During his plenary talk at “Love Bade Me Welcome” : Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church, Tom Troeger spoke about the “landscape of the heart” as a cultural context you understand God from. To illustrate this, he spoke about two churches he went to when he was young. One sang hymns like “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” with very free interpretation of the music almost ad libbed from the piano, and the other sang hymns like “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” played precisely from the pipe organ. They both reflect different landscapes of the heart that we go back to when we think about God, worship and music. He suggested that the wholeness of God is not known if you stay within one landscape of the heart.

I thought about my own nomadic religious journey, starting off Congregationalist, drifting through Baptist, various evangelical and charismatic churches before settling down to currently being an Episcopalian. The idea of knowing many landscapes of the heart, or perhaps mapping the relationship between these landscapes to see one larger broader landscape is especially appealing to me. As our society becomes more multicultural, how do we map in the landscape of Jewish or Muslim hearts? What about adding in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism?

Pushing this idea of emotional cartography further, I had to wonder about those not brought up in the church, the unaffiliated skeptics. What does the landscape of their hearts look like? How do we map it? How do we find the connection between these landscapes and the landscapes of those brought up in the church?

As science progresses, how does this change the landscape of our hearts? Is science moving beyond the abilities of our imaginations to use it for good? How must the landscape of the heart change as science changes? How do we keep the idea of being good stewards of God’s creation in a world overheated by climate change?

A secular part of the landscape of my heart includes the great song by the Canadian folk singer, Stan Rogers, “Northwest Passage”.

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;

What are the landmarks for a northwest passage of the heart, including various Christian landmarks, landmarks from other belief structures, landmarks from the skeptics, landmarks for scientists, to bring balance back to reason and imagination?