A Compass, a Map, and a Badge

When my sons were Boy Scouts, they each worked hard to earn the badge called Orienteering. At the time, computer-assisted navigation was a resource reserved for ocean, air or space travel.  For almost everyone else, the time-tested method to navigate by car was a paper map, and if you were exploring the countryside on foot, the addition of a compass was handy. By using map and compass together, the life skill called Orienteering helped you find your way from Point A to Point B. A compass gave you a general direction. A topographical map depicted terrain features and distances.  Using both together along with a bit of human ingenuity, some calculations, and no small amount of faith, you used the skill of orienteering to plan your route towards your destination. Then, you started walking, adjusting your steps, orienting yourself as you moved closer to your goal.

Religious seasons and symbols are powerful tools that express things without words: water for life; a star to show the way; ashes for mortality.  Spiritual orienteering hones our skills as we make our way through any sort of wilderness: physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.   With our maps and compasses of the Spirit, we journey into unknown territory… or to familiar places by a different pathway.

I move into the next 39 days after Ash Wednesday in need of spiritual orienteering, some tools to keep me on track as reliably as a compass and a map.  Lent itself is the compass with its clearly defined parameters and its goal of spiritual growth.  For the map, I asked: What are some important guides in my life? How do they shape my spiritual pathway? This calendar tile depicts six life priorities. In some ways it resembles a badge, though I certainly didn’t “earn” it and it is not a reward for hard work.  It contains the life-gifts of Faith, Order, Creativity, Health, Connection and Contribution. You may have similar ideals. During Lent, the daily calendar tile will reflect one of these six values.

Orienteering is an old school form of navigation for hikers who now access satellite signals and follow electronic voices that keep them on course. When we find ourselves in the wilderness of competing priorities, discouraging barriers and confusing messages, and we all do, there is nothing old school about matters of faith or Lenten seasons set aside for introspection.  We pull out the map of our guiding values. We find our North, the Attraction that pulls us God-ward. We adjust our courses.  We keep on travelling.

Today’s tile is a circle of paint and collage divided into six sections, each one depicting a life value. Faith is a central spiral image with a flowing rainbow-colored stream extending beyond the circle’s edge. Order is a predictable pattern; Creativity, a spattering of paint. Health is an active body; Connection, some conversational bubbles. Contribution is a busy bee of energy. The symbols are arranged in a circle, with Faith flowing out from the center.  Around the circle are the points of the compass.  Unlike the circle, which can turn in different directions according to life’s changing needs and influences, the compass points are the stable and dependable presence of God.

This tile is a little shopworn and the symbols are somewhat trite. My art skills have improved some since I created it over five years ago as the first tile in my Calendar. I’ve tweaked a few things. What originally I named Work broadened into Contribution, including work of any kind. My value Family expanded into Connection to denote any life-affirming relationship.  I thought about re-doing it for this year’s Lenten art calendar, but I dropped that idea. It’s okay just as it is, rather homely and simplistic. Were I to create it today, the images might be more attractive, but the things I held dear years ago are still true today in 2022. The many shattering changes in our world have not shattered these eternal values.  We cling to what is true, and that truth expands into new insights.  That is the significance of returning to, of “finding” Lent each spring. The journey changes, the pathway alters, but our destination does not change.

If you were asked to picture a guiding value, what would it look like?

Some people find metaphors and symbols helpful in their spiritual practices; others do not. There are many ways to describe our relationship to God and the values we hold dear.  What spiritual tools are useful to you?

O God, focus our hearts and open our vision as we journey through Lent.  Use the things that are essential to our lives to guide us as we find our way towards You. Amen.