Maps and Memories

"Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?

And don't you remember?" Mark 8:18

I love maps! I believe in maps! Maps give me comfort, but why? I am leaving for India today, so perhaps that is why when I woke up this morning and looked around my room I saw a common theme. I noticed, not for the first time, that my walls are covered with maps and memories. There are many more maps rolled up on my desk. Today, I started to wonder why some maps were rolled up and some were on the wall.


The map of Sri Lanka started it all for me. I found this map shortly after the tsunami, just before I travelled there for the first time. When I see the town of Pottuvil on the map, my minds sees the devastated beaches and the crushed homes, but I also see the smiling children and the adults rebuilding their lives. Other place names remind me of the trailer manufacturer, the elephants, the spicy road house, or the hydro dam we repaired the van fuel tank on. The map is a collection of triggers for my memory.

I have noticed, too, a strange mix of pieces on my walls (not that I know anything about feng shui or anything). There is a map of Rwanda next to my bed, and below it is a collection of butterflies from Bolivia. Rwanda showed me first hand the most evil that humans can be to each other. I still have nightmares about the genocide. I see babies smashed on the altar of a church, children thrown down the 30 ft deep latrines and stoned to death. I see rivers run red with the blood of thousands. It has been more than a year now, and the map is still there on my wall and the nightmares still come, but my Rwanda map is more than a map of bad memories. Rwanda is also about hope and rebirth. Rwanda taught me that we are all capable of unspeakable evil if we choose not to think for ourselves, if we allow other to think for us. Rwanda showed me that at the core of every human is humanity. We can choose between brutality or butterflies.

Not all memories need to be tied to a location. the little yellow star on my wall, colored as it was by a preschool child, could have been colored by my grandson, but it wasn't. It was colored by a Rwandan child, a child that hoped for exactly the same thing that the children of CERENID in Bolivia hope for. These are the same hopes and dreams that the Rhimpoche in Zadou is desperately trying to bring the children of the Tibetan high plateau. To quote a good friend of mine, "We are different, and yet we are all the same." My walls are not full yet, and I take that as a sign that I have much more to experience. I wonder what the map of India and Burma will have for me? I wonder what memories it will hold? I wonder when we will all learn to get along?

I will update this as often as I can but internet is sketchy at best, I hear.

Keep me in your prayers.