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By Gladys Alcedo
Day Staff Writer, Groton
Published on 8/18/2004

Jack Fix walked in a roundabout way Tuesday morning to get to the granite bench at the center of a natural amphitheater encircled by more than a dozen trees on the grounds of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church.

He followed a 38-inch wide, stone-lined path that wound through seven concentric circles.

Fix, a church elder and chairman of the church's memorial committee, was the first person to walk through the labyrinth that volunteers had completed just minutes before.

A crew of 10 people, including the Rev. Mark Porizky, placed the last of the multicolored, decorative stones that delineated the path. For centuries, various cultures have used such labyrinths as an aid to prayer and reflection.

“I think it will be a unique area for meditation,” Fix said.

Unlike a maze, the labyrinth, a metaphor for a spiritual journey, has no dead ends and no intersections. There is only one way to the center and only one way out. It is meant to lead one into deeper levels of prayer and understanding.

A labyrinth is “to calm your feelings and to meditate and pray in the middle,” said 10-year-old Andrew, one of Ann Barnes' three children, who volunteered at the site Tuesday.

Allison Gentry, 14, who will attend Robert E. Fitch High School next month, said she would tell her friends who have a hard day to come and walk through the labyrinth and think.

Despite the sounds of nearby traffic, she said she found the surroundings conducive to solitary reflection.

Many churches in the area have their own temporary, two-dimensional labyrinths. But Porizky and Fix believe the labyrinth on the St. Andrew grounds atop Fort Hill is the only permanent, three-dimensional one in the area to be built from natural materials.

“The intent is to make it look like it belongs on the grounds,” Porizky said.

Porizky came up with the idea of installing a labyrinth to give his church members an avenue to “explore (their) spirituality in a dimension that doesn't normally get explored” and to reach out to people who normally wouldn't enter the church's doors.

“Our hope is this will be an entry,” Porizky said. “I also hope it would draw people back looking for spirituality. It's very much intended to be a community gift.”

That's why the labyrinth, built 70 feet from the parking lot, was located in front of the church, just a stone's throw from busy Route 1.

The church removed three trees in the front area of the church property, clearing about 2,100 square feet to accommodate the Cretan labyrinth, modeled after an ancient design found on Crete, an island in the Mediterranean.

Altogether, nearly two-dozen volunteers worked Sunday and Tuesday to finish the labyrinth, made possible by a $6,000 donation from the Glass Family Trust in California.

Jacky Glass donated the money in memory of her husband, Jerrold Glass. The Glasses, longtime family friends of Porizky, a native of California, have been supportive of his ministry.