The Wilderness is Our Place of Refuge

shelliwilliams Freedom, Lent, Wilderness , , , ,

desert%20shelterScripture Text:  Matthew 2: 13-15

13Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

 

We are accustomed to the wilderness being a scary place, a wild and unpredictable mass of chaos that becomes our nemesis, our thing to conquer. So how can it be a place of refuge? There is nothing about it that feels safe. There is nothing about it that feels like we are in control. There is nothing about it that feels like it is protecting us. And yet, after the birth of Jesus, after that hard birth in the grotto of Bethlehem, Joseph is called into yet another wilderness. Joseph is told to flee to Egypt. The reason that Joseph and his new family are called into the wilderness isn’t about awakening or questing or getting to a promised land of some sort. Joseph is called into the wilderness so that the wilderness can be a refuge. What an odd twist of events?

 

But when you think about it, this has happened before. The Israelites were released into the wilderness in order to pursue freedom, freedom, ironically, from Egypt. The wilderness is their way to freedom. And now, Joseph and his family return, traversing the wilderness in search of freedom, in search of safety from Herod, from the certain death of Jesus the child. Maybe Egypt was never the captor at all, but just the other side of the wilderness, the other side of freedom. But this fleeing into the wilderness by Joseph and Mary and their child is to gain refuge. Here, the wilderness is a place of refuge.

 

Maybe it’s the same for us. Maybe we don’t trust it as refuge because we can’t control it or predict it or pave its path. After all, we tend to think of it as “all or nothing”. How can I guarantee my safety? How can I protect myself against all harm? How can I insure that nothing will happen to me? Well, you can’t. God does not provide some sort of Divine bubble around our lives. Things happen. Bad things happen. Maybe rather than closing us off to life, God calls us into wildernesses so that we will have nothing to hold onto except God. God provides a refuge not from the things of life or the things that we can’t control, but from those things that get in the way of who we are, those things that perhaps protect us so much that they become our captors, our enslavers. But in the refuge of the wilderness, we have to let them go. For us, just as those before us, the wilderness is our way not to safety or protection from life, but to freedom. Because in the freedom of the wilderness, when we have let go of the things that we hold so tightly, we find that God is holding us, providing a refuge, a way to freedom, a way forward.

 

This Season of Lent, like the wilderness, is often wild and untamed. And yet, it gets us out of ourselves, providing a refuge, offering freedom so that we can move forward finally unhindered and free from enslavement. This Lenten wilderness journey can be our refuge if we only let it.

 

God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. (Annie Dillard)

 

FOR TODAY: Leave yourself behind. Let God provide a refuge in the wilderness, freedom from what stands in the way of life. Do not run. Stay and bask in the loving refuge of God.

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Shelli

 

The Wilderness is Where We Came to Be

shelliwilliams LENT, Wilderness , , , , , , ,

nativity-story_282_resizedScripture Text:  Luke 2: 1-7

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3All went to their own towns to be registered. 4Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

 

Oh not this!  How can you call this beautiful story the wilderness?  But the truth is, Jesus was born into a wilderness.  Joseph and Mary had had to travel some distance to get to this place.  And the setting, for all the wonder and awe that it holds for us was not idyllic—forced occupation, taxation without representation, poor couple, long trip under less than favorable circumstances, and, then, no room when they got there.  See, in our haste to welcome the child each year and celebrate once again his arrival into the world, we forget the circumstances into which he came.  We forget that he first appeared in the dim lights of a grotto drenched with the waters of new Creation, with the smell of God still in his breath.  We forget that Mary was probably in tears most of the night as she tried to be strong, entering a realm that she had never entered.  And we forget that Joseph felt oh so very responsible and that the weight of that responsibility, the responsibility for essentially birthing God into this world, was heavy on his shoulders.  We remember Jesus’ birth, the moment when we came to be.  But we forget that the wilderness is where we came to be.

