kristen leigh southworth cw401 guided reading on the...

SOLVITUR AMBULANDO1: CREATION OF THE LABYRINTH ON THE

MCGIFFERT ROOF AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Kristen Leigh Southworth

CW401 Guided Reading on the Labyrinth

September 2011

1 A Latin phrase, widely attributed to St. Augustine, but dating back to the cynic Diogenes of Sinope,

meaning: “It is solved by walking.”

Stops and Starts

“When did you come up with the idea to paint a labyrinth on the roof?” asked

Leslie Culbertson, who was sitting on a bench nearby, keeping me company while I filled

in the chalk lines on the cement tiles with white primer paint.

“Oh, the first week I got here,” I answered.

It was true that I had been somewhat surprised and disappointed upon my arrival

at Union – the heralded progressive and ecumenical seminary of New York City – that a

labyrinth was nowhere to be found. For that matter no permanently-installed Chartres-

style labyrinth seemed to be regularly available to the public anywhere on the entire

Manhattan peninsula. “This is New York,” I thought, “don’t they have everything here?”

In retrospect, I can see how my journey up unto this point may have misled me as

to their ubiquity. I had only been a Christian for about a year when I stumbled onto the

courtyard of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco one night, and saw a labyrinth for the first

time, gleaming in the moonlight. The next Sunday when I attended church there, I also

experienced for the first time the Anglican liturgy, with its enchanted melodies of

Eucharistic prayer reverberating throughout the stone rafters of high Gothic ceilings.

After the service, I waited around until the crowd dwindled, slipped off my shoes, and

stepped onto the path of the indoor labyrinth at the back of the nave.

Both the experience of the liturgy and of the labyrinth left me with a feeling like

as if God had reached down into my depths, yanked out my soul, and was holding it right

out in front of my face to make sure I got a good, long look at it. I saw parts of myself I

could have sworn I’d never seen before even thought the whole experience felt strangely

familiar. It was less like discovering something new, and more like remembering

something that I had always known, but had at some point forgotten, like coming out of

some sort of amnesia, opening up a time capsule, or finding an important scrap of paper

containing all the information I had been searching for, which turned out to have been

hiding in my back pocket all along. Something ancient in me had been stirred.

I suppose all of this might have seemed a bit odd, except that things like this had

been happening to me a lot lately, and by this time I’d grown somewhat accustomed to it.

I’d come to know God as a playful sort of trickster, who I wasn’t always sure I liked, but

I definitely knew that I could trust. God had become like my best friend: often annoying,

always endearing, and always seeming to know me better than I knew myself. So for the

most part, I tried to let God do God’s thing, and I would go along for the ride. After all,

who would have ever thought that I, the overly rational agnostic/atheist with no patience

for religious hypocrisy and a vehemently scathing attitude towards Christians would find

myself a wayward but devoted disciple of Christ, loving Jesus more than anything in the

world, voraciously devouring sermons and books on the Bible, prayer, theology, and

mysticism like they were the bread of Life, and walking around proclaiming the good

news of God’s love everywhere I went, hugging perfect strangers on the subway platform

like a damn prophet or a holy fool? For God’s sake, I had even begun to consider

seminary. I visited the Graduate Theological Union while I was living in San Francisco,

and the discovery of something called an “arts & theology” program set my heart on fire.

“That’s me!” my insides cried out rather suddenly. I couldn’t have seen it coming.

My life, as it turned out, was a lot like the winding path of the labyrinth. Its

meandering corridor fit my own story like a glove; it was a physical metaphor that I could

literally step into and wander around inside of, accompanied by all my hopes and fears

and questions. All the stops and starts. All the seeming failures that still led in the

direction of somewhere. All the times that I thought I was moving towards the center,

only to get further away from it. All the times that I thought I was the furthest from

discovering the truth, only to suddenly find myself suddenly staring it in the face,

watching it giggle at me joyfully like it knew how close I’d been all along.

I eventually got a job working at the basement bookstore of Grace Cathedral,

selling labyrinth books, key chains, necklaces, and other spiritual wares to parishioners

and pilgrims. It held rank for my favorite job ever until a couple of years later, when I

found myself back in my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, running my own

spiritual bookstore at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. This was another parish with an

impressive courtyard Chartres labyrinth and vibrant labyrinth ministry, and I maintained

a large section of books and resources on the subject in order to serve the community’s

growing interest. The titles we carried had been recommended to me by the director and

facilitator of the Labyrinth Keepers ministry. Though I had browsed through most of

them to get a sense of what they had to say, I only really knew enough about the

scholarship on labyrinths to provide a brief introduction to my customers.

In the fall of 2009, we invited Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, the canon priest at Grace

Cathedral who had installed the first Chartres labyrinth there – and who has subsequently

inspired the installation and resurgence of the labyrinth in churches worldwide – to come

and offer a public lecture, book signing, and a 3-day workshop for labyrinth facilitators.

Her visit attracted more than 300 people over the course of the weekend, many of whom

traveled from all over the Southeast to hear her speak about reclaiming this ancient

symbol and practice and its meaning for the church for today. Working behind the scenes

for the event, I was unable to actually participate in the workshop, but it became clear to

me that ecumenical interest in the labyrinth was surging among progressive Christians

and non-Christian faith seekers alike, and I knew enough from my own experience with

walking the path to understand the power and potential of this meditative prayer practice.

