Sister Melanie and the lion tamer originally intended to visit all of San Francisco's labyrinths in one day (there are three public labyrinths in San Francisco, two at Grace Cathedral and one at Land's End) but transportation distances kept us from Land's End. Grace Cathedral has two labyrinths, an indoor and an outdoor one


While thinking about how best to "play" in a labyrinth, we walked our way to the center, calmly and meditatively following the path before us until following the twists and turns of the labyrinth became automatic and subconscious. Then, in the middle with no ideas, we walked back out in the same fashion.


A thought struck us afterwards: why had we followed the labyrinth so automatically and prosaically? There were rules to the labyrinth, yes; but not rules that could be enforced, nor rules necessary for public safety. The logical conclusion: they were the rules of a game. The labyrinth itself, illogical and deceptively small, had compressed a set of expectations and rules for personal enjoyment into a the understanding of its purpose, an intrinsically implied facet of its nature.

On an even more meta level, we were playing the game of sf0 inside a labyrinth. But as tasks are completed by characters and we ARE sf0, analysis becomes philosophically difficult.

We stepped inside to walk the inner labyrinth, but the tranquil nature of the church and its inhabitants gave us pause. This was not a place for games; it was a place for healing and prayer, where several men walked the labyrinth barefoot with more purpose than we could have ever mustered. Instead, we merely documented our presence, and thouroughly examined the space

Finally, we attempted another game in our analysis of the labyrinth; an object, situated as it was, on Nob Hill, surrounded by four star hotels named after three of the famous Big Four railroad barons. Accoutered in our sf0 gear, we plotted an infiltration (a separate adventure entirely)



Sister Melanie Adds:

Though Abe the Lion Tamer was not aware of this, another game was being played at the time we meandered through the outdoor labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. The Lion Tamer and I were documenting our labyrinth games using a magical picture box. He took pictures with the box on our way into the center, and I took pictures on the way out. Examining the pictures afterward, the Lion Tamer remarked that I had, in fact, taken three times as many photos as he had! Thus I am more skilled at taking vast quantities of useless images with the magical picture box.