Collegiate Times

The labyrinth at Blacksburg's Christ Episcopal Church is designed for meditation and prayer, with one route to the center and back.

Hymns and organ music resonated in downtown Blacksburg Sunday evening as one church opened a space designed to foster healing and serenity for the Virginia Tech community more than two years after the April 16, 2007 shootings.

Tucked away in downtown Blacksburg, the Christ Episcopal Church appears to be merely a small stone church with a red door - a picture from a textbook on Americana - but connected to the church is a quiet courtyard that now hosts a unique structure: a labyrinth.

Rev. Scott Russell, campus minister, said this labyrinth is no traditional outdoor maze with walls made from bushes or corn stalks.

Instead, it is a stone path on the ground in the church's courtyard. The path twists around itself many times, but there is only one way in, and the same conduit takes the walker out.

"We are offering this to the community as a response to April 16th," Russell said. "It can be a space to pray, heal or just have a quiet space off the street to reflect."

The labyrinth was dreamed up in the fall of 2007.

After the tragedy of April 16, 2007, an independent nonprofit religious organization, Episcopal Relief and Development, contacted the church.

ERD generally provides aid to Episcopalian communities affected by natural disaster, famine, epidemics and other situations that require outside assistance.

"They wanted to help us," Russell said, "but we didn't need food or clothing or medicine."

Malaika Kamunanwire, ERD spokesperson, said that the grant came together within the first couple of months after the tragedy.

"We wanted to talk about what might be a potential long-term response for the trauma to the students," Kamunanwire said. "We wanted to establish the basic framework for permanent relief."

Initially, the foundation provided funding for a psychiatrist to come speak with and counsel students.

In New York City, gardens of forgiveness were constructed in remembrance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That project inspired the labyrinth in Blacksburg.

There was not enough space in Blacksburg for a full-scale garden to be a viable option, but the church's courtyard used to be a patch of grass between the sanctuary and the library with a large tree in the middle of the grass.

"The tree was getting pretty old anyway," Russell said.

So the church decided to convert the space to a labyrinth.

"At first we were like, 'Can we really do it?'" Russell said.

ERD stepped in and made the idea a concrete reality. The church received a grant of $25,000, roughly $15,000 of which has gone directly into the construction process, meaning that the church has not had to raise any extra money for the project.

"They did a lot," Russell said. "They worked with us as we went along."

Landscape architecture professor Ben Johnson oversaw the project in an advisory position.

"I was basically the contractor and designer," Johnson said.

Johnson helped the church lay out plans for the renovation. He also brought some of his landscape architecture students in to help the congregation with the project.

All of the work, from clearing the courtyard to laying stones and planting flowers around the perimeter of the labyrinth, was done by the congregation, made up of students and town residents alike.

Senior mechanical engineering major David Bergquist was part of the construction team.

"I was there at the start with five or 10 other students ripping up tree roots," Bergquist said.

Construction began in March 2008, and after about a year's worth of work the labyrinth was nearly completed by last Easter.

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