I could claim that it was this awareness of the growing public interest in church

labyrinths that inspired me to paint a labyrinth on the roof at Union. But I have to admit

that there was at least some element of self-interest involved as well. After a long, hard,

first year of seminary, I wanted to walk a labyrinth. It had been a container for me, a safe

space in which I could enter into deep communion with my soul and with God. I had

always walked it in times of confusion and transition. This desire to walk the labyrinth is

what I think finally pushed me from idea into motivated action. Through my own need

for a labyrinth I came to feel that others might need it to, whether they knew it or not.

I began by polling some of my fellow students, particularly those who used the

roof frequently for social gatherings. “I’m thinking of painting a labyrinth on the roof,” I

would say. “What do you think?” The response I got was very interesting. The

Unitarian Universalist segment of the community, and others who aligned themselves

with multi-faith, agnostic, or non-doctrinal theologies and spiritualities, were very

familiar with the classic Cretan labyrinth and were supportive of the idea of making

available at Union what they understood as a really cool “pagan” ritual element. Those

who had been engaged in Buddhist meditation practices supported the idea of

incorporating a “walking meditation” into the space. Many people liked the idea because

it seemed that it would add an element of mystery, fun, and medieval-inspired beauty to

the roof. Everyone was enthusiastically supportive.

But very few people from the various Christian traditions, I discovered, were

familiar with the idea of the labyrinth as an ancient Christian symbol, or as a legitimate

and growing ministry within the church. Having been introduced to the labyrinth through

the church, I found this somewhat surprising, and rather intriguing. I encountered

genuine curiosity and interest around the idea of the labyrinth having historical roots in

the church, but not many people seemed to know very much about it. This only deepened

my resolve not only to bring a labyrinth into this ecumenical seminary community, but to

better educate myself on its symbolism and history, so that I could educate others about

its use within Christian ritual contexts.

Battling Logistics (or, Everything That Can Go Wrong Will)

Innocence is often the key to ambition. If I had known what I was getting myself

into with this labyrinth project, I am sure that I never would have started it. But this is

why I tend to follow a strict policy in life of only taking everything one step at a time,

and never expecting anything to go as planned. I had drawn labyrinth symbols before,

but never life-sized, and never permanently on someone else’s rooftop. The gravity of

the job I was taking on was in no way lost on me, and I knew that I was going to do this, I

would have just one chance to do it right.

I wanted to draw a labyrinth based on the one in Chartres Cathedral, not only for

its metaphorical complexity but for of its connection to Christian ritual and symbolism.

However after some preliminary measurements and checking the specs for the Chartres

labyrinth online, I discovered that I was going to have to make some significant

modifications. The original Chartres labyrinth is 42 feet wide, and the roof space

accommodated less than half of that diameter. I contacted Lauren Artress for her

recommendation, and she pointed me to the 7-circuit variation of the Chartres design.

Chartres Labyrinth: 7-circuit variation:

Drawing a life-sized Chartres labyrinth requires a stationary pole of some sort, a

rope of some sort, and chalk. The pole stands at the position of the labyrinth center. The

rope is tied to the pole, and then marked with the measurements for each path line. By

holding a piece of chalk next to each of these markers and holding the rope tight you can

trace the concentric circles onto the surface.

After experimenting with different center, line, and path widths, and carefully

testing the aesthetics and practicalities of different sizes, I quickly realized that this

project was going to involve a good bit of math…never my strong suit. In her book

Walking a Sacred Path, Lauren Artress goes into great detail about the symbolic

importance of the sacred geometry of the labyrinth and the numerological significance of

each aspect of the design. “Sacred geometry,” she claims, “is a lost art that developed a

balance and serene climate for the human psyche and soul,”2 something we might

perhaps think of as the feng-shui of the medieval West. Artress explains that the scholars

of the esoteric school at Chartres from the sixth to the twelfth centuries understood

geometry to be one of the four keys to all knowledge in the world (along with arithmetic,

astronomy, and music).3 And in her discussion of some of the major challenges facing

the labyrinth movement in the church today, Artress identifies one as the unfortunate

proliferation of badly-built labyrinths. “The sacred geometry embedded in the [Chartres]

labyrinth is crucial,” she writes, “and its requirements are quite precise.”4

Logistically speaking, in order to ensure the geometric integrity of the design, the

labyrinth would have to be drawn fully with chalk, and then quickly outlined with the

cement primer paint, before any chalk lines were washed away. In order to make sure

that the primer and paint dried correctly, I was advised that I should not apply it during

the middle of the day, when the cement roof tiles would be baking in the hot August sun.

This made it impossible to complete in one sitting. A sudden untimely rainstorm could

ruin everything. Ideally, however, the pole would remain unmoved for the duration of

the project, so that any mistakenly erased lines could be easily re-drawn.

Taking inventory of all that could go wrong, I began to doubt my ability to

actually accomplish it all. But somewhere in the midst of the uncertainty, God granted

me determination, and after some long periods of silence during which I attempted to

accept my ultimate lack of control over the outcome, I chose to take up the challenge. I

placed a sign on the door to the roof and sent out an email to the entire Union community

informing them of my plan to paint the labyrinth, asking them not to walk on the space or

move anything – especially not center pole – for the next couple of days.

