A labyrinth is a narrow, circuitous, complicated, highly structured and unchanging pathway that is nevertheless said to be uncannily relaxing and profoundly playful.
Advocates say walking a labyrinth will quiet the mind, feed spiritual hunger, heal suffering, release the ego, bring order to chaos, amuse, amaze, transform the psyche and give firsthand experience of the divine.
It seems a tall order for a pattern on a floor.
Unlike a maze, designed to confuse, a labyrinth has no dead ends, or even choices. The path, though not obvious in all its twists and turns, leads only to the center.
“The labyrinth reflects back to you whatever you need to discover,” said psychotherapist and Episcopal priest Lauren Artress, who will anchor a conference on following sacred paths in Arvada on Jan. 15-16.
As a member of two professions dedicated to changing people, Artress considers the labyrinth to be one of the most powerful tools of transformation she has encountered.
“We’re always told what to believe, what to do. We’re told. We’re told. We’re told,” she said. “The labyrinth evokes our own deep intuitive wisdom about ourselves. “
Artress is largely credited with reviving the ancient spiritual discipline in contemporary Christian experience after it had largely slipped from awareness for some 350 years.
The labyrinth had re-emerged in the early 1980s, here and there, in relatively small circles of geomancers, dowsers and New Age adherents, said David Gallagher, executive director of the New York- based Labyrinth Society.
Then Artress, with a book in the mid-1990s, created a burst of interest within Christianity, concentrated in the Episcopal and Anglican traditions. It then blossomed into a worldwide movement, Gallagher said.
Labyrinths began appearing in more and more churches and spiritual centers, but also in parks, medical facilities, schools, spas and even in the lavish lobby of a towering commercial office building, the Palazzo Verdi, in Greenwood Village.
More labyrinths have been built in recent years than at any other time in their known 4,000-year history, labyrinth historian Jeffrey Saward said.
Centering on the divine
Palazzo Verdi concierge Kyle Dittrich said since the building opened in late 2008, one or two people a day have walked the lobby floor’s granite and sandstone re-creation of the labyrinth in the 13th-century Catholic cathedral of Chartres, France.
“We have some regulars, like the ladies of the Red Hat Society. They walk it once a month,” Dittrich said. “Some people are shy about it and come up to me to get permission. Some people just take off their shoes and start walking.”
Every sacred tradition uses the metaphor of walking a path to find one’s spiritual center and to experience the divine, Artress said. To be human is to invoke symbols and metaphors.
“You have a meaningful life when you live a symbolic life,” Artress said.
Moving along a ritual pathway with a set center — and no way to get lost, despite the complexities — is an expression of trust in divine order.
“A labyrinth takes you out of time,” she said. “It is one big pause button.”
A self-described antsy person, Artress said she was unsuccessful at many forms of meditation, but the labyrinth is a “body prayer” that easily brings her to a contemplative state.
Saward’s England-based website, Labyrinthos.net, notes that the earliest forms, including the oldest one carved in rock in northern Spain, all had the same classical design of a single path laid out in concentric circles. Its origins are still mysterious, Saward said, but the same ancient symbol has been found in Rome, Crete, Egypt, India, Iceland, Arizona and New Mexico.
Saward said the labyrinth seems to symbolize the path to be followed in daily and seasonal cycles — in life and in death and in rebirth.
During the late medieval period, the labyrinth design was adapted and reproduced in cathedrals, parks and gardens to represent the Christian belief in the true path to salvation.
The labyrinth was fashionable again in the 19th century, Saward said, and its use has exploded in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Feeding spiritual hunger
Artress said it isn’t hard to understand the resurgence.
“All our institutions are shaky — educational, medical, religious, legal, financial. Everything is up for grabs,” Artress said. “It’s touching everyone’s lives. We shoot fear into our veins like heroin.”
Or, she said, we can seek to feed our spiritual hunger.
Philadelphian Patricia Pearce is in Denver because her mother is dying in hospice here. Pearce, 51, is in the practice of walking labyrinths and is using the “Petite Chartres” at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Denver.
“Every season of my life, it means something different for me,” Pearce said. “I’m at a transition point in my life. Walking it now is a way for me to affirm my willingness to walk this spiritual path with my mother — to say yes to God.
“When you step into the center — after walking, walking, walking — there is a beautiful stillness,” Pearce said. “I often will stand or kneel there for quite a long time.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
Find your path
2010 Colorado Spirituality Conference:
What: “Discovering and Following Your Sacred Path: The search for an authentic spirituality,” with Dr. Lauren Artress
When: Friday, check-in 5 to 7 p.m., program 7 to 8:45 p.m.; and 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday (doors open at 8 a.m.)
Where: Arvada Center for the Arts, 6901 N. Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada
More information: Pre-registration closes Sunday. Call 720-870-1497, or visit spiritualdirectioncolorado.org.
Want to walk?
Other Denver-area labyrinths can be found at: The Children’s Hospital Garden of Hope; St. Barnabas Episcopal Church; Unity Church of Denver; Evanston United Methodist Church; St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch; and St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Lakewood.
Most places ask the public to call ahead for availability of the labyrinth.
