Sometimes the Wilderness is What We Need
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Beth Henricks
May 29, 2022
Our scripture today is from the Old Testament. Exodus 13:17-18 and 16:10.
Exodus 13:17-18
17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer, for God thought, “If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.” 18 So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness bordering the Red Sea.[a]
Exodus 16:10
10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
I always like this holiday because there is no pressure for gifts or decorations or fancy dinners or being with a lot of people. It seems more about casual dining with family and friends, or spending time in quiet solitude, or outdoor barbeques, and the welcome of summer and a different pace of life for a couple of months. It is also a weekend that we reflect on those we miss and treasure and remember with joy and sadness those that have touched our lives and also those that have sacrificed their lives for our country and for our democracy.
I can’t share a message today without mentioning the devastating event that occurred this week in Texas where 19 children ages 7-9 years old (and some adults) were gunned down in their school. I can’t express my grief, sadness and tears that this tragedy occurred. I know you share in the horror of hearing about this and learning some of the details and hearing about these beautiful children of God. The anguish we feel can turn into despair when we watch these horrific acts occur and as a country, we seem to be doing nothing to prevent these tragedies. Mass shootings are occurring on a regular basis and my heart continues to break again and again every time we hear news like this. I know God is weeping with us today. I pray we take some kind of action to help prevent these tragedies. I also believe deep in my heart that God is at work in these darkest moments.
My message today is about the wilderness. Recently Bob suggested I read a book called Church of the Wild, and I read this narrative in fascination about this new type of church being created across the country that worships outside with an emphasis of how we are connected to God through creation and nature. But the chapter in the book that really struck me was one that focused on being in the wilderness.
When many of us hear the word wilderness we think of a place that is barren, without life, a place of wandering without direction and something to avoid. I have heard many talks about “wandering in the wilderness” that denotes a period of loss, being alone, losing one’s groundedness, not feeling centered and feeling abandoned and rudderless. I have heard many sermons in my life talking about the wilderness as a place where God takes things away to teach us to appreciate God’s gifts or a place for us to receive the refining that we need to receive God’s blessing. From all these accounts, the wilderness I is not a place that I want to be. I want to feel the opposite of these emotions and work hard to try to avoid these barren times of life or times of distance from God.
This book turned the idea of wilderness on its head for me. Rather than being a place of punishment or abandonment, sometimes the wilderness is what we need to bring us into wholeness. The scripture I just read is a story that I have heard my whole life. God frees the Israelites from Egyptian control, and they are no longer slaves. God has promised them a land of their own and this is now their opportunity to be free. But through a series of events that highlights their fear, their complaining, and their lack of faith, I always heard that God punished them by not taking them directly to the promised land but sending them into the wilderness for 40 years. This seemed like a punishment because of their lack of faith. It was their actions and their attitude that sent them into the wilderness, and they had no idea how they were going to survive.
The author of Church of the Wild, Victoria Loorz offers a different interpretation. She said “rather than simply a harsh backdrop for a human drama, like we often portray the site of forty years of wandering, the wilderness as a place that speaks, completely changes the tone of the story. What if Moses and his traumatized people were sent into the wilderness not as some sort of intense punishment or intense object lesson? What if the wilderness was instead the place to listen to the sacred speaking through the voices of burning bushes, calling humans to remember that they belong to a greater story?” (pg 62)
This had me really examine all my perceptions and preconceived ideas about wilderness. I have always found God in nature and one of my favorite things is to get up early and sit on my back porch to hear the many birds, watch the leaves change and feel the gentle breeze through the branches. I love to take walks and experience creation in this way. But this doesn’t feel like wilderness – wilderness is where wild animals are and where my fear of the unknown rises. But what are we afraid of in the wilderness?
Loorz suggests, “ From Moses to Jesus, and from Hagar to Isaiah to Paul, the uncompromising directive from God to enter the wilderness at a pivotal moment in history had to mean something more than internal wrestling with ego or demons.” (pg 52) Maybe the physical dirt, the heat, and the wild creatures are part of our development in our journey to God. Maybe this is the place that we need to go for healing during a period of trauma in our life. Maybe its the place we face our life and our death?
In the Hebrew scriptures the word midbar is usually translated as wilderness. But it also listed in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon as a noun meaning mouth, the organ of speech. This gives a different context to the word wilderness and suggests something that is alive, that gives breath and speech and expression. It whispers, it shouts, it speaks tenderly and lovingly.
When Jesus went to face his shadow self, his false self he didn’t go to the Temple to pray but he went to the wilderness and stayed there for 40 days. He faced his life and his death in the wilderness and lived among the stones, the wild animals, and his demons. It is here that he heard the call of God and wrestled with his calling. I think the wilderness was more than a setting but a character in this story that brings Jesus into his true destiny. He experienced the intimacy that the wilderness can bring to us. It was a place of connection, hearing and seeing God through this wild place.
My son Greg has introduced me to the Welsh poet, philosopher and writer David Whyte. I listened to his story of an encounter with a black hawk in the Galapagos Islands. David was trained as a marine zoologist intent on subduing nature and classifying, organizing, and naming species in the Galapagos Islands where he was stationed. One day he comes upon a black hawk at eye level on a branch staring intently and deeply into his soul. This was a rare bird in the Islands and one that David was wanting to identify. David stares back. In that moment David had a revelation that he was staring into the essence of this hawk and that this hawk was so far beyond his naming or categorizing. David’s body was unraveling within this insight. He realized there is no language to describe the interconnectivity to what he was witnessing in the wilderness, and it changed him forever. He set aside his scientific training and become his true calling of poet and philosopher.
Here is a poem by David called Sometimes
Sometimes
If you move carefully
Through the forest,
Breathing
Like the ones
In the old stories,
Who could cross
A shimmering bed of leaves
Without a sound,
You come to a place
Whose only task
Is to trouble you
With tiny
But frightening requests,
Conceived out of nowhere
But in this place
Beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
You are doing now,
And
to stop what you
Are becoming
While you do it,
Questions
That have patiently
Waited for you,
Questions
That have no right
To go away.
The wilderness is interconnected with how I face my shadows and my false self and is part of my journey to allow my true self to begin to emerge. It is a place that I need to visit to go beneath my surface, to face my fears, to move beyond my ordinary life and gaze deeply into the hawk’s eyes and understand that my naming, identifying, categorizing, aligning with my tribe is not who I really am and it’s not who you really are. I need to enter the wilderness to become that which God is calling to me to out of my soul. The wilderness brings me into the intimate love of God. The wilderness is not a place of punishment and abandonment by God but a place of love.
I have always appreciated the quote from Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak. He shares of entering the wilderness and the wild animal through silence. Silence and respect of the soul. Our soul is like a wild animal.
“The soul is like a wild animal, tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy.
If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out.
But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of the tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wilderness we seek.”
Friends, I feel a strong sense that we need to spend more time in our unprogrammed worship or Quaker communion today, as we all wrestle with so much inside of us. Here are a few queries to consider but I know each of you have the questions that you need to wrestle within for our time together.
Am I afraid of entering the wilderness?
What do I need to face in the wilderness?
What in my soul needs to quietly emerge?