The work of that first Sunday afternoon involved an intense aerobic workout,

hopping around in 16 concentric circles, each one slightly larger than the last, in 90

degree heat, as I drew the chalk lines that would become the walls of prayer. Before

completing the two outer rings, the sun became overpowering and I went downstairs to

get some water and cool off. When I returned to the roof less than an hour later, I was

dismayed to find that the center pole had been moved and tables and chairs had been

placed back on top of the newly-drawn labyrinth. I thought about starting over, but that

2 Lauren Artress, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice (New York:

Penguin, 1995), 48.

3 Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 108.

4 Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 186-190.

would have set me back an entire day and I was already on a tight deadline. I noticed an

outline in the cement where the pole had been. With some careful shifting, I was able to

get the pole within millimeters of its original placement. The two outer circles appeared

to be perfectly concentric. It would be fine, I told myself.

Following the helpful specifications outlined in Sally Welch’s book Walking the

Labyrinth: A Spiritual and Practical Guide5, I measured out and drew in the entrance and

exit paths, and erased the lines at each of the correct junctures and intersections in order

to create the turns for a functional 7-circuit medieval pattern. I added curves to the turns

by tracing around the top of an overturned table I found in McGiffert’s second floor

common room, which just so happened to be the right size. When I stepped back to look

at the completed drawing, I had to admit that it looked pretty darn good, even in spite of

the mishap of the moved pole. I walked it through once, just to make sure that it actually

worked, and I was somewhat surprised and very relieved when I actually reached the

center. It would be worth putting down in paint after all.

I checked the weather forecast: clear skies, with no chance of rain until the

following evening, which would give me enough time to paint the outlines. But as I

opened the can of primer and pulled out my brush, I again took inventory of all that might

go wrong. I could get confused about which side of the line to fill in; I could accidentally

knock the can of primer over and make a big white blob on the top of the roof; someone

could walk across the wet lines while I wasn’t paying attention and create permanent

white footprints. And again, an unexpected bout of rain could prove disastrous. I knew

that this entire project would require God’s grace, along with my total concentration. So

I said a prayer to the Holy Spirit: guide my hands, heart, and mind, as well as all those

whose footsteps would enter this sacred path, and let this labyrinth be a means for people

to hear the voice of God and experience a concrete connection with the Divine.

The sun had already begun to set as I began to apply the primer. I worked as fast

as I could until the last bit of light was left, but when darkness finally fell, a quarter of the

labyrinth still remained unpainted. It would have to be completed early the next morning.

Then as I prepared for bed that evening, I heard something that made my heart sink: the

pitter patter of a gentle rain falling outside. I ran to my computer to check the weather

again: sure enough, the forecast had changed. With half of the labyrinth already painted,

starting completely over again was no longer an option. And with the center pole having

been moved the day before, there was no way to precisely re-draw the remaining quarter

of those already-painted circles. And so I didn’t sleep much that night, wondering what

in the world I was going to do. At 5:30am I sauntered sleepily up to the roof to assess the

situation. As I suspected, most of the chalk lines had been washed away, except for the

crucial curve lines at each of the intersections, which had been drawn in red chalk. These

remained, and so I was able to used these curves to reconnect the dots and draw roughly

symmetrical lines to recreate the missing section of the labyrinth.

As I began to apply primer to these newly-drawn paths, I became deeply

dismayed. The proportionate integrity of the labyrinth was lost. Even if no one would

ever be able to tell, I would always know that in certain places the labyrinth was wrong.

Would this lack of mathematical precision diminish the feng-shui effect of the labyrinth’s

sacred geometry? Would this be just another poorly-drawn labyrinth? Nothing would

5 Sally Welch, Walking the Labyrinth: A Spiritual and Practical Guide, (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010).

ever align now, it seemed. I spent the morning scolding myself, cursing the weather, and

lamenting what felt to me like lousy, arbitrary paths.

But when I finally finished these new outlines and saw the finished work, a sense

of peace swept over me. Somewhere in the process I heard a voice from deep within

suggesting that perhaps God did not want a “perfect” labyrinth on this roof after all.

Perhaps this was not part of the Design. I considered my friend the apostle Paul, writing

in his second letter to the Corinthians (12:9) that the power of God is made perfect

precisely in weakness. The Hopi had also been on my mind, a native culture with its own

labyrinth history and mythology, and I remembered the tradition of their Navajo

neighbors to weave an “imperfection” into the corner of every rug, for it is precisely in

this spot where they believe that the Spirit enters. Maybe, I thought, this “imperfect”

corner of the labyrinth would be where the Holy Spirit would enter, reaching into the

hearts of the perfectly imperfect pilgrims who would walk it. Somehow I felt like Paul,

in the spirit of Christ, would agree.

