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The Wilderness


top-down photo of a side table holding an assortment of books, pencil case, burning candle, and sock mending paraphernalia. Prominent book titles include How to Have an Enemy, by Melissa Florer-Bixler, and Field Notes for the Wilderness, by Sara Bessey.
Field Notes for the Wilderness

The metaphor of the Wilderness is something I’ve grown quite accustomed to over the last few decades. For me it evokes a sense of being ‘outside’ – outside the group, outside the structures that organized church/faith/the broader culture creates. I've felt 'outside' for much of my adult life. As much as I enjoy solitude, and being an individualist, as much as 'being weird' is far more attractive to my temperament than being 'normal', being on the outside, in the wilderness is lonely much of the time. And disorienting.


a large fire burns at the bottom of the photo. the rest of the image is dark, portraying night in the wilderness
Bonfire in the Wilderness

When I trained as a Spiritual Director the image of the Director-as-Fire-Keeper in the wilderness was significant for me. Within this image, the Fire-Keeper holds a safe space - a fire going, if you will - right in the thick of the woods, ready for wanderers in the wilderness to stop for rest, to gain comfort, to share their stories of traversing the dark spaces of the forest, and find a companion within the isolation of the wilderness. Imagine, if you can, trudging through darkness, or practically impenetrable shrub and trees, or across barren tundra, or desert - looking up with sweat - from effort or fear - stinging your eyes, to see a flame burning in the distance, an indicator of companionship and a place to rest along the way. Fire-keepers aren't seen as necessary in the brightly lit church buildings where 'everyone' is comfortable, certain and confident about what they believe and with the image of God they hold to be true. But for those who have met God in the wilderness, Fire-Keepers offer a welcome ministry to weary, lonely, confused travelers.


During a time of faith change/evolution/deconstruction/composting (or whatever name you want to give it - I've heard many) the wilderness feels like an accurate image: perceived threats and unknowns at every turn, isolation and loneliness, lack of a comfortable (ie. what you're used to) place to rest. It feels as though God is absent at times, but, as Bessey writes, the wilderness, "wasn’t an absence of God. This journey was an invitation to a new path of intimacy and depth, growth and evolution. The wilderness wasn’t something for me to fear: God was already here, making a way.” (9)


“An evolving faith", Bessey continues, "is never simply about “deconstruction”. It has proven to be about the questions, the curiosity, and the ongoing reckoning of a robust, honest faith. An evolving faith brings the new ideas and ancient paths together. It’s about rebuilding and reimagining a faith that works not only for ourselves but for the whole messy, wide, beautiful world. …An evolving faith is a resilient and stubborn form of faithfulness that is well acquainted with the presence of God in our loneliest places and deepest questions.” (12) To this i say, yes and amen. This has been my own experience, and I've heard so many similar stories that prove, to me and many others, that this is a common one.


Faith writer and theologian Rachel Held Evans said, “Sometimes one of the greatest gifts God gives to us is losing our religion. We have to be committed to unlearning the unhelpful, broken, false or incomplete things if we want to have space to relearn the goodness, joy, and embrace of God.” (31) This is less terrifying for those of us who acknowledge that the 'unhelpful, broken, false or incomplete things' include the church's part in genocide, power imbalances, Christian nationalism, patriarchy, homophobia, sexism, racism, white supremacism, Residential schools, forced conversions, crusades, wars... and the list goes on. There was a turning point that happened within myself when i recognized that, first, these were evil actions that did not at all align with the love and self-sacrifice Jesus teaches and demonstrates in the Gospels and secondly, that I was guilty of the very ways of thinking that perpetuate these acts. Boof! Ain't that a hard pill to swallow!!

a white woman, wearing summer clothing, sits on a log on the side of a wooded path gazing at something outside the image.
Walking the Wilderness

This process - naming the unhelpful, broken, false parts of the faith i grew up with - feels terrible. Excruciating, even! If you’ve experienced it, you know what I mean. The discomfort stems from the realization that you can’t, with good conscience, continue on the path – in the thoughts, beliefs, actions, etc. you held before – because they now feel/look very wrong to you. The ways of ‘doing church’ and following Christ you practiced before, sometimes vehemently (Christ forgive me!), now reveal themselves as man-made structures of greedy, power-hungry systems of living that are definitely NOT aligned with the Jesus of the Gospels. Yet changing the way you practice church and follow Jesus creates a whole other host of trouble: change will incur judgement and condemnation, people will ‘fear for your soul’, they don’t understand what you’re doing and try - by whatever means necessary - to reform your thinking and beliefs. If you hold to what you believe is right you may sense a gradual ‘de-belonging’ from groups - families, churches, friend groups - that you felt very much a part of before. You will feel less IN than OUT. Less IN the church and more OUT in the wilderness… a place those IN the church seem to think God isn’t.


Fireside Companions. Silhouettes of people gathered around a bonfire at night, the sky is dark with many stars. The fire is blazing and sparking.
Fireside Companions

If I’m honest, much of the discombobulation from ‘deconstruction’ or any change, perhaps, has been the reaction of the people around me. Humans are pack animals, after all. Leaving a well-trodden path is risky for one's sense of belonging.


Books, like Sarah Bessey's Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith, and groups of wilderness wanderers reading and discussing together, have been some of the many bonfires along the isolating path of the wilderness for me.


Spiritual Direction is another.


What have been your bonfire rest stops?

 




 


P.S. In my next post, I’m committing here and you can call me to account if I don’t follow through – I want to write about the process of acknowledging wounds experienced along my path.  We all – myself included – tend to downplay and dismiss our wounds, to NOT acknowledge them. Especially spiritual wounds, in my experience. In Sarah Bessy’s Wilderness book I came across a simple story of how acknowledging hurts allow us to heal from them. “The relief of being understood, of having… feelings named opened up the room for the possibility of moving forward.” Ach, this is true not only for spiritual wounds, folks. Instead of saying, “you’re fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine”, there is the simple, but difficult fact that when we name and affirm experiences in recognition of someone’s (even our own) suffering we then have permission to let it go. Instead of ‘You’re fine’, we yearn to hear, “Yes, you are sad; yes this hurts; yes, I can name with you what you feel and love you in it” and THEN, with the acknowledgement of pain, that naming, we can begin to turn toward healing. The holiness of God doing this for - and with - us… it’s something I’ve been practicing – requiring great courage to do so – in my own life recently.



A pottery bowl holding avocados displays a gold kintsugi mended break in the top right corner of the photo. The image suggests the beauty of repair.
Mending what's broken

You cant fix what's not broken. Acknowledging wounds is an oft neglected first step toward repair. It's not for no reason that mending features so often in my photos and daily practice. The spiritual art and practice of mending - socks, clothing, dishes, hearts... - is deeply embedded in my spirituality.

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