t e n d i n g o u r g a r d e n • 125

Cr a ne Da nCe Scott Samuelson—Department of English

Kneeling on the april grass at Smith Park, I pound stakes into the ground, laying out a nine-course labyrinth. Once I get the bright

construction ribbon strung between the pegs, my wife, grown children, friends, and I will “walk the labyrinth.” The central cross and the concentric maze grow out in a thousand-year-old pattern, a pattern found in cultures around the earth.

“What are you doing?” asks a young father carrying a two-year-old boy and a plastic basket full of bright plastic easter eggs.

“Making a labyrinth. We’ll walk it as an easter activity.” I know this doesn’t make much sense, but I also know he probably doesn’t really want the full story.

He doesn’t say “Huh?” but I figure that’s what he’s thinking. I change the subject by gesturing toward his basket: “It looks like the egg hunt is your ritual of choice.” We smile and give each other our best “rite of spring” nod. Willing to give each other the benefit of doubt, and aware that our easter Saturday activities may seem a little strange to an outsider, we resume our separate ways.

Indeed, what am I doing? Let’s call it resurrecting a celebration ritual. I have been researching what in classical Greece became a dance of rebirth and was transformed by medieval Christianity into a renewal rite—both of which used the same labyrinth as a symbol of the road of life with its twists and turns. My family, friends, and I will go to the center of things and come back out of the circle of life triumphant. Or that’s the plan.

I’ve explained just enough of this to those I’ve invited to get them interested in coming. We all know it’s a little eccentric, but apparently the idea of reviving an ancient tradition and enacting an archetype is not a bad idea since it means getting outside after a long, inert winter. There stirs deep in the blood—perhaps especially in the spring blood—the desire for a new ritual, a longing in a slightly tribal way to welcome back the sun and honor the lengthening of days. Spring has always meant renewal in nature, and I think in relationships and in beliefs as well. For example, I hear bird song, and I imagine birds—even cranes—flying from the south to mark the turning of the year. Many migratory birds, including the crane, mate for life. Why should not I, like them, reaffirm my resolution to travel with my life-long companion, Shauna, in the direction of fresh nourishment and prolonged light?

Before we enter the rexburg Labyrinth, I tell my people something of the roots of this ritual:

I have been

researching what

in classical Greece

became a dance

of rebirth and

was transformed

by medieval

Christianity into a

renewal rite.

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SPIr a L PILGr IM

dance into the maze; ever on & to the very heart.be devoured until you turn & turn again and find yourself back home.

The Labyrinth is all terrestrial time, each leapingcrane, & every road of the earth.

t e n d i n g o u r g a r d e n • 127

The Cretan cave quickly turns black. Young Theseus carries a sword and a ball of spun flax. His shoulders rub against claustrophobic walls. But he steps on. He is the son of a god, destined to be king, and he has faced peril and fear before. Still, the quiet of the cavern is ominous because he knows there lurks in this tight darkness a beast so powerful and sinister that none has survived a confrontation.

as his way twists round and round, his mind wanders to lesser things: It is irritating that he must devote attention to the un-balling of the string. It diverts his concentration on the sounds in the darkness. Sweat makes the sword unsure in his hand. It is definitely getting hotter.

He pauses. Yet another turn, another doubling back. at what turn will the Minotaur spring at him? He knows that without the string, his clew, he would be confused. He imagines advice: “Don’t mind the turnings. Just keep on. When the bull-man makes his first charge, stuff what’s left of the ball into his mouth. Then use your sword. Follow the string out, and flee this cursed place.”

How long ago all of that seems now. Theseus remembers that he was surprised the string did not break when he fed the ball into the Minotaur’s maw, or when he made the many windings back to light. Thank the gods for a sharp sword. What a deadly foe the monster was. When the prince stumbled into the light, the youths and maidens erupted into cheers. The blood of the bull monster took long to wash off in the sea. Then they took their quick flight to the neighboring island.

resting now on the island of Delos, the prince feels the warmth of the sun on his muscular back. Spring has come again. Winter and wind have migrated to the southern hemisphere. Soon crops will be planted. Soon they will be home to build a nation. There are sacrifices to be made. Birds sing. new-born lambs and calves frisk. The youths and maidens are falling in love and will marry. Babies will be born.

The prince has come to a marsh to enjoy the spring and to forget the trauma of his past. He sees there two tall birds strutting, jumping, flinging sticks into the air. The crane and its mating dance are sacred here. He smiles and watches the birds cavort. They should seem awkward with their long legs and necks, but they are not. How effortlessly they rise and fall in the air. They spread their wings to each other. They stretch their necks in tandem. They circle in their sacred crane dance.

and deep within himself, full of spring and victory, Prince Theseus knows this profound urge: It is time for him to dance.