Once the primer had been laid down, the next step was to add the actual paint. I

had originally chosen a grey color so that the labyrinth would blend in subtly with the

existing cement tiles for a kind of barely-noticeable effect. But the contrast of the bright

white primer paint had been admired by several students, since it made the labyrinth

visible and walkable at night. And so as I began to apply the grey paint it no longer felt

right. I paused, and reconsidered the context. Over the past year, the Edible Churchyard

had transformed this industrial-looking urban rooftop into a beautiful and plentiful

garden, using scraps of food waste and other trash to churn out composted soil that

brought forth a delicious abundance of herbs and vegetables. And so, I decided to go

back and exchange the grey paint for a more earthy, compost-inspired brown.

When I returned the next evening with the brown paint, ready to begin adding the

color, I encountered one of the seminary’s faculty members relaxing on the roof. “Do

you mind if I just work on this while you are up here?” I asked innocently, expecting

everything to be fine. After all, I had not only received permission for the project from

the Director of Housing, but I’d had the overwhelming support of everyone I’d spoken to

about it, including students, staff, and the two faculty members who had agreed to let me

approach the project as an independent research project for academic credit. This

professor, however, did mind. Having not been informed of the project, he was very

concerned about what it would mean to have a prayer symbol taking over what had

always been a space for entertainment and social gatherings. I tried to assure him that

once it was finished it would not be in anyone’s way, but he assured me that he would be

contacting the Facilities Department to vie for its removal. Sure enough, as I was later

finishing the application of the brown paint, the Housing Director came up to ask me to

discontinue working on it until a faculty meeting could be held to discuss the situation.

A Labyrinth is Not a Maze, and other dubious assertions

I experienced great inner turmoil about the conflict I had unintentionally caused

among seminary faculty and staff. But how did my plan to paint a sacred symbol of

prayer on the residential roof at a progressive Christian seminary become equivalent to a

subversive act of graffiti art? It was almost two weeks until the meeting that would

decide the fate of the labyrinth, which gave me plenty of time to ponder these and other

questions. The controversy had given me some perspective on the lengthy defense that

Lauren Artress offers in her book on behalf of spirituality, mystical experience, and the

power of the labyrinth to move us beyond the overly rationalistic values that have reigned

in the West during the early modern era and modern eras. I had not understood why she

had devoted so much time and so many pages to emphasizing these ideas. The spiritual

merits of symbols like the labyrinth seemed so obvious to me. But suddenly, the need for

clarification seemed to make a lot more sense.

“As we in the West learned to use our rational minds,” Artress writes of the

transition into early modernism, “we developed a sense of superiority that denied our

intuition and imagination their rightful place among the human faculties we need to

survive.”6 Quoting William Blake, who believed that “the enemy of whole vision is

reasoning power’s divorce from the imagination,” Artress argues that the imagination

came to be viewed with suspicion precisely because of the way it was differentiated from

the developing sense of rationality.7 Lacking the proper tools for discernment between

true mystical experience and imaginary fantasy, most people came to confuse deeper

intuitive forms of imaginative knowing with “superstition.” Ultimately, Artress goes on

to say, the imagination as a whole was placed into exile. And though she insists that “the

tyranny of the Age of Reason is losing its grip,”8 it would seem that it still holds sway in

many religious and educational institutions.

Artress identifies three traditional ways of knowing God in Christianity: given

knowledge, as in the Scriptures; tradition, such as liturgical worship and the inspired

spiritual writings of those who have lived the faith before us; and continued revelation,

through direct experiences of the Holy. “The third avenue has always been

controversial,” she writes, “and depending on the denomination or the tradition, comes

with all kinds of caveats.”9 This controversy can be seen in the disputes over the

suitability of certain prayer practices that claim to entail direct experiences of the Holy

within seminary education. After all, this kind of “knowledge” is not something that can

be evaluated, critiqued, footnoted, or accredited. As a spiritual practice, the labyrinth can

and often does lead to direct experiences of the Divine, experiences that are characterized

by a kind of holy humility, self-awareness, and egolessness. For societies and institutions

organized around values of possession, prestige, and power, it is looked upon as suspect.

One cannot help but to wonder if this resistance to Mystery was not an underlying

factor behind the destruction of church labyrinths at the end of the eighteenth century.

According to Sally Welch, their destruction took place within a few short years, and was

almost total. Those that remained, like the famous labyrinth found in Chartres cathedral

in northern France, fell out of use and became just another floor decoration.10

While no

one seems to have a clear sense of the reason behind their destruction, it is interesting to

place it within the historical context of the so-called “Enlightenment.” Lauren Artress

observes that: As the Western world moved into the Enlightenment, we embraced reason as the

central function of the mind. This excluded subjective experiences: the senses, as





10 Welch, Walking the Labyrinth, 25.

well as intuition, dreams, or any hints of revelation. In the eyes of both scientists

and leaders of the Reformation, the religious imagination was stripped of all

respect…Protestants banished symbols and images from their churches because

they thought them idolatrous.11

Significant shifts in Western thought during the early modern period were

occurring not only in scientific and religious circles, but in the field of mathematics as

well. The labyrinth was built according to Pythagorean Geometry, which had no zero

and was based around the number one, representing the central concept of unity and

symbolized by the circle. In a mathematical paradigm more closely mirroring the natural

pattern of cells, unity became multiplicity not through addition but through division.

