from http://www.stpaulcathedral.org/labyrinth.html What is it? The labyrinth is an archetype, a divine imprint, found in many religious traditions in various forms around the world. By walking the labyrinth, a design laid in or on the floor, we are rediscovering a long-forgotten mystical tradition that is insisting on being reborn. The labyrinth you see here applied to the floor of the Great Hall at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, is like the one at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which in turn is modeled on the one laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France about 1220. Why Do We Walk It? We live in a time of extreme spiritual hunger. People are seeking ways to enhance and deepen their awareness of God. The Labyrinth can be a tool for doing this, as a form of walking mediation. How Do We Walk It? In general, there are three stages to a typical walk: the first stage, lasting until you reach the center of the labyrinth, can be called shedding, a releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This tends to quieten the mind. The second stage can be called the illumination, when you reach the center and linger there. The center is a place of mediation and prayer. The third, as you leave the center and retrace your steps back to the outside, can be called union with God and the healing forces at work in the world. Our Labyrinth is available for any individual or group meditation without regard to your religious affiliation. Contact the Cathedral Church office for an available time. Text from a St. Paul brochure "The Labyrinth," which was based partially on the book by the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, "Walking A Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth As A Spiritual Tool," Riverhead Books, N.Y. 1995. © St. Paul's Cathedral, 2728 Sixth Avenue, San Diego, CA 92103, (619)298-7261

Walking the Labyrinth

I just walked the labyrinth at St. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego.

The room is large and high-ceilinged. The floor is a red brick tile. The lighting is from chandeliers shaped like cross-quartered circles. The labyrinth itself is based on the Chartres labyrinth, and is painted in black on the floor in the center of the cathedral's Great Hall. A low table with crayons and coloring book pages depicting saints and the life of Jesus suggest that at other times this room is used as a Sunday school classroom.

There are votive candles lit around the perimeter of the labyrinth, and here and there about the room. A small, portable stereo plays a relaxing background of gongs, drums, wordless chant. Every so often sirens, alarms and horns remind us of the steady drone of traffic that is the world outside, but most of the time the space is no different from what I would expect from a cathedral of the middle ages.

About a dozen people are there when I arrive. They sit around the outside of the room on folding chairs and orphan pews in attitudes of prayer or meditation. One by one each stands and enters the labyrinth, walking in his own way: duck-footed, pigeon toed, scuffing or marching, barefoot, sock-foot, in heels or in sandals, more-or less evenly spaced along the path.

It is the nature of the labyrinth that when there are ten or twelve people walking the path, it becomes a dance, it becomes a model of the universe, of planetary and electron orbits. Most of the time all the walkers are evenly scattered, seeming to orbit the center, and there is no way to tell who is ahead and who is behind, who is headed toward the center and who is on his way out. There's no way to tell who is going to get to what point first, or who is about to make a turn.

Sometimes, like a harmonic convergence, all the walkers are on the same side. Sometimes they crowd each other. Mostly they dance. I sit and watch, mesmerized, as they walk and turn, and walk and turn, and walk and turn, silently. When they reach the center, some turn and leave again, some stand for a time, or sit, meditate, raise their hands in prayer, supplication.

Everyone that walks is different, yet they are walking the same path, and I am watching – and I watch myself watch. I realize I am waiting for everyone else to finish so I can walk alone. And I realize that I am watching some of them to see whether they are doing it "wrong," whether they stumble in their path, or take up more than one lane, or scuff their feet.

Then I remember that there are many games I've played whose punchline is, "the way you play this game is the way you are in life."

So before the labyrinth is quite empty, but after most of the dozen have departed, I stand and I remove my shoes. I enter the labyrinth, one foot in front of the other – I am a ninja labyrinth walker, I am a Native American tracker labyrinth walker, I am a tight-rope labyrinth walker.

Immediately I feel a pressure, a resistance. In some way this path is not just walking across stone tile.

I first heard of a labyrinth, though not by that name, in Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles. He describes a thing called a Pattern, a glowing pathway on the floor. People walking it encounter points that are difficult to traverse, and it loops in unpredictable ways so they never know how far they are from the beginning, or to the end in the center. I never understood how the Pattern Zelazny described could be real. I figured he had created details that would make it impossible for anyone to recreate the pattern. But now, this is exactly my experience of walking between black-painted lines on a red tile floor in the Great Hall of St Paul's.

"There are votive candles lit around the perimeter of the labyrinth..."

As I walk, there are three or four other people on the labyrinth. I thought I had figured out how many people were outbound and how many were inbound, how many people I would pass on my path – but I am completely mistaken.

It comes to me that this is an excellent metaphor for life: Each of us is walking from beginning to end, from source to source, in a topologically straight, unbranching line. Yet, there are times when we seem to be going backwards, where we seem to be walking with another person, or against, or seem to be walking toward or away from someone – and then, a few steps down the line, the path turns back on itself.

There is a moment when I am walking parallel with another person, and then a turn, and we are still walking parallel. A few steps later, there is another turn and we walk apart, until further along, when we walk toward each other again. Ultimately, the thing is, we wind up in the same place, we both started the same, and despite appearances to the contrary, we walk the same path. The people who walk with me move in their own orbits, and I have no way of knowing if they walk forward or backward, if they walk to the same destination as I do, or walk to where I came from, if they are further along the path or behind.

"The labyrinth itself is based on the Chartres labyrinth, and is painted in black on the floor in the center of the cathedral's Great Hall."

It reminds me of times I have been judgemental of those not in the same place I am. I assumed life was linear, and these others had not come as far, but for all I know, they may have traveled twice as far.

I can know where a particle of light is, or how it's traveling, but I cannot know both at the same time. We are all particles on the same beam, and it makes no sense to talk of whether we are hurrying or dawdling, we're all going get there when we get there.

And I reach the center. The "clearing at the end of the path." Building on the metaphor I had as I walked in, this would be death, the End of the Line. It doesn't seem so bad. It's not an ending, just The Next Thing. And everyone I walk with gets here – or comes from here. I knelt for a time with eyes closed and meditated.

I hear others' bare feet padding or sandals scuffing, and I know myself to be both entirely alone and entirely with every other soul.

I stand and re-enter the path, walking back toward the beginning, and it is exactly like the path on the way in.

I meet others and pass them, or walk with them, and still I have no idea who is coming and who is going, who is ahead and who is behind.

"I enter the labyrinth, one foot in front of the other – I am a ninja labyrinth walker..."

It is possible to look ahead, see where I am going, how many steps and turns away I am from the end, but it's pointless. Doing so takes me off the path. If I am trying to follow the line ahead, I am not watching where I walk. I may step off the path path entirely and not notice. I realize it as best to not worry about where others are at, or my place in line, but to just watch where I am, and keep walking and turning, walking and turning.

The docent told me that folks often enter with a question, or a subject for prayer or meditation, and as I walk the path I ask, "Tell me of the Way Home."

The answer, then, comes with a wry shrug. It is where it is, I get there when I get there, the way I get there. I may walk for a time with people, and for a time without them, and none of it means a thing, for we are all on the same path.

As I walk, I understand how someone walking a path can experience being the path. There's probably a Zen name for this.

I come out of the labyrinth and collect my things.

And then I walk the long path home.

Pattern of the Chartes labyrinth.