The Map

The Zoo: (May 7, 2011, Saturday): Today Pat and I took Norah to the Birmingham Zoo. She loves the zoo. Her favorite animals at this time are the lions. When we were there they were just laying around sleeping. (Well, they are cats after all.) On the way in we picked up a map of the zoo since neither Pat nor I had been there before. (Norah has been many times). Well, Norah wants to be the leader in everything we do. (Shy she isn’t.) So she took the map and went in front of us, holding the map behind her, saying, “Follow the map.” She has obviously heard people say we have to 'follow the map' to get somewhere, and she took it literally. So, we literally followed the map.

At some point in our development we are able to understand the difference between literal language and symbolic language. We learn to look at symbols on a page and interpret what they mean in real life situations. That’s a sign of intellectual maturing.

Apply this to the Bible and other religious literature. The narratives of scripture are full of symbols that we have to interpret and translate into actual living. The Bible is full of symbolic words: God, Father, Christ, Shepherd, King, Kingdom of God, Hell, Justification, Forty, Wilderness, Lamb, Fire, Cup, Wash, Die, Bread, One Thousand, etc. In order to understand religious books and stories, we have to get beyond the literal; otherwise we miss the real message.

A fear that some people have is that if we let go of the literal meanings of texts, they become ambiguous and we lose control of them, which is exactly what we need to do—lose control of God.

The Bible is sort of like a map. It gives us a larger perspective on the journey of life, and it shows us the way to live in order to get to the ‘place’ we were made to get to. The emphasis is on the journey. After all, Jesus said he is the Way. The Beat writers were on to something when they wrote about always being on The Road. Walt Whitman had the same emphasis: stay on the road, don’t settle down. The trouble is that we take the scriptures to be a book of ideas or doctrines or dogma instead of a map.

Norah was right: we have to follow the map, which means we have to keep moving because the map itself is moving. Jesus is not the Bench; Jesus is the Way. And who is Jesus? Love! Love is the Way to live. Love means moving out of oneself into relationships and into the world.

Will our religion cage us up like animals? Or will it break us loose and keep us moving in the freedom of Love?

Follow the map.

##