Artress therefore speculates that the movement from Pythagorean to Cartesian thought

may have eventually contributed to the loss of interest in labyrinths.12

However, on intriguing factor that may have influenced the abandonment of

labyrinths by the church was the coinciding rise in popularity of a recent invention, the

maze, as a secularized leisure activity. The subsequent conflation of labyrinths and

mazes in the popular imagination seems to have played an important role in the

displacement of the labyrinth’s spiritual and religious significance. Indeed, it is precisely

in an effort to overcome this pervasive and entrenched conflation that much of the

literature introducing the labyrinth as a spiritual practice today goes to great lengths to

emphasize the important differences between labyrinths and mazes. The labyrinth, many

writers often choose to highlight, offers a single path that always leads to the center,

whereas a maze emphasizes choice and presents dead ends as consequences for wrong

choices. While both mazes and labyrinths offer the experience of being lost, in a

labyrinth, one is never actually lost. Sally Welch stresses this as one of the most

important points to establish when introducing the labyrinth to newcomers.13

Yet, as soon as these authors move away from their conversation about spiritual

direction and facilitation of labyrinth walks and into a discussion of the history of

labyrinths, the two concepts suddenly seem to merge again in their own writing. What

were emphasized as two completely different phenomena in the previous chapter are

suddenly treated as synonymous. This abrupt shift from “a labyrinth is not a maze…” to

“the labyrinth was a maze…” characteristically occurs in the literature with little or no

explanation. How are we to account for this confusion?

The popular concept of the “labyrinth” as a maze-like structure that threatened to

forever trap an individual inside of it dates back at least to the third century CE, when the

term was used to describe the ominous structure built by Daedelus in Crete to house the

Minotaur in the Greek myth of Theseus.14

This mythology continued to inform popular

conceptions of the labyrinth throughout the time of the Roman Empire and well into

Middle Ages, when church labyrinths were most often depicted with the half-man, half-

beast in the center.

11

Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 115.


13 Welch, Walking the Labyrinth, 41.

14 Helmut Jaskolski, The Labyrinth: Symbol of Fear, Rebirth and Liberation (London: Shambhala, 1997),

5-23.

It is in curious contrast to the literary myth describing the labyrinth as a maze that

none of the graphic depictions of labyrinths actually contained any dead ends, and

therefore offers no conceivable way of actually getting lost. Hermann Kern offers a

comprehensive analysis of this confusing contradiction: The term labyrinth is most frequently used as a metaphor in reference to a

difficult, unclear, confusing situation. This figurative, proverbial sense of the

word has been in use since late antiquity and can be traced back to the concept of

a maze, a tortuous structure (a building or a garden) that offers the walker many

paths, some of which lead to dead ends or blind alleys. This particular notion of

a labyrinth derives from the many written accounts from the third century BCE in

which the labyrinth (in this context, a maze) is employed as a literary motif. By

comparison, the earliest depiction of a maze dates from about 1420 CE; in

curious contrast to the literary tradition widely accepted in antiquity and the

Middle Ages, all depictions of labyrinths up to the Renaissance show only one

path, therefore, there is no possibility of going astray. This visually simple

concept, however, has been eclipsed by the more complex notion of a “maze” (at

first a mere literary construct) since antiquity. In fact, these two distinct notions

have been obfuscated over time, resulting in unavoidable terminological

confusion, which has not been accounted for until this century.15

The invention of the maze as an actual physical construct in the fifteenth century seems

to have corresponded to a significant turning point in Western thought. Regarding this

shift, Jaskolski writes: It is no accident that it was in the same century that the first labyrinths in the

form of mazes were devised, playful innuendoes of the uncertainty of humanity’s

capacity for orientation and at the same time, signals of a new relationship of

man to himself and to the world. In contrast to the medieval labyrinth, which as

a figure of orientation and salvation led with certainty into the middle and out

again, the new mazes were symbols of a way that was uncertain through and

through, on which the traveler constantly had to deal with false paths and

confusion, a route that forked without warning and often enough led into dead

ends.16

It was from this point in history that the labyrinth and the maze conceptually

diverged into two very different physical and metaphorical depictions of life’s journey.

The maze offered an experience that was more resonant with the rational humanism that

was already on the rise in the fifteenth century and ultimately came to prevail in Western

thought during the Early Modern period. Thus, having lost its mathematical,

mythological, and metaphorical power, the singular path of the labyrinth eventually came

to be rejected as an archetypal construct of any significance, and became dormant in

Western culture for the next several hundred years of human history.

It is only with the recent shift to postmodern thought that the metaphorical

meaning inherent in the singular path of the labyrinth has begun to re-emerge as a

resonant symbol. The opportunity that it provides walkers to focus their attention

inwardly, without concentrating on externals for orientation is slowly becoming a more

powerful and meaningful experience than that of the maze, which emphasizes individual

choice and self-determination – values that the current culture is beginning to question.

15

Hermann Kern, Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings Over 5,000 Years (New York: Prestel,

2000), 23.

16 Jaskolski, The Labyrinth, 88-89.

It is interesting to note that the labyrinth’s resurgence has also coincided with a further

development in mathematics, from Cartesian thought to chaos theory, which completely

reorients relationships between predictability and perceptions of chaos. As we move into

new frontiers of scientific thought and spiritual understanding, the meaning and metaphor

in the labyrinth has begun to speak to us anew.

