March 21st, 1989
Some years ago in New Zealand a geography teacher from my school became lost in dense bush on the mountain ranges off the central North Island. You may or may not be aware of the geography of New Zealand, but there are many mountain ranges which are rugged and all but impassable. Steep razor back ridges and deep V-shaped valleys make travel exhausting, and the thick bush ensures that landmarks are almost impossible to see. The teacher had a map, but had lost his compass in a fall, and navigation to safety was proving difficult. As in any context where a person is lost, it is too easy to begin to go around in circles.
Are there any fans of David Bowie left these days? In
one of his earliest and strangest hits he sings these words:
Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles
I’m
feeling very still,
and I think my spaceship knows
which way to go.
The irony is that his spaceship is in fact drawing him out
into endless space, breaking free of its orbit around earth, and carrying him
to a phenomenally lonely death.
Tell my wife I love her very much.
She knows.
My geography teacher, and the character in Bowie’s song,
Major Tom, was each faced with a big problem. Which way to go? Each faced the
probability of a lonely death if the right decision was not made. Each was
utterly alone, with no one else to guide their decision. One had a spaceship
claiming to know the way, but leading him deathwards. The other had a map, but
a map is useless without a compass.
We too are faced with serious decisions about the way to go. On a global scale we are faced with the problems of nuclear weapons – not only
in the now cooling tensions between the Soviets and the USA, but elsewhere – and
ecological disaster, the greenhouse effect. Five years ago the average person
dismissed such concerns as being the foolish cries of greenies. Now even
governments are taking notice.
And we are faced with personal questions about the way that
we will go. What will be way? Do we make a god of sex and drugs and
rock'n'roll? Of money? Of power? Do we want to be a Debbie Flintoff-King? Or an
Annie Lennox? Or will we be content to be ourselves instead?
My geography teacher discovered something in the bush. He
discovered that in that part of New Zealand a certain kind of moss grows only
on the seaward or west side of the forest trees. By that discovery he was able
to set his path for the coast, keeping a straight course, and he walked out of
the bush near a main road, after two days, tired, but alive.
Debbie Flintoff-King and Annie Lennox too have their compasses.
Their compass may turn out to be fulfilling and life saving, like my geography
teacher’s moss. Or it may be self-seeking and destructive, like that of David
Bowie’s Major Tom, or rather, of his spaceship.
It is up to you now, to find the way. It is up to you to
choose your compass and your gods. You may, like Major Tom, make a God out of
something that ultimately destroys you. Or you may find something that guides
you into life.
Thomas said, “Lord, we do not know where you are
going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus said, “I am the way, I am truth, and life.”
(John
14: 6)
During this Holy Week and Easter it should become clear to
us all that there is nothing either soft or easy about the way of Christ. There
is however the unexpected message that somehow the horror of Good Friday is
changed into the hope of Easter. Just what your horrors and hopes are is your
own concern. But it is my belief that, like the moss on the trees, the way of
Christ is a good and ultimately rewarding choice.
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