This summer, the Friends at Yardley Meeting (Bucks Quarter) are building a labyrinth and a set of raised bed gardens on the grounds of the meetinghouse. The community is committed to create a space for meditation, and to provide a growing site for medicinal herbs to be shared with the Singularity Botanicals supplying health-related products to the Chester, PA community.
Labyrinths are simple walking paths leading into the center and back out again. A labyrinth is used to center oneself focusing on the steps of the path inward to the center and then to return thoughtfully to the entrance. There are no dead ends, such as in mazes. The idea is to center oneself and meditate, not to get lost or stuck. Its purpose is to be a single path for a visitor to follow as a spiritual journey. It is often used as a tool for self-exploration and healing. An infinite number of designs of labyrinths have been created around the world. Records of some of the first ones can be found in India, several African nations from Algeria to Zimbabwe, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Ireland as far back as 3500 B.C.E.
Yardley Meeting is very excited to create another way for people to enjoy the wonderful grounds of the meetinghouse. The setting for the labyrinth at Yardley Meeting is near the outdoor fireplace where we have been worshipping during the pandemic. It is in a sheltered area below Lake Afton, within earshot of the waterfall on Buck Creek. The six ring Chartres style design will provide a method to experience walking a path paralleling experiences in life which often consist of a convoluted journey with episodes that repeat and double back on themselves. The Yardley Friends design traces along six folds of a line inside the quarters of a circle, leading to the central circle. Participants will turn at the center and follow the turf and stone tile path back out to the entrance.
The team of meeting members and attenders has prepared the land and the flagstones are in place. We will be planting drought resistant grasses and sedges that need no mowing between the paths. We hope to be welcoming the public to visit later this month.
Meanwhile, over next to the meetinghouse another team of volunteers is springing to action building a set of raised beds to grow medicinal herbs. We have a two-year commitment to supply root crops for the African Diaspora Plant Medicine Project. The plant medicine project’s purpose is to help distressed communities of color with their own health and well-being. Besides supplying the medicinal herbs education and instruction are imparted about their use. ashwagandha, astragalus, burdock, dandelion, echinacea, elecampane, licorice, nettles, rhodiola, and valerian are some of the plants used.
Pamela Boyce-Simms, who was inspired in 2016 by the Quaker Earthcare Witness working group of the U.N., gave a presentation to the Quakers of Bucks County in November 2021 reporting that the “African Diaspora Earthcare Coalition partners, in a collaborative community, enthusiastically embrace plant medicine as a key to autonomy and environmental resilience at this critical juncture in the Earth’s climatic history.” Currently Chester, Pennsylvania, a city of 30,000 which is 71% African American, is the local epicenter and operational prototype for the plant medicine project.
Yardley Friends were inspired by the presentation and decided to find a way to contribute. So, if you visit the meetinghouse later in the summer, you will see ashwagandha, elecampane and echinacea growing in our raised beds. We are pleased to become part of a group of people from Quaker meetings throughout the Philadelphia area as well as Buddhist groups as far as Vermont who are also cultivating gardens of herbs for the project. We are getting our fingers in the dirt to grow supplies community in Chester who live near the toxic dump which is only one cause of their chronic health problems.
As the plants grow, we will join classes to learn about herbs. We will meet with others in the project to compare knowledge and explore questions. It is our intention to reach out into the greater community to share our experiences and discuss the healing effects of plant medicine and its uses.
Working together and helping more people obtain a healthier life makes the world a better place. “Our spiritual lives will be expanding outward from our labyrinth and gardens out to be shared with the community.”
