Saturday, June 27, 2020
The Rev. Nathan Bourne
Turn
The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel. – Luke 1:80
Wilderness can have a powerful and clarifying effect. I’ve often been drawn to it in times of transition and uncertainty. It’s where I go when I need to sort out what is going on inside me, when things feel like they’re too much to hold. As a kid I was drawn to the woods behind our house, and the endless natural wonders they had to reveal. After college, it was the hills of Georgia next to the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains to the north that helped me sort out where I was going in life. Before coming to St. John’s, it was the Long Trail in Vermont that helped me prepare for my move to Portsmouth. Yesterday, Nicole and I went up to the White Mountains to hike Mt. Moosilauke, and I found myself again in that clarifying place – able to step away from the stress and worry of the day-to-day and turn towards myself, my own body and my emotional state.
Wilderness is the place where I most often encounter God. It’s where John the Baptist went to prepare for Jesus’ coming. Saints, mystics, and holy people wandering through the desert have often written of the effect of wilderness, and how the journey outward into unknown places – and the fear, uncertainty, and difficulty of that journey – can draw us deeper into ourselves. Through them we can become more acutely aware of our needs, desires, and the small movements of our heart. In the wilderness the whisper of God speaking and moving within us and the world gets amplified. The wilderness invites us to turn, to focus, to open ourselves simultaneously to the world around us and the depths of ourselves.
The journey into the wilderness doesn’t always need to be a literal one. A few years ago I went with a group from St. John’s to the Society of St. John the Evangelist’s monastery in Cambridge, MA for a silent (or at least mostly silent retreat). Some of the folks who went on that trip had never done anything like it. The thought of that much intentional silence was terrifying. But over those three or four days, I could sense how they were settling into the experience, and afterwards heard from them how much they appreciated it. The silence of that space was a wilderness, scary and uncertain, but in the end clarifying and profound.
Where are the wildernesses in your life? Where are those places that allow you to put down your worries of the day-to-day and turn towards your own heart and to God? What might you discover stepping out into the wilderness today?