Now this is, of course, not the first time that God has appeared in the wilderness.  Incarnations were happening all along.  God came as winds sweeping across the waters, burning bushes, and thick clouds that shrouded mountains.  God came in dreams and whirlwinds and strange manna appearing in the wilderness.  God always came.  Perhaps we were too busy with our lives to notice.  So, on this particular night in this particular place, God called us into the wilderness of our lives so that we would finally notice.  God seeks us out, showing us the sacredness that had been created for us, the holy that we had missed all along.  On this silent night, in the thick wilderness of night, God comes and dances with humanity, crossing the line between the ordinary and the Divine if only for a while.  God comes to us.

Haven’t you always thought that it would have made more sense for Jesus to born into the establishment, perhaps into at least moderate wealth, in a place where it all would have been noticed?  OK, really?  So what would have happened if Jesus had been born into a single-family McMansion in the suburbs?  See, God always comes into the wilderness.  God chooses to call us into the wild where we will notice that God is there.  God calls us away from what we know, away from those places where we get comfortable and close ourselves off.  God calls us to the place where we are open to newness, open to encounter, open to walking toward rather than closing off.  And on this night, on this beautiful silent night with angels singing and stars shining, the walk to the Cross began.  The wilderness is where we can come to be because it is the place where we know nothing else other than to walk forward.  This season of Lent, this season of walking to the Cross did not just begin this last Ash Wednesday.  It began long ago on that silent night in the wilderness.  It began in the darkness of the wilderness when we came to be.
It gets darker and darker…and then Jesus is born. (Ann Lamott)

FOR TODAY:  Leave the comforts of your life and walk into a wilderness.  What do you see?  Who do you encounter?  Now keep walking.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Wilderness is Where We Began

shelliwilliams LENT, Wilderness , , , ,

Creation 1Scripture Text:  Genesis 1: 1-3

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

 

That’s not the wilderness!  Wilderness has thick, unsculptured trees or endless sand, hard-to-follow paths or paths that keep disappearing.  This isn’t a wilderness. There’s nothing there!  But don’t you think nothingness, a formless void covered in darkness is just about as ultimate a wilderness as you can imagine? And keep in mind that there WASN’T nothingness, per se.  There was a void, a glob (that’s an official very spiritual term!) of disordered chaos.  And God was there, there in the wilderness with the chaos and the glob.  All of Creation began in this wilderness.  God spoke the first creating Word in that wilderness.  God spoke and the formless void began to slowly follow God into being. As the Spirit of God swept over the waters, they moved and parted, letting go of the part of themselves to which they had held so tightly, and they began to change.  And then with another Word, God called Light forth and darkness began to be illuminated.  Creation had begun.  We had begun.  The wilderness is where we began.

We know the rest of the tale.  God continued to create, continued to order the wilderness, to one by one call Creation into being—earth and sky, plants and suns and moons and ordered seasons, swimming creatures, winged creatures, creeping creatures, walking creatures, and, oh yeah, us!  As the last bit of ordering of this incredible called-out Creation, God created Sabbath, the pinnacle, the climax, the glorious coming together into perfect order of all of Creation.  And God delighted in this order and called it good.

The wilderness is where we began.  In our beginnings, in our disordered chaos, God called us forth into being.  God created us not in a haphazard way but in the very image of God.  God called us forth to live into that image, to become the very ones that God envisioned we would be.  We were probably pretty OK in that wilderness void; after all, we knew nothing different.  And then God created us into something new.  And God called it good.  We were God’s delight, God’s beloved.  Oh, sometimes we wander away. Sometimes we mistake really pretty acceptable chaos for God’s ordering.  Sometimes we think we have a better idea of who we could be than this image of God.  And so we need to return to the wilderness, to the place of our creation, to the place where we began, so that God can say us into being once more.

