Joan McMillen-Remembering The Way

Remembering The Way

SIDE 1: CEREMONY

This Is The Place
A Magic Dwells
Empty Cradle, Empty Bed
Find The Way
Super Cuncta, Subter Cuncta
As Above, So Below
Sooner Or Later

SIDE 2: VIGIL

Now The Green Blade Riseth
Path of Darkness
Make Me Green
To The Rose

What is the Labyrinth? That question cannot be easily answered by us who have forgotten it. The hints that reach us, whispered down through long ages of human living, speak of our ancestors' meeting with the Mother, Our Lady Under-the-Earth, the Dark Virgin who is to bear a Child, the serpent-power and water-energy of Earth itself, a deep experience of death and rebirth, initiation, healing. The very look of the pattern suggests the interior of the human body, the turns and re-turns of every human life, the enclosed garden where rises the fountain of living water and in which the precious Rosa mundi blooms.

Some years ago, a story--the story of a certain Ceremony--began to unfold within me, telling itself in songs, movements, and images of dancers. Once morning I wakened with the significance of the word re-membering flooding me, and I remembered reading somewhere that a beautiful pattern lay in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. Wen I found a copy of this pattrn, I saw that what had come to me was a ceremonial way of walking it with others.

I had longed to join the elusive dream-dancers who first showed me this ceremony, but I was satisfied when I came upon their dancing ground with the Labyrinth imprinted on it. For the dance and the gons are the Labyrinth's. Whoever enters the Labyrinth enters its body and is given the opportunity to experience and express the Life that is being lived there. This was so in the cave sanctuary of Lascaux, it was so at Epidauros, it was so at Chartres, and it is so in that inner place where the Labyrinth eterminally dwells.

This is the place where
the longed-for will happen,
This is the time when
the longed-for will come.

©1996 - 1998 Joan McMillen
jmm@windingway.com


			SIDE 1: CEREMONY This Is The Place A Magic Dwells Empty Cradle, Empty Bed Find The Way Super Cuncta, Subter Cuncta As Above, So Below Sooner Or Later SIDE 2: VIGIL Now The Green Blade Riseth Path of Darkness Make Me Green To The Rose		What is the Labyrinth? That question cannot be easily answered by us who have forgotten it. The hints that reach us, whispered down through long ages of human living, speak of our ancestors' meeting with the Mother, Our Lady Under-the-Earth, the Dark Virgin who is to bear a Child, the serpent-power and water-energy of Earth itself, a deep experience of death and rebirth, initiation, healing. The very look of the pattern suggests the interior of the human body, the turns and re-turns of every human life, the enclosed garden where rises the fountain of living water and in which the precious Rosa mundi blooms. Some years ago, a story--the story of a certain Ceremony--began to unfold within me, telling itself in songs, movements, and images of dancers. Once morning I wakened with the significance of the word re-membering flooding me, and I remembered reading somewhere that a beautiful pattern lay in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. Wen I found a copy of this pattrn, I saw that what had come to me was a ceremonial way of walking it with others. I had longed to join the elusive dream-dancers who first showed me this ceremony, but I was satisfied when I came upon their dancing ground with the Labyrinth imprinted on it. For the dance and the gons are the Labyrinth's. Whoever enters the Labyrinth enters its body and is given the opportunity to experience and express the Life that is being lived there. This was so in the cave sanctuary of Lascaux, it was so at Epidauros, it was so at Chartres, and it is so in that inner place where the Labyrinth eterminally dwells. This is the place where the longed-for will happen, This is the time when the longed-for will come.

			©1996 - 1998 Joan McMillen jmm@windingway.com