THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602100100
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BETSY MATHEWS WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines
The road to marital bliss has been a maze for Skip Horton and Radha Parker. They met in graduate school, fell in love, were separated for 17 years, met again, fell in love again, and hurdled dozens of speed bumps along the way. Every time one corner was rounded, a wall appeared to block their path.
They always knew, however, that God would bring them together. Call it karma, call it fate.
Call their story a labyrinth of love.
With only a few dozen miles and a river between them, you'd think that Norfolk-born Horace ``Skip'' Horton, Jr., 45, and Janis ``Radha'' Parker, 43, of Hampton, might have crossed paths earlier. They didn't until graduate school at the University of Virginia. Oddly enough, this Southern Baptist boy and United Methodist girl were both enrolled in the Buddhist Studies Program, each drawn to it by the same charismatic professor.
They met in a coffee shop where Skip had a Zen meditation group going. It was not love at first sight. Radha was interested in Skip's best friend. Skip was interested in giving his lecture. Still, they became friends.
Time passed. Radha broke up with the boyfriend. Skip moved to Chesapeake. Then, one night, Skip was back at U.Va. for a class. He needed a place to stay, and she offered her sofa.
They ended up talking all night long, falling deeply in love and even speaking of marriage.
There were, however, complications. Skip had been dating someone back in Chesapeake. Plagued by indecision, he tried dating both women, but was haunted by guilt. Also, the distance from Chesapeake to Charlottesville prevented Skip from seeing Radha often. The fragile relationship crumbled, and they went their separate ways.
In the 17 years of separation, Skip and Radha thought of each other often. The thoughts were more than fond memories. They were faint regrets of what could have been. Each, however, worked hard to set aside the thoughts. Life must go on.
Skip married the woman he had been dating in Chesapeake, and they had a son, Matthew, now 12. Skip taught school and was a professional musician for a while. An evangelical Christian, he applied and won Regent University's first Beasley Scholarship, using it for a graduate degree to the School of Theology. After graduation, he went to work for CBN, helping to write its ``Living by the Book'' series. After that job ended, Skip got his current position as an adjunct faculty professor of religion and philosophy at the Chesapeake campus of Tidewater Community College. By 1992, however, Skip was facing his worst nightmare: a disintegrating marriage.
Radha continued in the graduate studies program at U.Va., earning four more degrees, mostly in reading education and counselor education. She, too, married and the couple moved to Arkansas, where she taught at the University of Central Arkansas. Other teaching jobs came in Maryland and Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1992, Radha's employer, Lynchburg College, made cutbacks in its staff. Since she had no tenure, she lost her job. By that time, she'd also separated from her husband. When Old Dominion University offered her a position as an assistant professor of Counselor Education, she almost declined, but a small voice inside told her to take the job. She did.
One September evening in 1992, Radha walked from her night class at ODU to her office. Taped to the office door, she found a single red rose, but no note. The next day, she inquired about the rose. She got no answers.
The next week, after the same night class, she went to her office. She heard footsteps behind her, but was strangely unafraid. When she turned around, there stood Skip, with a rose in hand.
Several weeks earlier, a friend of Skip's had called to tell him about a new class he was enrolled in at ODU.
``You'd love this teacher,'' the friend said, describing the new professor, but not recalling her name.
``Ten minutes into his description,'' Skip said, ``I knew in the pit of my stomach it was her.''
Finally, Skip worked up the courage to visit Radha.
``It was as if nothing had changed,'' Radha said. ``When we walked out of the building that evening, the chemistry between us was just as strong as ever.''
After that night, the couple talked every day. Their bond grew. It took time for each to finalize divorces that had been in the works before their reunion. Then, just last spring, after almost 20 years of stops, starts, turns and twists, Skip and Radha were ready to make their commitment to each other. They both agreed, their marriage ceremony had to be something special.
They found ``something special'' in a health food store.
While browsing there, Skip purchased a magazine and later read in it an article about the labyrinth at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. Patterned after the 1200 A.D. stone floor labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral in France, that of Grace Cathedral is a 42-by-42-foot carpet of winding swirls, a single-path maze that leads to a center circle. Since it opened in December 1991, more than 70,000 people have ``walked the labyrinth.''
Why? The walk is a spiritual journey. It is representative of the twists and turns of life. It is a means of centering one's self. It is a way to seek God. It is a way of finding God's true purpose for one's life.
Though labyrinths pre-date Christianity, they were popularized as a spiritual tool during the Middle Ages. Because the Holy Lands were tied up in the conflicts of the Crusades, medieval Christians were not able to make religious pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The Catholic Church designated seven European cathedrals as pilgrimage sites. In the floors of these great houses of worship, labyrinth patterns were installed. Peasants and priests could make their religious pilgrimages simply by following the labyrinth path, arriving at the center, symbolic of Jerusalem and of Jesus Christ.
``The labyrinth is a means of centering,'' Radha said recently. ``One of the things so special about it is that as you work towards the center, it is circuitous and often it seems like you are going backwards. That was Skip and I. It seemed we'd gone in opposite directions and yet here we were, back in the center together. It just seemed so intuitively right to use the labyrinth.''
The two immediately called the information number in the magazine and connected with Helen Post Curry, a New Canaan, Conn. pastor who leads workshops and ceremonies with a portable canvas labyrinth. Curry agreed to bring the canvas to Norfolk and also to marry the couple. It would be, she told them, only the second labyrinth marriage service in the United States.
There was only one problem left. Where would they hold the service? They needed an open, flat, covered floor large enough for the 30-foot diameter labyrinth canvas. It also had to cost next-to-nothing, since the couple was on a tight budget.
Just three weeks before their set date of Aug. 5, a miracle happened.
Skip looked out the window of his 49th Street Norfolk home and saw workers pouring a cement 35-foot diameter hexagon. When he asked what it was, they told him it was a new gazebo and it would be complete in two weeks.
``It was as if God had built us a movie set for our wedding,'' Skip said. MEMO: For more information about ``walking the labyrinth,'' contact: The
Labyrinth Project, Quest/Grace Cathedral, 1051 Taylor St., San
Francisco, CA 94108-2277; (415) 776-6611.
ILLUSTRATION: Skip Horton and Radha Parker with Skip's son Matthew following
their August wedding ceremony.
by CNB