LTRP Note: The following news story from a Canadian news source reports on the growing popularity of labyrinths. The structures, used to practice meditation and contemplative prayer, are being built all across North America. Please review our research on labyrinths as well (click here).
BRENNAN CLARKE
The Globe and Mail
Toronto, Canada
…If all this talk of energy flow and sacred geometry sounds like claptrap from the New Age fringes, guess again: Labyrinths are in the midst of a popular resurgence. In recent years, variations have popped up by the dozens in churches, spiritual retreats and public spaces across the country….
Anne Nesbitt, co-ordinator of the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth project, believes the labyrinth’s renaissance is a reaction to troubled times – a way for people to make sense of issues such as global conflict and climate change.
…But the resurgence can also be traced to Lauren Artress, a psychotherapist and Episcopalian minister from California.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Artress made a pilgrimage to the Chartres labyrinth in France, which had fallen into disuse. Dr. Artress copied down its dimensions and set about installing replicas at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, where she was canon at the time.
In 1995, she wrote a book about the experience, called Walking a Sacred Path, which presents the labyrinth as a meditative refuge that offers moments of stillness and clarity amid the chaos of modern life….Click here to read this entire article.