Art, Archetypes, and the Appropriateness of Appropriation

The question of what the labyrinth actually meant to the ancient and medieval

people for whom it was so pervasive seems to be (perhaps not surprisingly) a matter of

some significant debate. Again, Hermann Kern offers the most comprehensive approach

to the subject: “Since the etymology of the word [labyrinth] is unknown,” he writes, “and

the earliest literary references obviously denote a derivative secondary meaning,

reconstructing the labyrinth concept can be tackled only indirectly.”17

Kern suggests that

there is strong visual and literary evidence for the hypothesis that the labyrinth design, at

its earliest, actually had a choreographical function. The term labyrinthos, he writes,

more than likely denoted a dance whose path was determined by the graphic pattern, in

addition to describing the pattern itself. By the third century, cultural understanding of

the dance had diminished and the term came to have a vague meaning associated with

something unpredictable or confusing in character. It was during this time that it came to

be applied to the structure built by Daedelus in the Theseus myth.

Somehow it seems fitting that any attempt to trace the history of practices

surrounding the labyrinth would prove winding and elusive. Perhaps it is the very nature

of a symbol made by the imagination, for the imagination, that it precludes or evades

historical lucidity or clear singularity of purpose. Of the available historical documents

and research concerning the question of the labyrinth’s meaning, Kern observes that: The records contradict each other in almost every way possible, and fundamental

elements are either missing or skewed by the perspective of the interested party.

In addition, we are not only dealing with a symbol of the past, but with one that

continues to have significance today, a fact that naturally influences our view of

historical and philological considerations do not provide a comprehensive picture

of this concept.18

Given these problems, it is equally as confusing to speculate on what the meaning

and/or ritual purpose of medieval church labyrinths might have been. Unlike most other

pervasive ecclesial elements utilized for ritual and spiritual practice, there seems to have

been little effort or interest on the part of the official church to unify any Christian

understanding surrounding use of the labyrinth through doctrinal or theological writings.

There are no known records of anyone walking the labyrinth, or descriptions of how such

a walk might have been understood,19

which has led some scholars to surmise that the

labyrinth held little value beyond an aesthetic element of the medieval church, something

akin to stained glass windows or flying buttresses. However, indirect references to its use

suggest that there were varied traditions and practices surrounding the labyrinth, and that

17

Kern, Through the Labyrinth, 23.

18 Kern, Through the Labyrinth, 30.


its use was simply never systematized by the clergy or discussed in any official church

documentation.

The earliest known church labyrinth was in the Roman square style and dates

from the fourth century in Algeria.20

In the ninth century, a labyrinth was carved into the

entrance of the cathedral in Lucca, Italy, accompanied by the following words: “Here is

the labyrinth that Daedalus of Crete built and which no one can leave who is once inside;

only Theseus achieved this thanks to Ariadne’s thread.”21

The wear in the stone indicates

that people frequently traced their fingers along the path; perhaps before entering.

Roman style labyrinth Lucca labyrinth, ninth century

While most people in the ninth century would not have been able to read the words the

labyrinth at Lucca, it is interesting that the allusion to the pre-Christian myth was so

clear, particularly given the supposed emphasis on rooting out the influence of Greek

paganism among the early church fathers. Minotaurs, in fact, were very commonly

depicted in the center of church labyrinths. Keith Critchlow even believes that the center

of the famous Chartres cathedral in France, which has now been destroyed, originally had

an engraving of the Minotaur.22

The best explanation for the presence of overt references to Theseus and the

Minotaur in Christian labyrinths seems to be the process of inculturation. The story had

apparently become so ubiquitous and culturally-imbedded that it seemed perfectly

reasonable to reinterpret and incorporate it as a Christian allegory.

In the Christian interpretation of the myth, the Minotaur is analogous to Satan and

the powers of death, and the labyrinth itself represents the fate from which no mortal

alone can escape. Christ takes the place of Theseus as the one who travels to the center

defeats the Minotaur and escapes from the labyrinth, representing his miraculous

resurrection. Christ himself, then, becomes Adriadne’s thread, the lifeline by which those

who find their faith in him will also escape from death and Hell. Journeying to the center

20


21 Jaskolski, The Labyrinth, 54.


of the labyrinth and back out again becomes a symbolic reminder of God’s triumph over

sin, death, and Satan.

In addition to their reinterpretation of the literary motif, Kern has observed how

the medieval Christians of Chartres also reconfigured the design of the labyrinth so that a

cross overlaid the circular path, further emphasizing the symbolic meaning.23

However,

not all labyrinths in Christendom followed the same design as the labyrinth at Chartres,

nor were they all used for the same ritual purposes. The octagon-shaped labyrinth at the

cathedral in Amiens has been of particular interest to scholars since it has the same shape

as the traditional baptismal font, causing some to speculate that this particular labyrinth

may have been connected to the community’s baptismal rituals.24

Amiens Cathedral octagon labyrinth

Other scholars have noticed that several labyrinths in northern France were

referred to as “Chemin du Jerusalem,” the path to Jerusalem, and also “la lieue,” meaning

“the league,” which was equivalent to the distance a person could cover in approximately

an hour.25

According to some scholars, this seems to suggest that the path may have been

walked by parishioners as a substitute for the last league of the pilgrimage to the Holy

Land. Parishioners who did so could conceivably gain the same spiritual benefits that a

real pilgrimage would garner.

