Finding Your Center

Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. — Wendell Berry I t was a toasty July afternoon in 2006 when the Rev. Holly Gloff, then brand new to St. Michael’s, took a stroll around campus to familiarize herself with where everything was.Her travels took her outside into the bright sunlight, and she wasted no time making for the shady grove on the northwestern side of the slate steps that lead to the church’s front door.

She found some shade there … and an unexpected sense of peace and calm. She looked around at the trees and bushes that created such a natural sacred space.

This, she thought, would be the perfect place for a labyrinth. And an idea was born.

“I thought it would be a wonderful addition to St. Michael’s, but I didn’t want it to be my idea,” she says. “I wanted it to come from the parish, so it would be something everyone wanted.”

Sometimes, time does the work for you. Holly didn’t push for the idea, but her interest in labyrinths prompted her to offer some adult education classes. Around the same time, she learned she had some money in the budget —about $2,000 – for educational materials.

“So I went straight to labyrinths.com and bought a big plastic one,” she says with a laugh. “I started teaching

about labyrinths, interest grew and eventually we had a committee that took this on as a memorial project.”

So … what exactly is a labyrinth and what on earth do you do with it?

A labyrinth is prayer on the move. It’s a meditation and prayer tool in the form of an ancient symbol that combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a purposeful, sometimes meandering path. The path is a metaphor for your life’s journey or your spiritual path

— and takes you on a contemplative, prayerful sacred journey.

Our labyrinth is patterned loosely after a famous labyrinth at the Cathedral of Chartres, built in the cathedral nave between 1215 and 1221. With its rounded sides and 11 concentric circles filling a diameter of about 42 feet, this bit of sacred geometry is believed to have been the largest labyrinth in the Middle Ages world.

The finished project was more an act of sheer grace than deliberate planning, Holly says.

The more parishioners used the plastic labyrinth, the more interest grew in creating a permanent one.

“We started to think through how to get that done and someone told me to call Tom Monaco. I didn’t know who he was, but I made the call and said I didn’t know exactly what he could do to help but I hoped he could help me and tell me what I need. He said, ‘Give me three days.’ He called back with a plan and I learned then that he was the retired dean of the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State.”

He contacted a teacher in the department, Anne Spafford, who was looking for a project for her senior landscape architecture students. She toured the site with Holly and could see the possibilities. She knew at once this was the perfect project.

She assigned each student to produce a plan. One ultimately was selected.

“We also wanted to make sure this site would be pleasing to the eye all year round,” Holly says. “We asked for plants that bloom at different times of the year. You can see those efforts paid off, all these years later. There are camelias, Lenten roses, Redbuds … Beautiful.”

The installation of the labyrinth took longer than expected — after all, seniors sometimes get busy in other areas as they get ready to leave school. The students did all the work by hand — each one physically put hand to shovel, rake and trowel to create the space.

Finding Your Center

Words: Beth Grace Photo: Susan Rountree

A year- and-a-half after that sultry July stroll, a dream — a dream of many, not just one — came to be.

The funding came from many sources.

“We treated this as a memorial project, so there was no major fundraising campaign,” Holly remembers. Parishioners who wanted to support the work made donations. A few years ago, the Rev. Meta Ellington spearheaded a small campaign to raise funds with memorial pavers creating walkway to the labyrinth. You can still buy a paver in honor of someone you love and want to remember. Contact Ann Garey at St. Michael’s.

Among the early donors was parishioner Nell Finch, a beloved leader at St. Michael’s, who passed away in 2012. She donated the benches that still provide a place for quiet thought by the labyrinth.

Since it was built, countless pilgrim feet have walked the path. Visitors from all over the world drop by. Our labyrinth is listed among open, public labyrinths on several websites that list locations of labyrinths worldwide. St. Michael’s parishioners provide most of the traffic. Holly has held classes for newbie labyrinth walkers, and it gets great use during The Gathering, held every other year. One parishioner walks it every day, Holly says.

For those who use the labyrinth as part of their regular spiritual practice, the path is one that helps lead them to comfort, peace and a deeper understanding of what God wants of us.

“The brick path to this space is lined with names of people who have inspired and challenged me on my faith journey. The circle pattern of the brick and the need to intentionally seek out that space remind me that faith is a process I have to step into by choice,” says parishioner Susan Sullivan.

“I am not alone on that journey. Those etched names in the brick invite me in for a moment of contemplation and centering prayer. The garden always has something in bloom. I notice what has faded, what is ready to open up and even a few weeds. That’s life. I hope you find this space as special as I do!”

For Holly, it’s the silence that draws her. “My mind tends to have a lot of chattering going on. Walking the labyrinth is like following the yellow brick road — it keeps me focused and more centered.”

She reflects on that inspirational moment under the trees outside the church that started a project that would impact lives and hearts for years to come.

“It wasn’t me or my idea that did it,” she says. “If it works, you know it’s of God. If it doesn’t, it isn’t. “his was God’s work through human hands.”

The point of a maze is to find its center. The point of a labyrinth is to find your center. -- Unknown

Beth Grace is a freelance writer and editor. She is communications director for the NC Masonic Foundation and writes frequently for Archangel.

