I have this map in my head which I am continually updating and refining, correcting and adding to as I incorporate both visual maps and actual experience. My map helps me get places and going places helps me draw the map. I am loathe to ask for directions (in part, maybe, because I’m a man) because every time I get lost my internal map gets both more accurate and more intricate.

Many years ago, when I was taking a different route home, my wife asked “Where are you taking my body? If you’ve never used this route how do you know that it will take us home?” I explained that I was simply using the map in my head. She was unaware of this kind of mental map. To illustrate the contrast in our approaches: when I use Google Maps I get the route and scroll in and out to add that picture to my internal map; she relies on the turn by turn directions.

One of the benefits of using a map instead of directions is that I am able to take different routes to the same place, and enjoy new scenery. I get a better sense of the place where I live as well as a better sense of my place in this environment. In my world, there are never any worries about a right way to get some place.

So I felt a kinship with, and was encouraged by something I read recently in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s new book:

The constellation of teachings we [Indigenous Americans] call the Original Instructions … are not “instructions” like commandments, though, or rules; rather they are like a compass: they provide orientation but not a map.  The work of living is creating that map for yourself. 

Braiding Sweetgrass

As the work of going places is creating a map of the physical world for myself, so also the work of living is creating a map of all the different worlds I live in (intellectual, emotional, spiritual, relational, biological, environmental, political, cultural, etc.). I have all these maps within me; some I am more conscious of than others, some are more intricate than others, some more accurate than others. What they all have in common is that I use them to navigate through the world and I use my experience in this world to expand, revise and correct these maps. Each of these maps is integrated into a grand map of life in the world. My “work of living is creating that map” for myself. I think I could call this process “living cartography.”

Sometimes christians describe the Bible as a roadmap. And some object to this metaphor (see the quote from Peter Enns at the end of this post). I use the Bible as a roadmap for life the same way I use visual maps as a roadmap through the topography of my place. I incorporate it into the grand map of life that I already have in my head and then I use that internal map to navigate through life. And as I live, and improve my living cartography, I can take this revised map back to the Bible to more clearly understand what the Bible is saying.

The Bible is not a roadmap in the sense that it gives us turn by turn instructions for the right way to get to the desired destination (heaven). The Bible is a roadmap in the sense that it aids me in creating a grand map of life in my head, and that helps me to live a better life. Living cartography is a circular process, using the map as a guide to living, and then using the experiences of living to revise the map. It leads to a better map and a better life.

Looking to the Bible for a detailed road map for life might leave one feeling a bit light-headed right now. Which is it? Which one do I do? Stop jerking me around, Bible! JUST TELL ME!

No chance.

Peter Enns. The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It