Mapping The Interior

Maps intrigue me. It’s fascinating where people settled, why, and the names given to those crossroads and deltas. Sadly, with our growing dependence on GPSs to cheat, map reading may be a skill forced into extinction. This may have more dire consequences than we think. Maps record our histories, guide return visits, and point us to new frontiers. Dots, lines, and letters on a page reveal what has shaped us and the convoluted roads we and others have tread.
The Plains of Abraham. Queenston Heights. Dawson City. Vimy Ridge. Bay Street. Walkerton. Mayerthorpe. The names alone tell a story. Marks on a map invite us to take a journey into the soul of a people. Outdated maps uncover the ever changing ebb and flow of human geography. For instance, why did the Ontario city of Berlin, where sausage and sauerkraut are staples, change its name to Kitchener? Whatever became of Frobisher Bay? Look internationally and Leningrad is no more and the 2008 Summer Olympics weren’t in Peking; and yet they were. Curious, isn’t it?
Explorers like David Thompson are fascinating and most young males imagine mapping wild interiors like he did. Once upon a time some friends and I mapped a scavenger hunt that took participants around our township by car. All they had to do was follow our clues and directions. Many left. Few returned. Of those who managed to straggle across the finish line no one actually completed the hunt as charted. The reason: we had made a grave error in our mapmaking. At a crucial intersection we had sent people left when they needed to turn right. We were no David Thompsons.
Navigating the contours of our own interiors can be, similarly, full of good intentions yet marked by utter failure. There are diverse locales in a man’s heart that even he, homo-erectus-who-needs-no-mapus, is hesitant to explore let alone lay down a path for others to follow. Like a closed country, we do not easily open ourselves to the outside world. We can be our own North Korea.
Recently this became personal. A conflict awakened things in me I thought I had moved beyond. Apparently there are “further up and further in” lands in me I am unfamiliar with. I hardly knew what to do with this uncharted terrain. Where did these emotions come from? Why is this bothering me so much? Lord, cartographer of my heart, what is going on? I could hardly put it into words. Ever been there? Ever been too scared to travel down that dark lane?
This most recent mapping of my interior required some means of grace.
I required the grace of Scripture. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” croons Psalm 119:105. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” instructs Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16. The ancient Word has taken so many on surprising and transforming internal journeys and it happened to me again too.
I needed the grace of companionship. Every Lewis needs his Clark. Every Lewis and Clark needs their Sacagewea. We can’t map the interior alone. Many claim to have tried, but I’m convinced that’s just a line of Buffalo chips on a trail to nowhere. Saying you’re okay and you’ll go there alone is a big smokescreen to hide fear of back roads. I needed a mentor and friends. I needed my wife. Through their words, listening ears, wisdom, prayers, embrace, and rebukes, I found my way again.
I found rest in the grace of the incarnation and the resurrection. Everywhere you go, there you are. So goes the irritatingly pithy yet nonetheless true declaration that I can’t escape myself. Thankfully and gloriously, I can’t escape the risen Jesus either. Everywhere I go, he is. He knows all about mountains, valleys, and even agony in a garden. He was tempted in every way as I am. God himself knows what is true from false in me and still he calls me “Son” because I trust him. For those afraid of what lives in the back country this is enormously hopeful and frees the boyish explorer to venture into the interior that the fearful man risks cutting off from the outside world.