Starr King Unitarian Universalist Labyrinth

Starr King UU Labryinth

The current labyrinth at Starr King UU is a temporary structure as part of an on-going project.

The stakes are wooden and have been painted to symbolize the four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. A wire chalice has been placed in the center to reflect this labyrinth’s Unitarian Universalist setting.

Our church and our labyrinth are open for a visit each Sunday.

Labryinths

There is no one way to walk a labyrinth. You can walk over lines or hold straight to the path. You can sing and dance and ring a bell or walk in quiet contemplation.

One way to look at walking a labyrinth is to consider the three fold path: Release the world, Receive what the center has to give, Return to the world.

A labyrinth is a design where there is one path in and one path out. Why a labyrinth, well, there are many perspectives on their purpose:

• A form of walking meditation
• A lesson in contemplation
• A form pilgrimage
• A form of time travel

Labyrinths, as symbols, are over 4000 years old. Cave paintingss of labyrinths dot bronze age Europe. Ancient peopled carved them in burial mounds. Placed crocks in patters that survive to the modern age. Walking in one may not send you back in time, but there’s something to knowing tht your footsteps are traveling a path walked by others, reaching back in time.

Some believe that the trojeborg (Swedish labyrinths) were used as signals to ancient mariners by filling them with candles.

A scribe recording the delivery of goats of Mycenaean palace in Pylos seems to have doodled one on the side of a 1200 BC accounting record. Even in Linear B, people got bored at work.

Romans often tiled labyrinths on their floors in a variety of patterns. They would surround them with images of walls and show the minotaur at the center. And yet, labyrinth’s aren’t mazes. They don’t exist to confuse. To reach the center is as simple as putting one foot in front of the other.

In medieval cathedrals, labyrinths were often built to enable parishioners to on a sort of pilgrimage of the mind. At the Cathedral of Amiens France, each Easter, the Dean of the Chapter of Auxerre would dance in triple time through the cathedral labyrinth while throwing a ball to the other clerics, who danced outside the labyrinth.

In a more transient tradition, each summer, people all over the world grow labyrinths from corn and sunflowers, or lay out bales of hay.

Some people see the internet as a maze. Surfing through vast stores of information into infinite series of possible dead ends. And yet, it’s an internal pilgrimage. You can’t actually get lost, there’s always the back button. You’re only sitting at a monitor. You can always walk away. As right now, you sit and read this, and move your mouse to navigate the glowing internal world, and eventually having received knowledge, get up and go out into the world.

As T.S. Eliot said, In our beginning, our end, in our end, our beginning.

Spirituality

Since walking a labyrinth can be a profoundly spiritual experience, to help give you a sense of our spiritual community, you can:

• Check out podcasts of our Sunday Celebrations

• Read a series of articles from our monthly newsletter examining how common words from the Christian tradition from a UU perspective

• Or take a look at some of the activities that take place at our church. From Pagan circles and mediations in dance, to film series and satars, morning and evening discover, and special classes

• Or if you're curious as to who we are, you can take a look at our history and learn more about us.