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40 days

Reflections on preparing for a journey: themes from trials in the wilderness scripture

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Not all those that wander are lost. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. — Anatole France Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. — Matsuo Basho

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
— Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To travel is to live. ― Hans Christian Andersen

Dream Big. Start Small. Act Now. — Robin Sharma

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself — Wallace Stevens

51. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road. — Jack Kerouac

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.— Marcel Proust

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.— Lewis Carroll

Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled. — The Prophet Mohammed

SONGS about WILDERNESS:

For Those Who Have Far to Travel
— Jan Richardson

If you could see the journey whole,
you might never undertake it,
might never dare the first step
that propels you from the place
you have known toward the place
you know not.

Call it one of the mercies of the road:
that we see it only by stages
as it opens before us,
as it comes into our keeping,
step by single step.

There is nothing for it
but to go, and by our going
take the vows the pilgrim takes:
to be faithful to the next step;
to rely on more than the map;
to heed the signposts of intuition and dream;
to follow the star that only you will recognize;
to keep an open eye for the wonders that
attend the path; to press on
beyond distractions, beyond fatigue,
beyond what would tempt you
from the way.

There are vows that only you will know:
the secret promises for your particular path
and the new ones you will need to make
when the road is revealed
by turns you could not have foreseen.

Keep them, break them, make them again;
each promise becomes part of the path,
each choice creates the road
that will take you to the place
where at last you will kneel
to offer the gift most needed—
the gift that only you can give—
before turning to go home by
another way.

That Journeys Are Good — Rumi
If a fir tree had a foot or two like a turtle, or a wing,
Do you think it would just wait for the saw to enter?
You know the sun journeys all night under the earth;
If it didn’t, how could it throw up its flood of light in the east?
And salt water climbs with such marvelous swiftness to the sky.
If it didn’t, how would the cabbages be fed with the rain?
Have you thought of Joseph lately? Didn’t he leave his father in tears, going?
Didn’t he then learn how to understand dreams, and give away grain?
And you, if you have no feet to  leave your country, go
Into yourself, become a ruby mine, open to the gifts of the sun.
You could travel from your outer man into your inner man.
By a journey of that sort earth became a place where you find gold.
So leave your complaints and self-pity and internalized death-energy.
Don’t you realize how many fruits have already
escaped out of sourness into sweetness?
A good source of sweetness is a teacher; mine is named Shams.
You know every fruit grows more handsome in the light of the sun.

JESUS in the WILDERNESS COMMENTARY

Throughout the scriptures, the wilderness represents a place of preparation, a place of waiting for God’s next move, a place of learning to trust in God’s mercy. For forty days and nights Jesus remains in the wilderness, without food, getting ready for what comes next. — Working Preacher

Like Jesus, we experience both The River and The Wilderness.
     At The River, whatever that represents for us, we are surrounded by community and given new life and called beloved.  God is near.  And it’s beautiful.  And we need it. But it’s not the whole picture.
     Yet it can feel as though we treat Christianity, or being “spiritual” as a Wilderness avoidance program.   As though finding oneself in the Wilderness is a failure. I know for myself, when I’m struggling with depression or I am in a period of hardship where nothing seems to be working, then I find that I label that time as “bad”.  Or more often than not I’m ashamed because after 20 years of sobriety and a seminary degree, shouldn’t I really have it all together?  So clearly I must be doing something wrong. Sometimes that’s true but sometimes … it’s just the wilderness.  And I can promise you this.  As much as I need to hear that I’m beloved and be surrounded by community and be made new, and we all need that, but as much as I need that, I never gained any wisdom from things going really well at The River. Because The River might fill the heart and that’s important, but it’s The Wilderness that brings wisdom.
     I mean, I’d love it if spiritual wisdom was distributed in the Personal Growth section at Barnes and Noble but that’s just not the way it goes. It’s always been found in The Wilderness. Because if we look at the order of things – at The River Jesus is baptized and called God’s beloved, (before he even does anything cool or enlightened or special by the way) after which he’s cast into The Wilderness for a good long while. And it’s only THEN that he begins teaching and healing. See, Jesus doesn’t begin teaching and healing until after he’s gone through 40 days of Satan, wild beasts and angels. So why do I think my Wilderness to be a personal failure if Jesus’ Wilderness gave him what was needed to heal and to teach? …
     I think maybe because some of us have been taught a rather anemic view of God.  That God is only found at The River times in life – only found in the moments of renewal and elation and blessedness.  In other words, God is only close to us when we feel close to God.  But that’s not true.  Your feelings about God have precious little to do with God’s actual nearness to you. Because Sometimes God’s nearness to us is also found in the way that God creates wisdom out of our wilderness experiences.  God’s nearness to us, is just as real in the blessings of The River as it is in the struggles of The Wilderness.  And Oprah would kill me for saying this, but how we feel doesn’t really matter.  Not in this case…
    Maybe tonight you are struggling with depression, or unemployment or divorce or addiction.  Maybe you are in The Wilderness of wild beasts and angels. But the wisdom is coming.  And after that, The River so that your heart might again be filled. That’s the life of the baptized. The River, then The Wilderness, then The River. In other words,  this whole thing has always been about daily death and resurrection. — Nadia Bolz-Weber, full article: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/01/wild-beasts-and-sheet-cake-a-sermon-for-baptism-of-our-lord/

