Journeys By Linda Stowe
My friend Bob has been writing a series of periodic posts about Magellan (1480–1521), the Portuguese explorer credited with circumnavigating the globe and proving the Earth is round. This would not normally be a topic I would spend time on, but Bob is such an accomplished writer that I’d read just about anything he wrote. He has a way of taking complex, convoluted information and arranging the chaos so that it makes sense. Bob is a musician and I believe there is something about a musician’s mind that can do this.
So today he talked about how at the time Magellan embarked on this trip everyone thought the Earth was flat. It made sense because that was how people perceived their world based on what they could see. Why would they think anything else? I wondered how the idea of a round Earth was even conceived.
That caused me to think about transitions and tipping points. About those moments our perceptions change, and we see things differently. Like the moment we fall in love or stop believing in God. When do we turn a corner and see everything differently. In an instant the familiar seems less so. We notice how shabby that comfortable sofa is or we realize the collection we are so proud of suddenly appears to be an out-of-control hoard? How does that happen? Why can we only recognize that next step after we’ve taken it?
Magellan may take me around the world, but Bob has a way of taking his readers into new worlds.
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Polly here.
I love the way Linda interpreted all of this, seeing Magellan’s journey and transforming it into a way of looking at our own journeys.
I love those moments in our own lives when a particular evolution is allowed to occur. For whatever reason, we experience that instant when we are able to view something in a new light.
In one word: Revelations.
Those divine and wonderful disclosures to humans. That particular “something” that relates to human existence or the world.
Or, as it is said in John 9:25. I was blind, but now I see.
May we always see the new worlds around us.
Journeys By Linda Stowe
