The Rev Bob Whorton, chaplain to Sobell House Hospice, finds the way

I was with one of our patients in the hospice the other day having a lovely conversation. I was engrossed in what he was saying and hardly noticed one of our delightful volunteers delivering the tray for dinner and quietly leaving the room.

As we continued to talk I suddenly felt the urge to draw a compass. I asked him if he had any paper and he pointed to the paper cloth on the tray. I drew a rough compass on the paper and the conversation turned to “losing our bearings” and “finding true north”.

True north is not the same as magnetic north. True north is found by tracing a line along the earth’s surface up to the geographic north pole; magnetic north is where a compass needle points and is a few degrees different. It is the point on the surface of Earth’s northern hemisphere at which the planet’s magnetic field points vertically downwards (thanks Wikipedia).

I find that images and symbols are incredibly helpful. They somehow “work” for us. Think of a beautiful flower growing on a rubbish tip, or the winter’s tree clothed in the green of springtime. Symbols go beyond mere words, connecting us to a larger truth – like the compass with its needle pointing to true north.

The needle can and does move all over the place. We lose our bearings very easily – through illness, through a sense of failure, through loss, or simply through the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives.

But even when the needle swings erratically, true north is still there. Some will use God language to describe it, others the language of love and the real.

True north is that which is true, life-giving, and full of meaning. It is strangely “solid” and lasts in spite of the disappointments of this life and in spite of the threat of our mortality. The needle points true.

In the chapel/prayer room in the hospice is a stained-glass window created by Oxford artist Vital Peeters. I have spent a long time simply sitting and looking at this window.

The image in the upper section is of a bird in flight, its wings scything through the air. Recently something clicked into place for me. The bird is an image of the human soul. And where is it going? Well, there is only one place. It travels true north.