwater?” During my labyrinth walks the day before, I had discerned that I believed God was calling me to focus a lot of my energy on promoting my book Darkwater, and finding ways to share the message it contained. The main way I planned to do this was through some upcoming talks I hoped to give in various places.
By this, I meant the book I had recently published, as well as the talks I planned to give
As I walked through this roomy path, I thought about praising God through talking about my story, talking about how God has always been steadfast, surprising, and salvific in my life. Eventually I wondered about more practical answers – what specifically could I do to praise God as I try to share the message of Darkwater?
It hit me like a bolt of lightning – the answer is Biblia Luna. Biblia Luna is a website I made a few years ago, an offshoot of Scholtes-Blog. The idea of Biblia Luna was to connect mental health and faith (the name of the site is a mashup of Greek and Latin that’s supposed to mean something like “the Bible and Lunacy”). When I was actively working on it, ,ost of what I used it for was a weekly column connecting upcoming scripture readings in the Revised Common Lectionary to mental health issues. I was hoping it would be helpful for preachers looking to prepare sermons. It never really took off. I stopped doing anything with it a long time ago, but the website is still there – maybe this is an opportunity to renew it. Perhaps even to recreate it in a different style. Maybe not a blog like it was, maybe something else; maybe it could even be the repository of everything to do with Darkwater. I don’t know. But either way – this struck me as a great ongoing way to praise God.
Scholtes-Blog 