I WILL

ALWAYS SING

Words: Helen Moses Photo: Susan Rountree

It was the ideal college job. Other than not getting to sleep late on Sunday mornings, the Wednesday night/Sunday morning schedule integrated beautifully into my life as a vocal performance major. It was great to earn a little money, but I quickly discovered this was much more than a “job.” In the choir at Church of the Holy Communion in Memphis, Tennessee, I found a group of friends who welcomed me into their lives, loved me and supported me as my surrogate family when I was 750 miles away from home. Singing with them also changed the trajectory of my life by introducing me to the Episcopal Church and leading me to St. Michael’s, where I have sung with the choir since 1991.

St. Michael’s began its Choral Scholar program several years ago. Kevin Kerstetter, our talented and beloved Director of Music since February 1998, wanted to start the program as a way to expand the choir’s foundation — the bass section.

“Nearly 60 dedicated singers participate in St. Michael’s adult choir,” he says. “But obviously, all singers are never present at the same time. Although our choir’s men make a great sound, the tenor and bass sections have the fewest members. So, when several are away, it can be difficult to balance the sound of the choir’s four voice parts. And the bass section truly is a choir’s foundation. I knew having skilled choral scholars (one bass and one tenor), who are expected to attend every rehearsal and service, having learned the music thoroughly, would benefit the entire choir considerably.”

Coleridge “Cole” Nash was our first choral scholar, joining the bass section in September 2017. Raised in Winston-Salem, Cole is now a senior at NC State, majoring in physics and applied math and minoring in music. Cole said he was reluctant to accept the position after his audition because he wasn’t raised in the church and he “wasn’t big into religion. ”In fact, Cole’s first service at St. Michael’s was just the second time in his life he had been to a church service (the first was the previous

summer at a mass in Salzburg when studying abroad). Like me, the stipend associated with being a scholar was what initially drew him in. But “what has kept me here is the people,” Cole said. He was even offered oth

Coleridge Nash, left, and Johnny Gillings Jr., are both students at NC State and serve as choral scholars for the St. Michael’s Choir.

er church gigs with larger stipends since starting at St. Michael’s, but didn’t take them because he enjoyed the adult choir members so much and felt so welcomed.

During his time as a choral scholar at St. Michael’s, Cole has been exposed to sacred hymns and anthems he might not otherwise have come across. He also credits his experience with improving his overall skills as a singer, especially when it comes to sight reading new music. The biggest impact being a choral scholar has had on

vocal precision to the music. Their talents provide a number of benefits - for regular choir members, exposure to singing skills that can enhance their own capabilities; for the choir as a whole, a better blended and tuned overall sound; for the congregation, the opportunity to hear choral music at it’s finest. For the scholar, the opportunity exists to experience music/singing in a church setting, establish potential contacts for future opportunities, and who knows — maybe a seed will be planted for an individual to come to know Jesus. — VAUGHN WAGONER

Cole is helping him decide that he wants to pursue music as a career. He plans to get a master’s degree in voice or opera performance and go on to sing opera professionally. He has applied to multiple graduate schools and hopes to know which program he will attend by the end of April.

Coleridge Nash, left, and Johnny Gillings Jr., are both students at NC State and serve as choral scholars for the St. Michael’s Choir.

Cole is grateful to St. Michael’s for making his experience here such a pleasant opportunity.

Johnny Gillings Jr. has been our tenor choral scholar since November 2018. He is a native of Fort Worth, Texas, with undergraduate degrees in math and music from Morehouse College. Currently he is in his fifth and final year of graduate school at NC State, and will receive his Ph.D. in operations research in May. As an undergraduate, Johnny held a similar choral scholar position in a church choir which he says was “directly related to my success as a singer.” Johnny learned about the tenor choral scholar opening at St. Michael’s through Dr. Nathan Leaf, the director of the NC State chorale, and former music director at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Durham. (Since NCSU doesn’t offer a music major, Kevin likes finding qualified singers who are looking to broaden their singing experience while completing their degrees, and has found Dr. Leaf to be a good resource for identifying exceptional choral scholar candidates.)

Johnny currently attends Oak City Baptist church in Durham in addition to being a choral scholar at St. Michael’s. (The services of the two churches happen to be timed so that he can just make it to Oak City immediately after the 9:30 a.m. service at St. Michael’s.) He has enjoyed the educational aspect of his scholar experience, singing famous and unfamiliar settings of traditional sacred music and learning new performance techniques for anthems in the Anglican church tradition. He says the Episcopal church, with its roots in Catholicism, is quite different from the African American church tradition from which he comes, and which is rooted in the slavery era. While almost everything about the two traditions is different, Johnny found that the primary commonality of the two is many of the songs— such as the Doxology — have the same words, just different settings. He’s learned to find his place in the hymnal and prayer book,’ he says, and knows when to kneel and can process down the aisle without fear of tripping over my choir robe. As any Episcopal choir member can attest, these are important skills that require some practice to master!

Like Cole, Johnny has loved getting to know the people in the choir. “They are a loving group of people,” he says, “who take the time to get to know you, invite you and genuinely want you to feel loved and appreciated.” The welcoming nature of our church and choir community inspires Johnny to be a more pleasant person to others, so they in turn can feel more comfortable in new and unfamiliar situations. After earning his Ph.D., Johnny will likely move to Texas or Georgia to pursue his career in research or industry. He has thoroughly enjoyed his time at St. Michael’s and is confident that “No matter where I go, I will always sing!”