Skewered

Traveling east or traveling west has to start somewhere. How about a line that runs through Greenwich, England?  Let that be zero. But then, when do the directions make their switch in direction?  Well, let that be a line running through the Pacific.

Of course, the decisions are historical and arbitrary---zero longtitude could run through my house--but there does need to be a reference, a getting-closer-to or farther-away-from line. At 180 degrees away, there needs to another line where leaving becomes returning, and vice-versa. All of this is necessary when we move around the earth in the way that day does. Of course, the 24 time zones zig-zag like lightning strikes north to south, but they more or less correspond to an hour's passage of the sun.

Arbitrary but essential. I'm put in mind of this as I ponder the relationship of God-in-love and the Beloved that I've been exploring in this blog.  I need (perhaps, others need too) to gird this rolling world with a system of stripes that take their meaning from some prime meridian of fundamental value, so that I can know where I am on this journey. The God-in-love framework may serve as such.

In contrast, the lines of latitude are not arbitrary. They puff out from the north pole, maximize at the equator and shrink at the south (or vice versa), perfect rings. It wouldn't do to make the circles emanate from my house; the axis around which the earth spins doesn't come down my chimney, but it does touch down at a point under Polaris, and it's distance from that point that determines whether day and night share each 24 hours equally or trade it between them season to season.

One way to have a fixed north/south reference line (without the concept of axis and pole) would be to know the ratio of daylight and darkness on, say, the longest day, the summer solstice. Then, with the help of menhirs and megaliths, you'd say this is the place where the longest day is of this length. There may many be other such places, but this at least is one. Where I take the measurement may be arbitrary, but the length of day on the solstice at the point is not.

Of course, we could make magnetic north the point from which the ripples of latitude expand but it's in migration, perhaps in preparation for topsy-turvy reversal. Imagine having to navigate by a moving reference point and one linked to the turbulent inner life of the planet itself.

Maybe God-in-love will turn out to be less like a Greenwich serving as a conventional zero meridian and more like a pole, a specific point on the surface of the earth through which runs the axis upon which the earth turns. The calendar day begins and end where we choose it to, but the seasons depend on the tilt of that skewer vis-a-vis the ecliptic, and thus the whole solar system.

These reflections are an exercise in analogical speculation, something like a game. But live we must, and navigate as we can the seas of significance. If we find that the chart we use for convenience is pegged to the cosmos, all the better.