We have now raised 100% of what’s needed! Thank you to all our generous donors. We have permission to maintain the painted labyrinth until construction begins, so you can visit anytime.  Come walk the mystery…

Grass labyrinth in Centennial Park

To find the site: Head straight down Parkes Drive, past the Cafe Pavilion, through the centre of the park and turn left into Dickens Drive.  Go past Loch Ave, on the left and you’ll find the labyrinth 100m further along Dickens Drive, in the field on the right, just past Lachlan Swamp. Here’s a park map to help you find your way.

We were honoured to be joined by the following Wisdom Keepers at our Interfaith Walk in December. To read their speeches, click on the box on the right.

Back Row: Rev Ben Gilmour, Paddington Uniting Church; Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins, Emanuel Synagogue; Fr Martin Davies, St James Church, King St; Venerable Boan Sunim, Korean Pori Temple, Gordon; Monsignor Tony Doherty, Church of Mary Magdalene, Rose Bay; Emily Simpson, Centennial Park Labyrinth Project

Front Row: Subhana Barzaghi Roshi, Zen BUddhist Centre; Aunty Ali Golding, Aboriginal Elder; Imam Amid Hady, Zetland Mosque

We had a wonderful fundraising event by the labyrinth this evening attended by our local member of parliament, Malcolm Turnbull MP.

Here’s the speech:

Welcome to this beautiful, peaceful field in this beloved park of ours. For those who haven’t seen one before, this is a labyrinth.  Its looking a bit tatty now, compared to when we first painted it in September, when the grass was thick and thirsty. Now the paths are worn down with use, which is a lovely problem to have.

Continue reading →

The Board of Trustees of Centennial Parklands have approved the construction of a sandstone meditation labyrinth and now we need your help to raise the money to build it. Based on the design of the medieval labyrinth in the Chartres Cathederal in France, the Centennial Park Labyrinth will be the first major public labyrinth in Sydney… a spiritual path in this much loved park.  The Labyrinth will be part of the Centennial Parkland’s 125th Anniversary in 2013, celebrating over a century of contributing to community health and well-being.  It will be a thing of great beauty – a significant public artwork as well as being a watering hole for the spirit for generations to come.  All donations to the Centennial Park Labyrinth project are tax-deductible. Help us create something wonderful for Sydney – a source of inspiration and contemplation for generations to come. More information…

Emily Simpson explains the background for the labyrinth in Centennial Park

A labyrinth is not a maze.  A maze has several different pathways and dead ends, which are deliberately designed to frustrate, confuse and quite literally ‘amaze’…

Maze: multiple pathways

A labyrinth, on the other hand has a single pathway and there are no dead ends so you can’t get lost. A maze is an intellectual exercise and a labyrinth is a spiritual one –  a simple, contemplative pathway which quiets the mind and opens the heart.

Classical Labyrinth: single path

Medieval Labyrinth: single path

The most famous labyrinth is in the Chartres Cathedral in France.  It was built in the early 13th Century and was seen as an alternate form of pilgrimage.  During the crusades, the journey to Jerusalem was too dangerous, so people would make their way to one of six Cathedrals in France, which at that time had labyrinths in them.

                         Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth                               Photo ©: Jeff Saward/Labyrinthos

But the labyrinth doesn’t belong to Christianity alone. There are Neolithic petroglyphs of the Classical design labyrinth in Spain.  The Romans had labyrinth mosaic floors and there are examples of pottery from 7^th century BC with labyrinth design. The Greeks used the labyrinth in their currency.

      Coin from Knossos. 3rd Century BC       Photo ©: Jeff Saward/Labyrinthos

                        Roman Mosaic Floor                                  Photo ©: Jeff Saward/Labyrinthos

There are turf labyrinths in the UK and Germany, usually found on village greens, some of which are documented to have been walked for over 500 years. There are hundreds of examples of stone labyrinths in Scandinavia built on coastal headlands.  There are also ancient examples in India and in North and South America.

Turf Labyrinth, Comberton, UK       Photo ©: Jeff Saward/Labyrinthos

Stone Labyrinth, Nyhamn, Sweden   Photo ©: Jeff Saward/Labyrinthos

Use of the Labyrinth in Europe fell out of favour sometime around the end of the 17^th century, coinciding with the cultural shift in emphasis to rational, linear thinking.  It was also around this time that mazes began to be introduced into garden design.

