“Before you cross the
street take my hand.
Life is
what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”—John Lennon, “Darling
Boy” (dedicated to his son Sean)
I usually arrive either just on
time or a little late for my spiritual direction session every month because I
lead a very busy, activist life. Way too busy, sometimes. That’s why I am
seeing my spiritual director, so I will give myself permission to take more time
for contemplation and for things that nourish my soul. This month, which
happens to be Advent, I arrived fifteen minutes early and was very glad I did
so. I didn’t feel rushed or anxious, and I had time to go for a meditative
walk. My spiritual director, Brother Dennis Gibbs, has his office at the Church
of our Savior, a beautiful (and very wealthy) Episcopal church in posh San
Marino. The campus is gorgeous, full of old pepper trees and bare white
eucalyptus that dramatically set off the mission-style white adobe chapel. I
was looking forward to exploring this beautiful site, which is a very different
world from Northwest Pasadena, the culturally and racially mixed neighborhood
where I live.
As soon as I stepped into the
central plaza, I heard a piano playing so exquisitely I thought it must be a
recording. Then I realized it was coming from a chapel that has large glass
windows. I peered inside and saw a young man playing. He had long hair and a back
pack next to his piano bench. He seemed like a high school senior. Poised over
the piano, in semi-darkness, he played intently and with amazing grace. His
fingers flew over the keys, paused, caressed the notes, and then boldly banged
out arpeggios that rocked the chapel. I was in awe of this young man and the
music he embodied so perfectly. Was it
Liszt, Chopin? I wasn’t sure. The image of this young man in the semi-dark
chapel deeply touched my soul. I thought: God must be having a blast listening
to this young man.
After listening intently for a
while, I went on my walk, paid my respect to the noble trees, and came back to
the glass chapel. This time I heard him carefully replaying a passage that was
especially difficult. He was, after all, practicing. He was doing hard,
faithful work so that his playing would seem effortless.
I thought
of the young people who perform on Chris O’Reilly’s radio show "From the Top"—those gifted,
quirky prodigies that O’Reilly loves to tease as well as praise. I wondered
what this young man with the back pack was like. Did he dream of becoming a professional musician? Did he have any idea that his
playing could give an elder like me a glimpse of heaven? It didn’t matter, of
course. What mattered is that he, like the birds singing and chattering these
venerable old trees, was doing exactly what his heart called him to do. And I
was doing what I was called to do: listening with rapt attention, moved to
tears, grateful beyond words.
I then walked over to the church
office and went upstairs to meet with my spiritual director. My meeting was
scheduled for 3:45 and I was still five minutes early. His door was closed, however.
When I peered through a glass panel next to the door, I could see that he was
engaged with another directee. I didn’t mind. I was enjoying this utterly free
time.
As I walked down the stairs, I
noted a picture on the wall I hadn’t noticed before. It was a “mappa mundi,”
a medieval map of the world. I love maps so I paused to inspect it. It was very
strange view of the world, written in Latin and German in tiny script almost
impossible to decipher. I struggled to make sense of this unfamiliar world view. This
round map mostly showed land, and hardly any water. In the center of the map
was the city I was able to identify as Jerusalem. Below it was what seemed like
a large river labeled Mare Mediterraneum, the Mediterranean Sea. Surrounding
the land mass was a strip of water dotted with islands. Rivers coursed through
the land like blood vessels in which fish swam. There were pictures of castles
signifying cities and land animals, some of them fantastical.
I wanted to know more about this
map and the man who made it. Was he a monk, like Dennis, drawing this map in holy solitude in a
monastery somewhere? Did he feel blessed to be able to spend his days
illuminating manuscripts, or was this just a chore he had to do? Did he go on
pilgrimages, like the characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Or did he just
dream of going to the places he drew with such painstaking care on this mappa
mundi?
As I pondered this intriguing map, a young
Chinese woman with a clerical collar greeted me.
“Can I help you?” she asked
politely.
“I’m just curious about this map,”
I said.
“Hmm,” she replied. “I really don’t
know anything about it, I’m afraid.”
Like me, she had probably passed
it hundreds of times without looking at it. It was just something old and
artistic and sacred, evoking the medieval world of Christendom. Just the thing
to grace the walls of an Episcopal high church office.
I took time to study this map because,
well, I was waiting for my spiritual director. And I have always been
fascinated by how people viewed the world in times gone by. In the “old days,”
when I was growing up as a precocious Greek immigrant’s kid in Princeton, I would have
gone to Firestone Library and researched this mappa mundi in a carel, like a medieval monk. But now I live in a totally different world, a
world of instantaneous information, so I just googled on my iphone and found
all kinds of fascinating tidbits of knowledge.
In medieval maps, the top portion of
a map was east, not north (hence the expression, “to orient”—to find out where
the east lies). Medieval mapmakers showed the known world as Asia (top), Europe
(left), and Africa (right). The maps were flat, but medieval map makers knew
the earth was rounded, perhaps spherical. But the purpose of the medieval map
was not to portray the physical world or to aid in navigation, but to show the “harmonious order of God’s
creation.” That’s why Jerusalem was in the center, and everything else emanated
from this holy city. The medieval mappae mundi were maps of the soul.
Our maps also reflect our world
view, and our souls. When I grew up, the United States was always in the center
of maps, and Asia was split in two for the sake of America’s centrality.
Sometime in the 1970s mapmakers began to place the United States on the far
left, so Asia could be viewed intact. Even though our maps have changed, many
Americans still have an America-centric worldview.
One of the maps I love best shows
the world with south on top and north on the bottom. This map is especially
popular with topsy-turvy Quakers and can be found on the walls of William Penn House in
Washington, DC, and on t-shirts from the Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City. It is especially important to see the world from the perspective of the global south since they will be hardest hit by the effects of climate change. This, as the Pope reminds us, is how Jesus would probably see the world.
As I was contemplating the upside
down world of Quakers, and of Christ, Dennis appeared at the top of the stairs.
He smiled and said calmly:
“Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“No problem,” I replied, also calmly.
During our session I realized that
this precious time of just being is what my soul had been waiting and yearning for. Time to
reflect, time just to be with the world around me and to appreciate the wonders
that we often too busy to notice. Time to redraw the map of my soul.