He makes his way to the worship place. People gather around the sacred altar. Some have brought drums, lyres, and pipes. The prince says to the youths and maidens, “I will teach you the steps that got me to the center of the labyrinth. We will retrace and celebrate the victory of the maze. We will be light-footed cranes.” The music begins. They join hands and move rhythmically to the music in a circle, back and forth with many windings. every few steps, they cannot restrain themselves—they jump like the sacred birds. and when they reach the center, the prince pauses in remembrance of his battle, then traces his steps back, the youths and maidens following, chanting, leaping, singing. and when the dance is ended, there on the ground, trampled by merry feet, lies a diagram of the labyrinth.

The crane and its

mating dance are

sacred here.

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and deep within himself,full of Spring and victory,Prince Theseus knows this profound urge:It is time for him to dance.

t e n d i n g o u r g a r d e n • 129

They sit in a grove of trees and drink libations to the gods. and the bard sings of sacred apollo once making an escape in bestial form, and the form he chooses is the crane. He sings of the love athena and artemis have for the stately bird as well. He tells how Hermes, seeing cranes fly high overhead in V-formation, a godly combination of angles and graceful curves, invented the alphabet.

The bard sings that man learned to dance in part from the animals. Humans felt an awe for creatures who could fly to heaven. and since mankind desired to encounter the gods, men and women imitated the movements of the cranes who flew toward the dwelling place of deity. and the poet tells a hundred stories of our fathers and mothers seeking ways of connecting with the gods. He tells how they dance to express the human hope for a relationship with the divine, worshipping to connect with paradise.

at various times in my life and for various reasons I too have felt the urge to dance. But today I sense something new, exciting. not that I desire to be some neo-Theseus, hero of Smith Park. Or a quasi-crane. rather, my urge to dance today has become the impetus to take my wife Shauna by the hand and enter the labyrinth—no cave, just lines on the ground. Others join hands behind us in a long chain and follow. The labyrinth is uni-cursal, meaning there is only one way to go. Unlike the modern corn maze, for example, which is full of possible paths and choices, this labyrinth requires not choice but endurance. The attraction is not in being lost and then found but in persevering the twists and turns, getting closer, getting farther away, by turns, from the center: this walk symbolizes life’s problematic journey. We finally arrive in the center and immediately double back. I’m glad I’ve made the tracks wide enough that it is easy to pass those who are still coming in. as Shauna and I finally emerge from the labyrinth, I am exhilarated! I applaud those behind me as they complete their first labyrinth walk. Others, smiling, applaud those behind them.

Of course, it’s not really a great accomplishment. But something about it has changed us, if ever so slightly. “Why was that so fun? What does it mean?”

at the moment I agree with Iris J. Stewart who says, “The labyrinth does not engage our thinking minds. It invites our intuitive, pattern-seeking, symbolic mind to come forth” (Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance: Awakening Spirituality Through Movement and Ritual, Inner Traditions Publishing, 2000). To the group I try to paraphrase this idea and what another commentator says: “the spiral pilgrim wanders the maze sometimes progressing, sometimes retrograding, gradually devoured by time, gradually moving back to the point of origin,” concluding that the maze is “a symbol of terrestrial time, the sum of human experiences on earth.”

The attraction is

not in being lost

and then found

but in persevering

the twists and

turns: this walk

symbolizes life’s

problematic journey.

130 • p e r s p e c t i v e — s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

L a BY r InTH

The path winds round to the corethe twists and turns of our test,linkeness of our deepest quest:maze, prison, and dancing floor.

Ordeal that leads to the fiend,the stringent, dark wrestling place.To be saved, just come this way.Kill the monster, save the day.

This is the road to the heart,diagram of dancing cranes,eternal round, swirling womb.Grab your partner. Time to start.

t e n d i n g o u r g a r d e n • 131

That’s big. But such inclusive symbols, while perhaps elusive, do have the power to appeal to us through their mystery and multitudinous meanings. I do not have these quotes at my fingertips there in our circle as the rain begins, so I conclude, “It’s an act of celebration.” Yes, finally, somehow, the smiling faces around me let me know that they too sense that it is just plain fun.

I explain to my family and friends that I have also read that it takes the gangly cranes nine running steps before they launch into the air, and that the human crane dance sometimes reenacts the nine steps and leap. We hold hands again and go once more into the labyrinth. This time I count to nine and yell, “Leap!” and because I have one “wing” free—my right hand holds onto Shauna’s—I flap my left arm each time I jump. I flap and jump every nine steps all the way into and all the way out of the maze, and all the following human cranes do likewise.

Is it the light spring rain that accounts in part for our sense of abandon and connection with nature? Or is it because we have become, so soon, friends of the maze? as we finish our crane dance, we find our way to a picnic table under a large Douglas fir and share lunch and chat. The rain eventually stops. People, heeding the demands of terrestrial time, say good-bye and wander off.

