A Mattering Map

Last updated on: July 12, 2023 at 4:47 pm by Fred Wooden

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A Mattering Map 2023-07-12T16:47:04-04:00 Fred Wooden

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Heard of Mattering Maps?

Large map of the USA Some years ago I happened on a philosopher who talked about Mattering Maps. It happened when I was adding to a literal map I keep at home. Sorry it is sideways to you, but it fit my dining table best this way. I will say more about mattering maps shortly. First, let me talk about this actual map.

You can just see lines. These trace journeys we have made since 1992, many as a family, when we attended annual conferences that roamed around the country. We spent many an hour in a Sable Station Wagon, then a Plymouth Minivan, then a Toyota Sedan, covering all but three states and including four Candian provinces.

There is only one line – hidden by the glare – that is disconnected from the rest, from Selma to Montgomery AL, which I rode and drove. That is the only conscious pilgrimage in all these.

Mappa Mundi (Ebstorf, circa 1300) with Jerusalem as the center of the map. : r/MapPorn

I got it out to update it with the roads I have added since 2020 – mostly in Arizona and California, because I was working there between 2020-2022. But as I did that other recollections came back – Victoria British Columbia in 2019, Hot Springs AK in 1986, Milwaukee in 1976. Somehow these escaped my first go.

Seeing something prompts memories, as you know. That’s why we take pictures after all. Our lives are connected to places. We experience life as a one duimensional line, but we remember it as a two dimensional plane.

Like the medieval map that placed Jerusalem at the center, we look around and everything else in our world matters to some extent. We all create a mattering map for ourselves. The only question is whether we know it or not.

Mind! I Said Conscious

Some years ago, I began work on a little book of theology (available at reasonable cost here) that may be the first time these two ideas – mattering and maps – were combined. Not being a formal expert on the topic, academically, I had no idea that there really were Mattering Maps. It would be great to claim I had the idea before those now writing and speaking, but I published my thoughts just last year. Trust me, though, I did write them down years ago.

My book begins with the claim that we all believe our life matters. We may not know for sure, but we act on that premise. Further into the book I use the concept of a map to describe how our religious beliefs (which arise from that first claim) arise from that and subsequent bets we make about thge meaning of life. These beliefs are not arranged in a straight logical line, but are found as we wander across life. We then connect them, like those lines on my map.

Far from being a neat series of syllogisms, we discover what matters and why as we live. Direct learning, experiences, emotions, actions, our loves and losses and griefs and grouses all are part of the landscape of our lives. Spirituality, that slippery word, is the metwork of paths we have trod along the way, connecting all those thoughts and feelings and experiences/

Pilgrim Life is Making a Mattering Map

If that is not obvious already I am saying so. Journeys of the body, of memory, of thought, of relationships, all form the lanscape of life and we make sense of it by stringing them together in our hearts like those lines across my map.

You have such a map. Consider creating it in actuality. Place yourself at the center, or at the edge, and then locate the times and places of your life. How do they connect? How did they connect? Are there parts that are still disconnected? Have you come back to some more than once, often, why?

Walk through your life as it is were a pilrimage. I’ll bet you have not seen everything that matters, even though you put it there.

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