FAIRLEE — An Upper Valley congregation is inviting the public to join a worldwide meditation for peace Saturday, May 3.

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, located at 5337 Lake Morey Road in Fairlee, will participate in World Labyrinth Day, where people throughout the world walk labyrinths at 1 p.m. local time.

St. Martin’s has had a labyrinth in its memorial garden since 2019, and this will be the second year it participates in the event.

There are no wrong turns or dead ends in a labyrinth, which helps “to bring order out of chaos,” said Bill Secord, one of the organizers of the Fairlee event.

“It looks like a maze, but it’s really a guiding pathway to get to your center personally,” he said. “As a group doing it ... it’s a belief that there’s a spiritual impact of some kind on the world.”

New this year at St. Martin’s is a workshop titled “Mindfully Walking the Labyrinth’s Paths,” which will take place from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. prior to the 1 p.m. walk for World Labyrinth Day. The workshop, which is based on the teachings of the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, will be led by Dale Sparlin, who designed St. Martin’s labyrinth.

“We’re going to spend a little over two hours learning about mindful walking and meditating with our breath, which is very much like Zen Buddhism,” Sparlin said.

Congregation members had been discussing the idea of constructing a labyrinth when Sparlin, who has been a labyrinth designer since 1998, moved to the Upper Valley in 2018.

“It was one of those graceful moments when they had been looking at the possibility in the previous year and I walked in as a guest and by golly I stuck around,” said Sparlin, who moved to New York in 2021, and is looking forward to returning to Fairlee for the event.

St. Martin’s labyrinth is about 30 feet in diameter, Secord said. Its pathways are about 3-feet wide, which make it more accessible for people who use wheelchairs. It is open to the public and people can choose from about 50 laminated meditation cards to recite while walking it. Some mention God, while others mention the Earth and rebirth.

“It’s a spiritual exercise but it isn’t necessarily an Episcopalian or even a Christian exercise,” Secord said. “It’s available to people of all kinds of persuasion, even atheists, because it’s a way of meditating and getting in touch with the Earth.”

Current events, including the deportations that are taking place around the country, are on the minds of the organizers this year, he said.

“We as a church group, as an Episcopal group, have become very concerned about the migrant situation, about the deportations taking place,” Secord said. “Those technically aren’t world peace, but they’re part of the environment of national, international breakdowns and world order.”

St. Martin’s is part of the Vermont Upper Valley Constellation, which includes three other Episcopalian parishes: St. John’s in Randolph, St. Paul’s in White River Junction and St. Barnabas in Norwich.

St. Barnabas has had a labyrinth since the late 1990s, said the Rev. Jennie Anderson, who leads services at St. Barnabas. The Norwich labyrinth is about four times bigger than the one in Fairlee.

Anderson often sees parishioners, community members and Appalachian Trail hikers walk through it. Labyrinths provide another way for people to find inner peace and communicate with a higher power — in whatever form that takes for them.

“To walk into a religious building can be both intimidating due to past experience with religion, but can also be intimidating because you have no experience with religion,” Anderson said. “I think that by walking in a labyrinth, the labyrinth helps us to leave better than we were when we came upon it.”

For more information visit https://stmartinsvt.org/events/world-labyrinth-day-2025/. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 60 3-727-3221.