In one of the only recorded uses of a labyrinth during the liturgy is described as a

dance pattern or surface. There are detailed accounts from the cathedrals of Auxerre and

Sens describing labyrinth dances that the bishop (or dean) and chapter members

performed on Easter Sundays.26

These dances, however, presumably like all other ritual

and ceremonial uses of the labyrinth, seem to have been a regional particularity. Instead

of being utilized in any officially-proscribed manner, the labyrinths of the medieval

23


24 Jaskolski, The Labyrinth, 65.

25 Kern, Through the Labyrinth, 148.

26 Kern, Through the Labyrinth, 146-147.

church seem to have simply been a pervasive symbolic element serving a variety of

ecclesial purposes and offering a multitude of spiritually symbolic meanings.

Many Christians and non-Christians alike today are skeptical or even overtly

critical of the resurgence of labyrinths within the church today. Their concerns seem to

stem largely from issues surrounding the appropriateness of appropriation. One the one

hand, some Christians maintain that all trustworthy truth originated within the Christian

cultures of the first four centuries, and therefore view the presence of the labyrinth in the

church as yet another example of a “pagan” ritual element infiltrating the “pure” practices

of an “orthodox” tradition. On the other hand, many non-Christians wish to maintain

clear categorical boundaries between different cultural and religious groups, and

therefore view the use of the labyrinth in the church as yet another example of Christians

inappropriately exploiting the symbols of other cultural traditions.

Both of these criticisms are short-sighted in that they fail to take into account the

dynamic nature of cultures or the ritual function that art forms and archetypes serve in the

human psyche. The popularity and pervasive reapplication of the labyrinth in cultures

and spanning across vast distances of space and time reveals it to be an archetype with

deep human significance, resonating both within and beyond the meaning-orientations of

the Christian church. While the meanings and myths applied to labyrinths in particular

cultural contexts vary, there is something in the symbol that echoes within the common

heart of humanity, and it is this human significance that has caused it to travel from its

unknown place of origin (probably somewhere in the Mediterranean) to cultures as far

reaching as India, Java, and the American Southwest.27

Everything comes from somewhere, whether we are able to identify its place of

origin or not. Honest historical scholarship reveals that very few, if any, of the religious

symbols, stories, and traditions of Christianity were “original.” They all had their pre-

Christian roots. This is true for every religious tradition. Does that undermine the depth

of their meaning, or diminish the truth in these symbols, stories, and traditions? On the

contrary, I would argue that it in fact confirms their validity. When human civilizations

across the globe find that a symbol resonates with meaning, even if the details of that

meaning or how it should be applied in ritual contexts varies, we know that we have

encountered something that is, at least in some sense, profoundly true.

The beauty of symbols, stories, and archetypes exists precisely in their ability to

transcend ownership by any one particular culture. This is the power of sacred art. Its

purpose and its propensity is to spread. It cannot be stopped. Efforts to restrain the

proclivity of human beings to creatively express their unique existential predicament

through an interaction with, or reinterpretation of, the aesthetic forms they encounter in

their world, are ultimately useless. And the labyrinth – whether it is understood as an

ancient dance, a literary construct, or a visual symbol that can help to guide prayer,

reflection, and meditation – is such a work of sacred art. The medieval church

understood the labyrinth to express a distinctly Christian truth, and Christians therefore

openly embraced the symbol up until the early modern period. There is no reason why

the church of the post-modern period should be afraid to look again with prayerful

imagination at this ancient symbol in the hopes of rediscovering or ascertaining anew the

depths of Christian wisdom that may still remain hidden within it.

27


Unleashing the Divine Feminine

Two weeks later, when the dust eventually settled on the controversy regarding

the McGiffert labyrinth, I was given permission to complete the project. With the path

lines painted, the labyrinth was of course already walkable. What remained, however,

were the groupings of 28 markings that surround the outside of the Chartres labyrinth,

which Lauren Artress has called “lunations,”28

as well as the six-petal rosette design in

the center. Both of these additions were complex to draw, and I had not been able to

figure out the formula to ensure the geometric integrity of these elements in relation to

the whole. The recommendation in Lauren’s book – to look for the invisible 13-pointed

star aligning everything – was of little use to me. I could no more visualize a 13-pointed

star than I could determine the diameter of six circles each fitting an inch apart inside a

larger center circle. With many people already accustomed to the labyrinth the way it

was, and given the recent conflict, I thought perhaps it might be best to stop there.

