Book Study
Every year – sometimes twice a year – St. Mark’s has a book study that looks at a book about our faith.
Every year a group at St. Mark’s studies books related to our Christian spirituality. In any given year we have about 15 participants but, because the Book Study has been going for 15 years, we have about 40 people on our mailing list. The actual number of participants each year varies. We share the load each week.
Our Fall 2024 study will be John Philip Newell’s book, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.
Fall/Winter of 2023 we picked To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue, “A beautiful book of blessings to help readers through both the everyday and extraordinary events of their lives.”
Labyrinth Walks
Periodically, we offer Labyrinth Walks in our Oasis (outdoors) and in our sanctuary.
Mazes are designed to make us lose our way; labyrinths are designed to help us find our way, literally and metaphorically. Our beautiful surroundings, poetry, prayer, and sharing of experiences made these events even more welcoming, peaceful, and restorative.
The labyrinth that we use indoors is a 7-circuit, modified Chartres style. Importantly, a labyrinth is different from a maze: there is only one path to follow in a labyrinth and it is the same going in as coming out; unlike a maze, there are no choices to be made as to where to go, no dead ends, no intention to confuse you; in a labyrinth you cannot control where you walk, only how you walk. A maze is meant to make you lose your way, a labyrinth is meant to help you find your way.
Labyrinth walking is physically relaxing, stimulates balance, and is beneficial for most people, whether or not they derive mental or spiritual benefits; by focusing attention, it can also be a mindfulness exercise, and regular mindfulness practice prevents depression, lowers anxiety, and has numerous mental health benefits; labyrinth walking engages the left brain as you focus on the specifics of the path, freeing your right brain to work creatively in the background, so artistic benefits have also been reported; spiritually it is nice to think of the metaphors of labyrinth as pilgrimage and labyrinth as life. We will return to these themes throughout this series.