Walking the Labyrinth

The labyrinth is clearly meeting a need that our own traditional forms of worship are not meeting.

During Lent members of my parish church walked a canvas replica of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth on the floor of the church on Wednesday evenings. The same thing is happening in other Episcopal churches throughout the United States.

Those involved in the labyrinth movement present the labyrinth as a form of meditation that transcends the limitations of still meditation. But that is only part of the story. The labyrinth is much more than a tool for meditation. Read More

This article was originally published in The Living Church on August 27, 2000. I wrote the article after doing extensive research into the origin and history of labyrinth-walking. Since that time the labyrinth movement has made deep inroads into the Episcopal Church and other denominations. My former parish has an outdoor labyrinth as do a number of Episcopal churches, including at least one here in the Jackson Purchase. Labyrinth-walking has even gained a following in evangelical churches. A number of theories have been propounded for how the labyrinth works. Hindu practitioners claim it re-tunes the chakras, the centers of spiritual power in the human body. As readers will see, I am not a proponent of labyrinth-walking. I explain why in the article.