The Pandemic-Era Appeal of Labyrinths

I walked the labyrinth in Amiens Cathedral and I thought it mirrored the experience of the Christian life pretty well. At the beginning you quickly go from the outside towards the center (God), mirroring in the initial joy and closeness you feel after initially choosing to follow God. Then the labyrinth moves away from the center, but not too far out, as the initially high fades and you learn who God is, repent of sins, learn to serve. The next stage wanders around the edges, far from the center, mirroring the "dark night of the soul" and you wonder if you're ever going to make it back to the middle. Then, suddenly, move from the outside into the endpoint in the middle.

An interesting (and free) book about the subject is "The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages" by Penelope Reed Doob https://www.amazon.com/Labyrinth-Classical-Antiquity-through... Sometimes it goes too far in seeing a "labyrinthine aesthetic" everywhere, but nevertheless it contains interesting information.

Speaking of labyrinths, programmers are like Daedalus: they design labyrinths, only to be immured inside them. Daedalus was commissioned to build an actual labyrinth; programmers set out to build cathedrals, but then mess up. They keep reworking sections of the labyrinth even as they are lost inside, trying to straighten out the paths, render them comprehensible. But they always end up creating more twists and turns.

When I was younger I always enjoyed mowing a ~10 acre lawn, for many of the same reasons. I believe it does encourage mindfulness. You trace a route that shrinks slightly with each pass. You come back to pretty much the same spot you were just before. The next pass I reflected on what I was thinking about in the first pass, noting the various emotions I was feeling rather than being driven by them. Eventually the field shrinks and creates small islands of uncut grass, or a turn becomes too tight to complete successfully, and you have to change your mowing strategy. I always felt it helped trigger a change in mental approach as well.

Although, this all could have just been mild heat stroke, who knows?

These pictures, especially the second one, really remind me of Jonathan Blow's puzzle game "The Witness" which I highly recommend. Very appropriate since part of the game is predicated on how playing all of these abstract puzzles warps your perception of the world around you.