Laberinto 1 (del Nordisk familjebok) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

* Begin with a scene from the labyrinth, or at least the church. I want you to interview at least three other people who are there, either walking or observing. If the cathedral has not changed the way the walk is organized, a docent will take groups into a side chapel and explain the history of labyrinth walking. You will quote him or her.

* Of course, I want you to walk the labyrinth. This may become a very personal experience during which you think on your past life and philosophy, or on some current challenge. You may choose to write in detail about this or you may not. You may choose to be "objective," relying on observation and description, and on comments by others. But if you do choose to share your own experience, make it a separate story, a sidebar.   

* You have an option. One of these two stories may be longer than the other. You may choose to emphasize your personal experience or the news feature.

* Here are some leads from past stories from Arts Review classes. These approaches are fine for your personal story. But in any case, I want you to write a traditional news feature about the experience. I urge you to give this experience a try. This is extra credit, though it can substitute for a story you missed. No one gets a bad grade on this assignment:

- Driving east up the hill on California Street, Grace Cathedral’s size and ruddy color loom from the surrounded buildings, playground and opulent hotels and venues. Inside, I find the architecture and artistry astonishing, busying with myself with taking photographs I might share with my mother. It was also to stall in participating in the “meditative labyrinth," something which made me feel the opposite of the enthusiasm I had about playing photographer.

This “meditative labyrinth” and its accommodating choir was exactly what I wanted to avoid. My mother said, “You should try it and take it seriously,” but I had already done such things in elementary school all the way through high school, completely being negative to the whole experience or what they call, “closing yourself from God."

- I can not remember the last time that my Grandpa broke-wind in a church.  I actually can not remember the last time he was even in a church.  But there he was, crop-dusting his lunch gas across the Grace Cathedral's candle-lit corridors.  My Grandma was quite embarrassed, but I believe that it added to the experience.

There we were, at the top of Nob Hill inside the old stone place of worship, where pigeons and bums take refuge and all religions are welcome.  It wasn't the devotion service or the architecture that drew us in, but what was built into the nave's floor. 

- Many people seek to find themselves. I’ll admit, growing up in my teens, I did not know who or what kind of person I wanted to be. In the Jewish Community, a Bar Mitzvah signifies as a rite of passage to who a boy is to become but I wasn’t Jewish. For others, finding self can occur through hot-stone yoga, a run at Golden Gate Park, or at the Labyrinth in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. 

- There it lay, the labyrinth at the center of the church. It wasn’t exactly what I expected to be there when I heard that I was visiting a labyrinth. My first thought was that we were going to be lab rats in a maze in search of the cheese.

- I was raised a Christian Scientist – no, not Scientology (though I do favor the notion that aliens exist) – a religious practice that puts the power of healing into God’s hands and not a physicians. I would go to Sunday school, draw some pictures of God (who apparently looks like a firefly...), and not pay any attention to the Bible stories being taught. As the members of our church steadily began to die from old age, untreated sicknesses and suicide, I began cementing my notion that religion is utter garbage. This is the view I had all throughout my adolescence: that religion is a bunch of trite fiction that gets renamed and recombined; subsequently spurring people of “different” faiths to annihilate one another through endless warfare. As we all recall, adolescence is a time full of angst, and these notions were certainly fueled by my anti-authoritarian fervor. 

Here's a recent San Francisco Chronicle story on the labyrinth.


 Only about half of the people who’d arrived at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral for a recent Candlelight Labyrinth Walk decided to attend the the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress’ pre-walk explanation of the labyrinth’s process and purpose. Artress gathered her small group out of the main cathedral and into the AIDS Interfaith Memorial Chapel, in a wing just off the front doors. A portion of the original AIDS quilt hung on a wall facing Artress as she cheerfully offered advice and history on walking the labyrinth.

Outside the chapel, many of the folks who had already begun to walk had no idea they were missing a free explanation by the godmother of the modern labyrinth movement.

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