I initiated this activity because I felt within me an urge to reenact history. and the wacky idea of acting like the crane filled me with a sense of play and child-like imagination. Because all of my children are grown and none of my grandchildren live locally for a traditional Saturday easter egg hunt, I was a man in search of a ritual. I knew that the next day, easter Sunday, I would worship with song and with word. I would read the sacred words, tell the timeless, joyous Christian story; I would partake of the bread and the water and make sacred promises. But on Saturday I wanted to move toward the Sabbath’s spiritual renewal by way of a more physical experience. I wanted to approach deity with people I love who are not in my ward, people with whom I will not be worshipping tomorrow. I wanted to dance my dance before the Lord.

I once asked my brainy brother-in-law why he thought dance is not more a part of contemporary Latter-day Saint worship. I pointed out the restoration scripture which says, “If thou are merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving” (Doctrine and Covenants 136:28). We heartily sing and pray and praise. But dance as worship is rare in our culture. My brother-in-law had been reading about Theseus and the crane dance and suggested that I look into it. I started reading, and the more I learned the more I became intrigued with the labyrinth. It was this search that led me to want to create and reenact the crane dance, especially when I read about the medieval Christian permutations of the labyrinth dance.

“It’s an act of

celebration.”

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The maze dance, nearly three thousand yearspagan, converted, took flight.Theseus became Christ, and the Minotaur Death.

and the cranes rose with the Lord in a soaringjubilee of new life.

t e n d i n g o u r g a r d e n • 133

From my reading of various documents on the subject I imagine this composite scene:

The young cleric assigned to sweep and mop the cathedral’s labyrinth is filled with strange excitement. Tomorrow, easter Sunday, he will walk with his brothers the magic circle. They will chant and sing. They will throw the sacred leather ball.

The light through the rose window mixes with the torch light. The dust particles fly like tiny birds through the sacred space. His mind starts humming and singing:

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day,I would my true love did so chanceTo see the legend of my playTo call my true love to the dance.Sing, Oh my love, o my love, my love, my loveThis have I done for my true love

His mind wanders to the stories he has heard: that on this very site—before God sent His heavenly cathedral—was the center of the druids’ oracle space. and that space was marked by white stones aligned to make a circle labyrinth. and that path had been there a thousand years. and when the builders of the cathedral laid out the house of God, they thought it no blasphemy to echo the place of oracle and labyrinth. and the youthful ecclesiast thought of an even older story, the tale of an ancient warrior who penetrated to the center of a cave labyrinth, and in the center killed a dreadful monster.

The young cleric knows for sure only of his own champion: Christ Jesus who strode into Hell and there killed Death. and when he returned from that sojourn of triumph, all the people shouted and sang, jumped and danced. Death had died. The slayer had been slain.

and the Church fathers designed this day of jubilation. The celebration included the dance of the clerics, following their elder circling back and forth through the labyrinth, chanting, singing, leaping, and tossing the ball, symbol of all eternity. and in the center they flap their robes, and then follow their leader back out.

The people will crowd into this space on easter morning to see the clerics spin and they will think of the sun dancing and playing in the water and the angels who were at the resurrection playing backwards and forward before the sun. The master will act the part of resurrected adam, and the clerics will be the angels, and together they will perform a ring dance with all those who hope to be raised up to heaven.

Our april Smith Park friends and family gone, Shauna and I, arm in arm and quiet as young lovers, enter the labyrinth once more. In the center we find no monster. We kiss. Holding each other still, we dance without motion our new dance. Here the world renews itself.

Worship is the appeal of earth for heavenly experience, ritual the enactment in time and space of some eternal pattern. I feel as a young

Worship is the

appeal of earth for

heavenly experience,

ritual the

enactment in time

and space of some

eternal pattern.

134 • p e r s p e c t i v e — s p r i n g 2 0 0 7

crane might feel that has just learned to fly. Thirty-five years ago we stood from the sacred altar and walked into the sunlight of our composite being. It’s as though those many married years have been condensed into a thirty-foot circle, and walking out from the center we have re-enacted all our perils and joy. and now we are ready for our next rebirth.

I made the labyrinth because I wanted to enact an ancient ritual. My conventional Christian worship stirs me deeply, but I thought it no betrayal of that worship to fly to classical Greece, to leap back to medieval Chartres and circle with the ancients the back-and-forth, spiral symbol of the cosmic journey. Part of that pursuit is the desire to find new angles from which to glace heavenward. Dancing to new rhythms moves me beyond my conventional trudge. Unanimous and ageless, ritual affirms its praise to deity, its contentedness with the gifts of the earth, and the paradoxical yearning to honor those gifts by reaching beyond them to heaven.

I pound my pegs, string my string, I grab the hands of those who will walk with me and, entering this symbolic diagram, we affirm who we are at the same time we express our longing for a deeper, broader being.

as we emerge the last time from the labyrinth, Shauna says, “Just as you drove the last peg, we heard the call of a Sandhill crane. It was flying high above. I wish you had seen it.”

I too wish I had known and looked up to see the crane when it flew over earlier. nevertheless, I choose to see its presence today as heaven’s smile upon our labyrinth walk. I say, “I wish it could have stayed to dance.” •

Unanimous and

ageless, ritual

affirms its praise

to deity.