However, Artress’s description of the symbolic meaning ascribed to these

elements haunted me. She had explained in great detail, for example, how the rosette

center had been a symbol for the Virgin Mary, with the rose being regarded generally as a

symbol of receptivity and acceptance of God’s love.29

Furthermore, she speculated that

the “lunations” were a symbolic means of marking the lunar cycles, which were used to

determine the date of the lunar feast of Easter.30

Of these lunations she writes: Unfortunately, when people reproduce the Chartres labyrinth design the lunations are

often left off. I have come to appreciate and honor the lunations. They add beauty to

the labyrinth design and invite us, symbolically, to be back in touch with the lunar

cycles. To include them in the making of a labyrinth takes more work, but it does

add beauty and power. It completes the sense of the whole cosmos that the Chartres

labyrinth conveys. I have been in labyrinths where there were simply decorative

lines in place of the lunations. Walking into such a labyrinth felt like walking into a

tin can with no resounding energy. When the lunations are left off a labyrinth based

on the Chartres labyrinth, I wonder if the creator is unconsciously repeating what we

have done over the ages: disregarding the feminine.31

Well, I, for one, was certainly not going to be responsible for creating a tin can of

a labyrinth that disregarded the Divine Feminine. During the earlier phase of painting, I

had already been delighted to notice other hidden elements of feminine symbolism in the

labyrinth, like the many uterine shapes that made up the six double-ax curves. I decided I

must find a way to add these remaining symbolic components. Fortunately, while

visiting with Episcopal nuns at the Community of the Holy Spirit in Brewster, NY, the

answer found me. Bill, a neighbor of the convent, had painted a full-sized labyrinth a

few years back, and he happily provided me with all the mathematical advice I needed to

finish the design. It still took me three or four tries on the lunations, and at least nine

attempts at the center rosette, but I finally got them properly drawn, and then filled them

in with paint. As a final touch, I added clover designs to the inner ends of the center petal

lines using my very own thumbs, just to leave a small personal signature.

28

Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 60.




I then stepped back to admire the finished design. It had been 20 days since I’d

begun the project. Seeing it now completed felt like nothing less than a miracle. In

retrospect, it felt almost as if something had taken over my entire being for a few weeks,

which gave me the creativity, the nerve, the determination and the motivation to bring

this labyrinth into being. In spite of the conflict surrounding the project, I knew in that

moment that I had done the right thing. I knew that God was present in this space, and

that it was truly God who had willed this labyrinth into being.

That evening, I invited seven of my closest female friends from seminary up to

the roof to celebrate with me and bless the space. We sat in a circle around the center

with candles, fruit, prayer, and laughter. That night it seemed as though the entire

rooftop was filled with the energy of the Divine feminine. The next day, I was joined by

eight friends from the community who helped me to add an invisible layer of sealant to

the top of the labyrinth, hopefully preserving it for many years to come. As they began to

ask me questions about the process of creating it, the history behind it, and the meanings

it might have, I realized that over the past month I had experienced an immense

deepening of my appreciation for the vast, sacred potential of this ancient art.

The rooftop labyrinth was dedicated on September 14, 2011 with the following

prayer: “Gracious God, we ask you to send your blessing upon this roof and this labyrinth,

that it may become a space of sacred encounters for all present and future members of this

seminary community. Make this a safe path, a path of discovery. Send your Holy Spirit to

be present with all its pilgrims to guide them towards greater healing, self-understanding,

and transformation through experiences of Your Presence. May all who walk this labyrinth

be strengthened to serve all of creation, in Your holy name. Amen.”

The Call of Faith: Turn Around, Keep Walking, Repeat

In a chapel service devoted to introducing the labyrinth to the community, I

offered a brief homily on forgiveness, repentance, and “turning.” What can sometimes

feel like a dead-end in conflict, I suggested, might actually be a chance to “repent” –

literally to turn around – and to keep on walking, trusting the path. The great irony is

that in order for diverse people to truly live in together, we must make peace with

conflict. We must find our way humbly and responsibly through inevitable chaos and

confusion. We must commit to taking things only step by step, avoiding the foolish

expectation that we will ever overcome all our differences, or arrive at some place of

perfect clarity and understanding. I invited the congregation at Union to consider making

a commitment to forgiveness as a way of sustaining peace.

What was incredible that day about walking the labyrinth with a diverse group of

students was the realization that although each individual might derive vastly different

religious and spiritual meanings from the experience, we were all able to genuinely share

in that experience of making-meaning together. Solvitur ambulando. In the end, I

believe it to be true that our biggest moral and theological chasms cannot be bridged by

talking, but by walking. We must keep walking through the tensions, the turns, the

messiness and the chaos. And this is ultimately my hope for the labyrinth at Union: that

in and through all of its ambiguity and subtlety, it will somehow offer a way for people

recognize, reflect on, and remember that God is a verb, that community is a process, and

that no matter what happens, we must always, always keep walking.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Artress, Lauren. Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual

Practice. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Jaskolski, Helmut. The Labyrinth: Symbol of Fear, Rebirth and Liberation. London:

Shambhala, 1997.

Kern, Hermann. Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings Over 5,000 Years. New

York: Prestel, 2000.

Welch, Sally. Walking the Labyrinth: A Spiritual and Practical Guide. Norwich:

Canterbury Press, 2010.

PHOTOS OF THE LABYRINTH PROJECT

The first lines of paint…

Phase 2: outline with primer

Phase 3: fill in lines with primer

Phase 4: paint lines with color

Complete but still incomplete…

Phase 5: add lunations and center

Phase 6: add protective sealant

Me in the finished labyrinth.

kristen leigh southworth cw401 guided reading on the...

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