Labyrinth at Scarritt Bennett Center
Nashville, Tennessee, United States
At the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, the former women's college campus turned retreat and conference center, a permanent outdoor labyrinth sits in the collegiate gothic grounds. It is one of the South's most active program labyrinths, walked in retreats, trainings, and quiet days.
At the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, the former women's college campus turned retreat and conference center, a permanent outdoor labyrinth sits in the collegiate gothic grounds. It is one of the South's most active program labyrinths, walked in retreats, trainings, and quiet days. The Labyrinth Locator's record lists it as a medieval seven-circuit path; installed April 16, 2004.
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
scarrittbennett.org carries the site's own information and schedule.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scarritt_Bennett,_Wightman_Chapel.jpg), CC BY-SA.
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