Spiritual Map Making

How do you find your way around the City or around country lines when you travel to unknown places? Most likely you use Google maps on your cellphone or some navigation system in your car.

      I still like old fashion maps and I use them occasionally especially when I want to get a larger picture and understand the broader landscape. On the other hand I got used to Google maps, it is so convenient, fast and increasingly reliable. It offers turn-by-turn directions and even provides construction and accident alerts while immediately suggesting alternative routes.

      Now imagine that a similar navigation system has been available for thousands of years to native people in Australia. They also have had oral turn-by-turn navigation which even has suggested alternative routes for different situations and have been able to keep up to date for centuries.

      Of course, they did not use any satellites, computers or cell-networks. Their technology was their religion, mythology and especially their songs. Their traditional songs led them turn-by-turn from hill to ravine and from tree to ridge sometimes for 300 miles and several weeks long journeys through deserted wilderness, bringing them reliably from one essential artesian spring to another. And it clearly worked, they are still here, before Europeans came they survived even thrived in their harsh environment.
      This Sunday we will learn about spiritual mapmaking and how it can help us to navigate not necessarily streets and highways but our lives. We will consider the great importance of the permanently evolving nature of any map. And what kind of direction the Gospel can offer us on our life journeys. It is the Gospel of John which reminds us of Jesus being the way, the truth and the life. Come to rejoice and find hope in spiritual map making.