The contemporary mystic Andrew Harvey once wrote that ‘the things that ignore us save us in the end. Their presence awakens silence in us.’ I have been pondering this week whether this is what all wild places have in common, whether they be the Australian outback, other deserts, mountain places or wilderness forest. Regardless of the particularity of their wildness, wild places ignore us – in a healthy and health-giving way. In a wild place we cease, as human creations, to be at the centre of our own worldview and become aware of all that is beyond us. As the American Presbyterian theologian Belden C. Lane expresses it in his great work “The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: exploring desert and mountain spirituality”: 'There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within.' When we find ourselves bereft of human company and resources, then we find ourselves in a place to let go of the demands of ego, the trivialities of our everyday lives, and to receive something of the incalculable and transforming presence of God...
Jesus at the start of his earthly ministry is led by the spirit into the wilderness – in Mark’s account he is driven. It seems that spiritually speaking the wilderness offers something that is essential to his maturing. It is only after a very long time – which is really what forty days means – that Jesus can confront the demons thrown up by the ego and reject them. They are demons we all recognise – the fear that we might lack food or physical security; the desire for power and control - (let’s have the world according to me!); the longing to be in charge of life and death and somehow as a ‘special’ person to be immortal. These are the demons of ‘do it all, have it all, control it all’ that estrange us from God. Those ego-driven fears and longings are placed in perspective by the experience of wilderness. Like many others before and since, Jesus is enabled to free his mind, clarify his thoughts and rebuke the demands of ego in favour of a God-given path.
There is no question that the wilderness is essential to our Biblical story. At least 300 times in the scriptures the wilderness is referred to as a place where God can be heard and encountered. We have only to think of the stories of Moses and the burning bush, or of Hagar sent out into the wilderness to die, or of John the Baptist emerging from the wilderness with a message of repentance, to recognise the centrality of the motifs of the wilderness as a place simultaneously of refuge and of challenge. Some go to the wilderness to escape their pursuers. Others find in the wilderness a place of testing and endurance.
A twentieth century commentator, addressing the American lawmakers about the need to preserve wilderness places for future generations, remarked that while the people of Israel had wandered in the wilderness for forty years, future generations might be wandering forty years before they could find a wilderness, such is the expansion of urban sprawl and the destruction of wild places in recent decades. Yet the call of wild places to our spirit remains and people returning from wild places speak from a common dictionary. They talk about re-establishing connection with themselves and God; heightening their awareness of the transcendent; sharpening their sense of compassion towards the natural order and increasing their sense of reverence. These are values that we preference and that it seems that God preferences too.
Just as God has a clear preference for the poor, it seems that God prefers to encounter us in the wilderness, whether that wilderness be physical, emotional, spiritual or all three. It is easy to see why. In the wilderness there is simply less to distract us. Human made noise ebbs away; human driven distractions like phones and computers can be set aside; the clamour of human assumed competence is stilled. There is the possibility of a silence where God can speak and be heard. “In the wilderness everything becomes 110% what it is, without all the usual background noise and distraction, there is nothing to dilute reality.”1
Now of course we cannot all simply up sticks and head off to the wilderness for a month or a year – especially not in the current crisis. But what we can do is seek some of the things that belong to that experience in other places – silence, solitude, an intentional letting go of the trappings of modern life, in order to be available for two minutes or two hours to the voice of God. We can seek our own inner wilderness places.For wilderness, as Jesus found, is essential to our spiritual maturing. Whether that wilderness be physical or metaphorical, places that ignore us, force us beyond the cries of ego and so indeed, save us in the end. In the name of the one who calls to us in the wildernesses of our lives and world. Amen.
by Penny Jones, for Outback/Wilderness Sunday, 20 September 2020
1. BB Taylor “Four Stops In the Wilderness” Journal for Preachers 2001
There is no question that the wilderness is essential to our Biblical story. At least 300 times in the scriptures the wilderness is referred to as a place where God can be heard and encountered. We have only to think of the stories of Moses and the burning bush, or of Hagar sent out into the wilderness to die, or of John the Baptist emerging from the wilderness with a message of repentance, to recognise the centrality of the motifs of the wilderness as a place simultaneously of refuge and of challenge. Some go to the wilderness to escape their pursuers. Others find in the wilderness a place of testing and endurance.
A twentieth century commentator, addressing the American lawmakers about the need to preserve wilderness places for future generations, remarked that while the people of Israel had wandered in the wilderness for forty years, future generations might be wandering forty years before they could find a wilderness, such is the expansion of urban sprawl and the destruction of wild places in recent decades. Yet the call of wild places to our spirit remains and people returning from wild places speak from a common dictionary. They talk about re-establishing connection with themselves and God; heightening their awareness of the transcendent; sharpening their sense of compassion towards the natural order and increasing their sense of reverence. These are values that we preference and that it seems that God preferences too.
Just as God has a clear preference for the poor, it seems that God prefers to encounter us in the wilderness, whether that wilderness be physical, emotional, spiritual or all three. It is easy to see why. In the wilderness there is simply less to distract us. Human made noise ebbs away; human driven distractions like phones and computers can be set aside; the clamour of human assumed competence is stilled. There is the possibility of a silence where God can speak and be heard. “In the wilderness everything becomes 110% what it is, without all the usual background noise and distraction, there is nothing to dilute reality.”1
Now of course we cannot all simply up sticks and head off to the wilderness for a month or a year – especially not in the current crisis. But what we can do is seek some of the things that belong to that experience in other places – silence, solitude, an intentional letting go of the trappings of modern life, in order to be available for two minutes or two hours to the voice of God. We can seek our own inner wilderness places.For wilderness, as Jesus found, is essential to our spiritual maturing. Whether that wilderness be physical or metaphorical, places that ignore us, force us beyond the cries of ego and so indeed, save us in the end. In the name of the one who calls to us in the wildernesses of our lives and world. Amen.
by Penny Jones, for Outback/Wilderness Sunday, 20 September 2020
1. BB Taylor “Four Stops In the Wilderness” Journal for Preachers 2001
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