That’s what Lent does for us.  Lent calls us into the wilderness to remind us who and who’s we are, to remind us of that image in which we were made.  Lent calls us into the wilderness so that we can begin again.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. (Pablo Picasso)

FOR TODAY:  Look around at this wilderness.  What does it mean to begin again?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Much-Needed Wilderness

shelliwilliams Calling, Journey, Uncategorized, Wilderness , , , , , , ,

ivan-nikolaevich-kramskoy-christ-in-the-desert1Scripture Text:  Luke 4: 1-2

 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

 

Yes, as a matter of fact, this IS the third time we’ve heard this account as part of our wilderness journey. But we haven’t heard it from the same Gospel-writer.  All three of the synoptic Gospels include the account of Jesus being led into the wilderness following his Baptism. It’s one of the few passages that was not only included by each writer, but actually was included within pretty much the same sequence in the happenings of Jesus’ life. There doesn’t seem to be any need on the part of any of the writers to “rearrange” things to further the focus that the writer was trying to impart. It’s just included. It’s part of the story. Apparently, each Gospel account recognizes this as, for want of a better word, a much-needed wilderness.

 

So have you ever thought of the wilderness as something that we NEED? We probably spend more time trying our very best to avoid it or, if it can’t be avoided, to at least hurry to the end, trying to cram as much as we can into it, but with the goal to get to the end as soon as possible so that we can go back to normal, go back to our lives. But Jesus was led into the wilderness and stayed for forty days. He had just been baptized. According to the Scriptures, John the Baptist had just pointed to who he was and what his life meant. God had proclaimed him the “Beloved”, and had voiced what pleasure the Divine took in him. He was set to go, set to begin his ministry. Standing there on the banks of the Jordan, he was ready to begin. And he did. He began with what was apparently a much-needed wilderness.

 

So for forty days, Jesus wandered in the wilderness. Sure, he was tempted to control it, tempted to overpower it, tempted to make it his. He was probably tempted to go home, although none of the Gospel-writers wrote that one down. But he didn’t. He walked the wilderness. He prayed, he looked at himself, he talked to God. My guess is that he probably argued with and questioned God a bit. (Well, maybe that’s what I would have done!) The wilderness was not any easier for Jesus than it is for us. But Jesus knew that he had to embrace the time, that preparing himself for the years to come, for the tiresome tasks of serving others, for the draining tasks of healing and teaching, for the frustrating tasks of calling others who did not always stay on the path, for the disheartening tasks of rejection and difficulty and questions, and, finally, finally, for the implausible task of walking to the Cross, had to be done in this wilderness. This wilderness would give him what he needed and he knew it. It was the place where he had to let go of his own plans and his own preconceptions of what his life would hold. It was the place where he had to take a good hard luck at himself, at the ways that he stood in the way of his own life. It was the place where he would know, finally know, that he WAS God’s Beloved with whom God was well pleased and that God would never forsake him. It was the place that, finally, Jesus knew who he was and what he was called to do.

 

We need the wilderness experience just as badly. It’s not a place where we prove our love to God or where we show how strong or how spiritual or how faithful we are. It is the place where we finally get out of ourselves, out of our routines, off the path that we have so carefully carved out for our lives, and, finally, without being able to see where we are going, we know that we are on the right path. It is the place where we can come to know who we are and what we are called to do.   Now we are ready to begin. And we return from the wilderness as a different one, as one who knows ourself as God’s Beloved, with whom God is well pleased.  We will return famished and ready to fill ourselves with God.

 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. (Wendell Berry)

 

FOR TODAY:  Look around you.  Quit trying to figure a way out.  Just walk through the wilderness and see what God has to show you.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Wilderness-found

shelliwilliams Lent, Lostness, Wilderness , , , , ,

 

"The Lost Sheep", Daniel Bonnell, USA
“The Lost Sheep”, Daniel Bonnell, USA

Scripture Text:  Luke 15: 4-6

 4“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’

 

As we have come to know, the wilderness is treacherous. It is tiresome and mind-draining. It often seems to lengthen time even as one makes his or her way through it. We become impatient. We want it to end. We want to shorten the time that it has its hold on us. We want to take shortcuts to get to the end, so we veer off the path, away from our course, thinking that we have it all figured out. We find ourselves lost.

 

It is easy in times of wilderness to think that you are alone. It is tempting to assume that you have somehow ended up there of your own doing and that you and you alone are responsible for finding your way out. We’ve all been lost before. We’ve all been in situations where we just can’t seem to find our way back. We’ve all had times whether they be physical, emotional, or even spiritual where we lose our way. We backtrack, trying to find the pathway down which we came so that we can “start again”. But everywhere we look, the choices of where to go all look the same. It becomes overwhelming. We turn and we turn and we panic and we run through this maze of choices over and over again.

