Wilderness

During Lent this year I will be posting a series of weekly reflections with a specific community in mind, but which I hope will resonate with a wider audience. Many of the themes, if not all, are fairly universal in nature and have been recurring themes in my ponderings lately…lately also meaning the past few years. I hope you will find something in each reflection that speaks to your soul.

The word conjures up so many images…the jungle, the desert, woodlands, the wilds of the deep ocean, even the jungles made of glass and steel. Wilderness can also bring to mind a sense of lostness, vulnerability, challenge, and aloneness. Life is full of periods of wilderness, including in childhood. Just think back to your teen years. Three years ago, we entered into a global wilderness from which many are still emerging. Times of transition also often create a sense of uncertainty, challenge, and loneliness. And that can include transitions that we choose and initiate. Exciting transitions still provide us with things unknown and questions about what the future brings.

One of my wilderness periods was in recent years, overlapping with the pandemic. I have written about that in earlier posts. The question of “Now what?” such as after the youngest officially moves out, the end of a career, a major health crisis, or a general sense of direction loss can bring a sense of being in the wilderness. Individuals can experience that with the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, or something less traumatic like a general unease or restlessness. Communities of all kinds, whether large companies, small non-profits, teams, faith communities, and peoples can also experience periods of being in the wilderness, resulting from things like massive layoffs, forced immigration due to violence or natural disasters, or loss of key leadership.

Periods of finding oneself in times of wilderness is not new. There are two big stories in the Bible about people in the wilderness…Moses and the Israelites wandering the desert for 40 years in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, Jesus spending 40 days in the desert, being facing temptations. In the Bible, the wilderness is a place of wanderings, emptiness, and testing. The use of the words water and sea in the Bible carry different connotations. Water is not threatening. The sea is a dangerous, risky, and wild place. Storms happen at sea; the water can be rough and the wind strong. The sea is wild, vast, challenging, isolating, and unpredictable.

We don’t tend to view being in wilderness periods as pleasant or comfortable. There’s too much unsettledness, too many questions, and no good vision of the end. We typically don’t want to stay in the wilderness. But here we are at the start of Lent, the season which echoes the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness. What if we looked at the wilderness as a time to pause, to reflect, and to be okay with not knowing? Whatever the wilderness is for us at the moment, can we trust that we will come out of it? That our wanderings will end or that the storms and winds will be stilled? Calm will return and direction will be re-established.

Some of us have been in a wilderness of some sort for a bit now. If you are finding yourself in that unknown, wild space, how are you holding up? What is helping you get your bearings and providing some calm? What new insights have you gained in your wilderness time?

As we begin this season of Lent, how can the wilderness of these 40 days show us the way home, the way forward?

Blessings on your wanderings.