Since confession is good for the soul, I'll admit up front that when they began painting concentric circles on the patio in front of my office in the old Cayce Hospital Building recently I wondered why management would approve such an idea. Of course I had heard of "walking the labyrinth," and even seen young people doing it, but it seemed like a passing fad to me - probably something out of California, harmless but not to be taken seriously. I mean we've got to keep our feet on the ground and not get too carried away with the latest diversion making the rounds, right?

Well, I got my comeuppance real fast. The paint was hardly dry on our labyrinth when The New York Times - not New Age Journal, mind you - published a story about how labyrinths are sweeping the country. If there is any publication other than Venture Inward that I take seriously it is the Times, so I read every word, half expecting the reporter to reveal some tongue-in-cheek disbelief. But a more positive story I can't imagine. The front page headline was, "Reviving labyrinths: A Path to Inner Peace." I was right about one thing: The Times traced their popularity to California, where the Rev. Lauren Artress, "a restless Episcopal priest" at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, is promoting the labyrinth. She learned about them in a workshop conducted by the author-lecturer Jean Houston, whom you may recall received some attention last year when it identified her as a spiritual advisor to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After Ms. Artress took her initiate labyrinth walk, she visited Chartres Cathedral in France, where a labyrinth 42 feet in diameter had been inlaid in the stone floor of the nave in the year 1200. That's nearly 300 years before Columbus discovered America, not exactly a new age wrinkle. In fact, labyrinth designs found on coins, pottery, or rocks date to 3,000 B.C.

I don't recall seeing the labyrinth on a visit to Chartres in 1971; but until the American priest went looking for it, this medieval design had been covered with several hundred chairs used by tourists while admiring the cathedral's gorgeous stained glass. Pushing aside the chairs, Ms. Artress inspected the floor design and returned to San Francisco and created two labyrinths at her church - one inside, the other of stone outside.

Ours at A.R.E, based on the Chartres Pattern, was much simpler to create. A group of volunteers with paint buckets, led by artist Meryl Ann Butler, tinted the patio stories to form the design seen here. The object is to walk the circular pathways that lead into the center and back out again. "You may wish to focus on an affirmation or mantra, a question, a prayer or a thought or intent to hold in your consciousness, to be empowered by the ritual," said Ms. Butler. But to achieve what?

"When you walk into the labyrinth, the mind quiets, and then you begin to see through what's happening inside. You become transparent to yourself," says Ms. Artress. "You can see that you're scared, or that you lack courage. People can see for the first time that their anger is in the way. You can see your judgments against people and against yourself."

Evidently hundreds of labyrinths have been created in America, at churches and hospitals, in yards and fields, and at retreat centers such as A.R.E. The beneficial effects include focusing the mind, slowing the breathing, inducing a state of peace, reducing stress, healing diseases. For some it is a moving meditation. As one woman said, "For me, reaching relaxation and a meditative state means moving. I find it very healing." Walking the labyrinth is attracting church goers and church quitters alike, nurses as well as patients - including some with life-threatening diseases who are said to have experienced remissions after walking the labyrinth over a period of time - and everyday people with everyday cares, including a once-skeptical editor, newly enlightened.

"In an age when many Americans are looking beyond the church pulpit for spiritual experience and solace," said the Times "a growing number have rediscovered the labyrinth as a path to prayer, introspection, and emotional healing."

Edgar Cayce, you can be sure, would be pleased to see this ritual being performed on the steps of the building he felt called to construct and to dedicate to the art of holistic healing.