 

When I was young, I was told that if I was lost, I should stay where I was. (Sometimes we’re smarter when we’re children, because we know to listen.) I think intellectually we all know that we should stay on the path and keep walking and yet, as adults, we somehow think we can fix it. We can wander with panic through life with no compass and no real help. We can try this way and that way and backtrack and veer off to nowhere. We can convince ourselves that we need no help, that we can do it. We can be tempted by the shortcuts that are offered along the way. And we stay lost.

 

Sometimes we are the lost sheep. Sometimes the wilderness seems to consume us. Sometimes the road through it seems to lengthen with each step. But where we did get the notion that solitude meant that we were alone? This wilderness journey is not one that we travel alone. God walks with us, holds us when we need to be held, and when we become the lost sheep, the one who has wandered away, God is there too. God doesn’t “fix” our way through the wilderness or speed up our wilderness time, but we are always wilderness-found.

 

We just have a couple of more weeks of this Lenten wilderness. We know that it will get harder. We know that, like many wilderness paths, it will seem to lengthen and become more treacherous as we near the end of its hold. But we do not walk it alone. Jesus, walking to the Cross, was never alone. He was in solitude; he was in prayer; he was often deserted by those who traveled with him. But God has walked this way before. God knows the way. So God will always make sure that even though the way is hard, we are always wilderness-found. And God lays us on the Divine shoulders and rejoices.

 

Look back from where we have come.  The path was at times an open road of joy.  At others a steep and bitter track of stones and pain.  How could we know the joy without the suffering?  And how could we endure the suffering but that we are warmed and carried on the breast of God? (Desmond Tutu)

 

FOR TODAY:  Let God pick you up.  Let God hold you.  Be aware of God walking with you on this path.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Vision Quest

shelliwilliams Cross, Lent, Vision , , , , , ,

Vision QuestScripture Text:  John 12: 20-33

 20Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. 27“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

 

In some Native American cultures, a vision quest is a rite of passage, a time of coming of age. In many tribes, a vision quest requires that a person spend at least four to five days secluded in nature, in the wilderness, so to speak. During that time, the person participates in what is characterized as deep spiritual communion. It is a time of transition, perhaps of “finding oneself”. It is a time of finding one’s direction, a turning toward who one is supposed to be.

 

We know this Scripture passage well. It is the point where Jesus metaphorically, if not literally, turns toward the Cross. It is the point where Jesus begins walking and beckons others to follow, to let go of all to which they are holding and follow. But I think I have often sort of skipped over the first two verses. What an odd interplay. Greeks, outsiders, come to worship at the festival. Now I guess you could assume that they were Jewish if they were coming to worship. But they are still not part of Jesus’ inner circle. And they head right up to Philip. The passage makes it clear that Philip, too, was on some level an “outsider”. He was from Bethsaida, the “house of fishing”, the place on the Galilean Lake where Jesus had probably called him to follow, along with some of the other disciples. And to Philip, the Greek questors make their request: “We wish to see Jesus.”

 

On the surface, it is a simple enough request. But when you consider that they were Greeks, accustomed to knowledge and learning, probably used to the more pragmatic way of looking at things, the notion of “seeing” Jesus is interesting. And there is no answer given. Jesus goes right into laying out what is about to happen. Maybe the idea is that wishing to see is a way of seeing, that desiring to be close to Jesus brings one closer, that one’s awakening to Jesus’ Passion is what brings one into it.

 

What if this season of Lent became our vision quest? What if here in the wilderness that leads to the Cross, where our plans go awry and we are at the mercy of circumstances that we cannot seem to control to our liking, we see life, we see Jesus, we see ourselves in a different way? What would it mean here, in a place to which we are unaccustomed, we were to ask to see Jesus—not just assume that Jesus is there, not just walk through Passion and Holy Week the way we always have, but to truly, in the deepest part of our being, desire to see Jesus, to know Jesus (not the Jesus that picks us up, not the Jesus who we like to call our brother or our friend or whatever word implies a close friendship, but the Jesus who has turned and walked away toward the Cross and now beckons us to follow.)? Now is the time. Now is the time for your own vision quest.

