IF YOU find yourself spiritually lost and alone in a dark wood, with no Virgil for a guide, then a map of your faith journey can help you to discern potential paths ahead. Mapping Your Spiritual Journey provides a suite of practical, reflective, and scriptural tools to aid the creation of such a map and its interpretation.
The book opens by describing the complex maps that we keep in our heads — some to help us physically to negotiate our neighbourhood, or plan a trip, others to locate us within our relationships, or those that chart the mix of accident and design which has brought us to our current understanding of who we are and what we perceive to be our place in the world.
Mapping spiritual journeys has precedent: corporately, we find such methods in the Stations of the Cross and Resurrection; individually, Dante’s Commedia is pre-eminent, alongside Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, editions of which sometimes contain maps illustrating Christian’s journey to the celestial city.
If these seem too ambitious for our own efforts, then we are reminded that we can initiate the process simply by focusing on a single memory, theme, place, or encounter, or a specific period of time. Starting small keeps the goal achievable, and, as confidence grows, the map should expand organically. There is also the need, reiterated throughout, to find space for careful reflection and strategies for stepping back from painful memories.
We are shown inspiring examples of maps in three dimensions incorporating paper, textiles, papier mâché, sand, the natural world, and labyrinths; or in two dimensions, using traditional cartography, spirals, ribbons, and tree-, word-, or mind-map forms. These offer plenty of scope for creating one specific to your personality type. For many, a soundscape, even something as simple as a Spotify playlist, could provide an illuminating sonic guide to our spiritual journey.
Since the created map is not an end in itself, but a jumping-off point for further exploration, so the book’s middle section supplies ways to engage with those elements that have sprung into prominence, discerning through prayer, scripture, and reflection something of where we have come from and where we might be going, noticing especially where God’s footsteps, or finger in the sand, criss-crosses our personal landscape.
The final chapters bring imaginative application of biblical passages to a variety of the features, such as roads, mountains, gardens, and people, that our mapping has thrown into relief. There is no conclusion, because the journey is ongoing. Creative use of the tools explored here, however, may well give us the confidence to step out boldly, aware of the Virgils or Beatrices in our lives and attentive to the presence of God throughout our story.
The Revd Richard Greatrex is Rector of the Chew Valley East Benefice, in Somerset.
Mapping Your Spiritual Journey: A creative reflection method
Sally Welch
Canterbury Press £14.99
(978-1-78622-543-6)
Church Times Bookshop £11.99