In the last few decades there’s been a revival of interest in the labyrinth and a return to this form of ‘slow cooking’ contemplation. In the last 15 years in the United States, there have been more than 200 labyrinths built in hospitals alone, including Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington DC, where the labyrinth is being used to help veterans with PTSD. They’re also being built in universities, public parks, schools and thousands of people are building them in their backyards.

  Granite Labyrinth, Indiana, USA      Photo ©: Jeff Saward/Labyrinthos

Washington, USA        Photo ©: Robert Ferre

 All images are the property of Jeff Saward / Labyrinthos 

www.labyrinthos.net

Dr Lauren Artress, who is the leading force in the use of the labyrinth as a spiritual practice, spoke to us recently about what it means and how we might approach it.

“Lauren Artress, an Episcopal priest and  psychotherapist largely considered responsible for sparking the labyrinth movement…” ~ O Magazine

“The modern-day bloom of labyrinths in this country can be traced to a restless Episcopal priest in California, the Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress, a psychotherapist with a divinity degree, who had already been pushing the envelope of traditional practice as a canon at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.”  New York Times

The gluttony games. It’s hard to believe that, having survived Extreme Christmas, people immediately, and without coercion, re-enter the retail ruckus. It’d take more than 20 per cent off lingerie and white goods to force me back into the Boxing Day fight-cage. Queensberry Rules be damned. I’d want spurs. Electric teeth. Revolving elbow-knives.

Shopping is hard work; sometimes fun but always knackering. Christmas shopping in particular leaves you wrung out, not because of its physical demands but because of the constant decision-state required.

Will great uncle Zanzibar like those particular sock stripes, or that particular snuff (movie)? What is there to which cousin Grace will give houseroom that won’t cost more to airmail than the entire relationship is worth? And in any case will it arrive in time?

Yet this – this yearning for control, this relentless decision-greed – is what leaves modern humanity so stressed out.

For with every decision comes responsibility. Even if it’s only responsibility to yourself (to ensure you’re not imbibing long-chain polymers in your water or giving yourself nano-cancer with your sunscreen), the constant need to make potentially life-death decisions with inadequate information is ceaseless. This can leave you – or at least me – feeling weirdly cirrus up there in the stratosphere; thin, wispy and dangerously blurred. So perhaps it’s unsurprising that the inverse also holds; that deprivation of choice can be a meditation.

I’ve never been a meditation person – which is odd, because I’m an obvious case for treatment.

But to my mind transcendental meditation, is the sole reason (apart from his beautiful hands) for Clint Eastwood’s screen-idol superiority over more worldly heroes like John Wayne or Gary Cooper. Indeed, I’d say it was transcendental meditation – and Ennio Morricone’s theme tune – that made The Good, the Bad and the Ugly one of the best films of all time.

But, envy it as I may, I cannot seem to stay still long enough to meditate. And if I do, I’m emitting zeds before I get close to nothing frame-of-mind. Vacuity remains an impossible, enviable grail. (I’m thinking cranial irrigation? Lobotomy?)

I make do. Swimming is good. Walking too offers a good mix of mental emetic and neuronal lullaby; a sense of stillness without the fact, which may be why I was intrigued enough recently to walk my first labyrinth. Continue reading →

Special fundraising event at the Mosman Art Gallery at 3pm on Sunday 1st April.

Robert Ferré was a founder of the Labyrinth Society and is a leading figure in the construction of labyrinths in the USA.  He is in Australia to build a labyrinth in the Childrenʼs Hospital in Westmead – the first hospital in Australia to have a labyrinth.  Robert’s talk will cover Divine Creation, number and proportion, and the quality of numbers as exemplified in Chartres Cathedral and its elegant labyrinth.  “Sacred geometry is a spiritual exercise that seeks to find eternal truths as displayed in the beauty of nature.”

Robert’s presentation will be from 3-4.30pm. Afternoon tea will be provided while we set up the canvas labyrinth. A facilitated labyrinth walk will begin at 5pm.  Booking essential – via emily@sydneylabyrinth.org