 

Every question in life is an invitation to live with a touch more depth, a breath more meaning. (Joan Chittister)

FOR TODAY:  Go on a vision quest.  Learn to see anew.  Wish, in the deepest part of your being, to see Jesus—not the one that you’ve been so comfortable seeing, but the one who beckons to you to follow.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Becoming Wilderness

shelliwilliams LENT, Wilderness , , , ,
"St. John the Baptist", El Greco, c. 1600.
“St. John the Baptist”, El Greco, c. 1600.

Scripture Text:  Matthew 3: 1-5

 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

 

We never know quite what to do with this strange wilderness man.  You can imagine him covered with dirt and grime after all this time in the wilderness.  His hair is long and unkempt, matted in places and hanging down over one of his eyes.  He is decked out from neck to knee in some sort of strange covering made of camel’s hair that is secured by a roughshod faded leather belt hastily tied around his waist.  And all this time in the wilderness has caused him to lose any hint of a sophisticated palate finely tuned to the gentle blend of herbs and spices and culinary concoctions.  Instead, he is content to eat what he finds—locusts, wild honey, whatever else may cross his path.  Yeah, we never know quite what to do with this strange wilderness man.

John was definitely not a run-of-the-mill preacher.  He had zeal; he had passion; his primary focus was preparing the way of the Lord.   I’m not sure what John saw for those who did not know God.  But he was determined that all who came out to him somehow, some way turned their lives around.  Now this whole idea of “repentance” that John emphasized is not one that we good Methodists often focus on.  It sometimes sounds a little too “hellfire and brimstone” for us. But repentance means turning around, a new mind, a change of direction.  It means throwing off those things that bind us to the life we know for those things that point to a life with God.  It does not mean that God has finally won us over; it means, rather, that our own self, our own story, has finally come to be.  Just being there is not enough; just having Abraham for your ancestor is not enough; just doing the right thing is not enough.  You must change your life.  You must change your path.  You must change how you look at the world.  There are no favorites.  This includes everyone.

So, why did John make his home in the wilderness?  Why didn’t he come to town, plant himself in the middle of the town square, and preach his message there?  Maybe it was not that John himself had such an affinity for the wilderness life.  Maybe it was rather that he saw what we often avoid.  I mean, think about the wilderness—it calls us into things outside our normal routines, outside of the establishments that make up our lives.  The wilderness calls us to learn to see things anew.  Without routines, we have to rely on something that will point us in the right direction; without our comfortable landmarks and our timeworn assumptions, we have to rely on the wilderness and those who we meet on the path showing us the way.

No, we don’t know what to do with him.  We don’t know how to talk to or talk about this wild wilderness man.  After all, John is a threat to proper society and accepted norms.  John IS the wilderness.  Maybe that’s what we need to do—become wilderness.  Now I’m not ready to don camel’s hair and I’m thinking that I might pack some peanut butter and crackers and perhaps a high-protein granola bar to avoid EVER having to eat locusts.  But maybe I do need to become wilderness, to clear the timeworn path through my life, to become open to the wildness of God’s Spirit that blows in and out of places that I never knew, that somehow compels me to travel down roads unknown, sometimes with fear and trepidation, and be willing (no, actually WANT to) turn myself around and see what I have not seen.

OK, John, I guess we get it.  I’m still not keen on the outfit and the meal, but if our Lenten journey has taught us anything, it is to open ourselves to traveling through what we do not know so that it can all be revealed to us.  John saw something that I have been avoiding.  John was not waiting for God’s Kingdom to come to be; he saw it happening.  By becoming wilderness, by stepping out of what he knew, he saw that God was not just coming but was already here.

 

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Suzanna Arundhati Roy)

 

FOR TODAY: Become wilderness. Open your eyes and see God’s Kingdom coming to be. (And, if you need to, pack some peanut butter!)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli