Labyrinth at First Parish in Concord
Concord, Massachusetts, United States
At First Parish in Concord, the Massachusetts town whose 1775 minute men and 19th-century transcendentalists made it a landmark of American conscience, the meetinghouse keeps a labyrinth for the congregation's walks.
At First Parish in Concord, the Massachusetts town whose 1775 minute men and 19th-century transcendentalists made it a landmark of American conscience, the meetinghouse keeps a labyrinth for the congregation's walks. The lineage runs from Concord's long meditation on inwardness to the medieval path underfoot. The Labyrinth Locator's record lists it as Medieval.
Every labyrinth is a walking practice, not a puzzle: a single path winds to a center and back out, and the walk is done slowly, as prayer or meditation. The pattern descends from the medieval pavement labyrinth at Chartres, and the modern urban revival began in the 1990s when Lauren Artress brought replicas of that path to American congregations and public grounds through Veriditas and the Labyrinth Society, whose World-Wide Labyrinth Locator now catalogs thousands. There is no branching and no trick to the path; walkers of every religion and none use it.
Visiting
firstparish.org carries the site's own information and schedule.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Parish_Church_in_Concord,_Mass_2012-0080.jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
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