Direction

I have an innate facsination with direction. I'm a geography major for primarily that reason. I greatly desire, in my inmost being, to know direction and to constantly have my bearings. To be orientated with the world around me, and with people around me. I do it naturally and without thought most of the time. Which way is north? That way. Then I must face this direction to get where I'm going. What emotion am I feeling? This one. Then I must take that course of action or acknowledge my heart condition to respond appropriately. In fact, most of us work at orientating ourselves with our environment. We have to both to survive and live a healthy life.

Because of my passion for direction and knowledge of place and surrounding relations I have studied to know the world around me in great depth and have prided myself in that knowledge. Like most men, I think I can get myself around a city or province or country without little difficulty or help from others. The difference is I have no objection to using a map. In fact, I LOVE using maps! My original career choice heading to the University of Victoria was, in fact, to become a Cartographer (maker of maps). Sounds maybe boring or monotonous to you, but to me ... exciting.

A question I get most often when asked about cartography is: 'Isn't the world already all discovered? Why make more maps??' You might even think it a reasonable question. But that is only the surface of what a map maker does (though for sure one of the most exciting - mapping and exploring new and uncharted lands). From there, the cartographer must continually improve upon the information he/she already has to make the map more and more accurate. For nothing will do apart from a perfect map. Which, I might add, is impossible to accomplish. There are no perfect maps. It's impossible. For many reasons ... but for two I will elaborate on here:

1) Maps are square sheets of paper with pictures depicting pieces of our earth. One of the greatest problems mappers have is putting our round (and not perfectly spherical. Our earth is actually eliptical) 3 dimensional planet onto a 2 dimensional square piece of paper. Imagine trying to peel an orange (representing the earth), but leaving all the peel intact as you take it off. Most of us have tried to do this before. Now take what you've peeled and make a perfect square out of it. You can't! You cannot, without squeezing, expanding, contracting or compressing the original parchment, create an exact replica of the earth on a square piece of paper. Actually, there is only one perfect map: the globe.

2) No map is perfect for another, more important reason: the earth is always changing and its detail is so infinite and its information so extensive, it is impossible to accurately portray what is EXACTLY on the earth's surface because we just cannot record or know all that information onto one map. Stare down at your own feet. You may be in a room with a hardwood floor. It may look fairly unchanging and easy to map. But in a few minutes you will move the chair on the floor to move away from the computer. In a few months you will rearrange the furniture. In a few years you will move. In a decade that house will be renovated and it's floor will change. In a few decades that house will be gone and likely a new one will take it's place. In a few minutes there will be another layer of dust where you're looking.

Map making is an art of impossible precision. Our world and its people and its nations are constantly on the move. The earth itself moves and we must be prepared to move with it and re-orient ourselves in our changing environment.

Thus I find myself, at times, in moments when I find it difficult and impossible to orient myself to my environment and surroundings. This is such a time. A time of no direction (as far as job and future home are concerned). I find I am frustrated and lost when the way seems foggy and unclear. It is a feeling I do not welcome. But I find it comes consistenly in life. And in these times I rest in my True North, my Compass, the only True Map ... my Lord and King Jesus Christ.

I also love to sail the ocean. I have a dear poem written for me by a friend from Victoria who somehow saw through to a depth of my person and touched on a part of my heart that stirs me and causes me to look beyond what I cannot see. When we cannot see the way ahead, let us stay true to the Compass that points ever North to our home.

Compass

“And he said, ‘No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord’”.
(Joshua 5:14)

“Those who go down to the sea in ships …
He guided them to their desired haven.”
(Psalm 107:23,30)

The ship is sailing north
The crew at the prow
Pull at the oars, deaf
As Argonauts in the Sirens’ strait.

A man is at the prow.
His ears are open.
He clenches his teeth
Against the siren-song, and stands.

At the skyline,
A sliver of turquoise:
The promise
Of land.

This fragment, this particle
As blue as peace,
Is lodged like glass in his heart.
The oarmen do not believe
Him. They say it is a trick of the air.

The leviathan moves its slow limbs
Beneath the sluggish sea,
The swollen planks of the ship.

The sea salt grimes the sails.
Black is the water,
The oarmen do not see.

“South, turn south” they call,
Blind to the skyline. Still
It reflects in the eyes of the prowman,
Whose compass is unchanging.

His limbs turn golden
In the light of the sun,
The rising and the setting
And the rising of the sun.
“North,” he commands
Above their cry
And the gentle fruit-sweet breeze
That echoes it
With dreams of gold, of red silk
Of almond eyes and cinnamon.

The sea goes on in vain. The helmsman
Clutches his compass. Beneath him
The behemoth grinds its gruesome jaw
And waits in the salt-spun spume.

And then – “Ahead!”
A rower at the starboard. His eyes
Roll with blue, the promise of land.

“His compass is true!”
And it lodges in the hearts of the oarsmen,
The shard, the turquoise gleam.

Brianna Leone Nyberg
04/21/00