Can we let God be God for us? If we face down our demons, can we trust that God will hold us?
      It may be helpful to consider Jesus in the wilderness as a coming of age story or coming into your own story that most people face. All around the world there are ceremonies and traditions young people in particular undertake to move into adulthood. Jewish young people have bar or bat mitzvahs and Christian young people have Confirmation. In Latino cultures, young women celebrate their Quinceanera. Some Inuits go out into the wilderness with their fathers when they’re 11 or 12 to test their hunting skills and get acclimated to the arctic weather. The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania have a number of initiations young men most undergo before they become warriors in the tribe. …
     Human beings are meaning-makers. We tell stories and have rituals that help us mark important moments, moments when we move from one part of our lives into another. Perhaps this wilderness story is about Jesus moving from those safe and beautiful waters of baptism in the Jordan River to encounter the harsh realities of the world in the wilderness. Knowing that not everyone was going to believe he’s God’s Son, some people would want him to use his power and influence for their own purposes, and some people would want him to test God or be the Messiah they wanted him to be. All of this going against God naming Jesus and claiming Jesus as God’s own. All of this going against God being the One who tells us who we all are—beloved people of God.  So that’s one way to consider Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness—that it’s about Jesus coming into his own. …
     The other understanding we can glean from Jesus tempted in the wilderness is that the wilderness environment is not unique to Jesus in the least. We will have times when we are there too. Not necessarily physically speaking, but in a spiritual wilderness. The wilderness by definition is an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region. The wilderness is wild and natural—where few people live. In our spiritual lives, the wilderness is when we feel pretty isolated from one another and perhaps even from ourselves and from God. Though perhaps the wilderness provides the landscape for us to do some profound spiritual wrestling with God.…
In the end, when we’re in the wilderness, we can trust that God is with us, and that we are not alone. We can trust that we belong to God and that God has named us and claimed us as God’s own. We can trust that evil never gets the last word, and that love wins—always has and always will. Let us keep trust in our hearts as we journey with Jesus in the wilderness. — Mary James

…. If in Christ we have been tempted, in Him we overcome the devil. Do you think only of Christ’s temptations and fail to think of his victory? See yourself as tempted in Him, and see yourself as victorious in Him. He could have kept the devil from himself, but if He were not tempted He couldn’t teach you how to triumph over temptation. — St Augustine

ABOUT JOURNEYS

Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. – Jane Kenyon.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself? — Rumi

A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.— Tim Cahill

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page. — St Augustine

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow..— Anita Desai

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.― Martin Buber

Journeys bring power and love back into you. If you can’t go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self. They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them. — Rumi

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way. — Carl Sagan

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.— G.K. Chesterton

Do not follow where a path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. — John A. Shedd

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.  — Yogi Berra

If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet. — Rachel Wolchin

All you’ve got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over. — Tony Wheeler

You don’t choose the day you enter the world and you don’t choose the day you leave. It’s what you do in between that makes all the difference. — Anita Septimus

Wilderness— Carl Sandburg
  There is a wolf in me . . .
fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . .
a red tongue for raw meat . . .
and the hot lapping of blood—
I keep this wolf because the wilderness
gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.       There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . .
I sniff and guess . . .
I pick things out of the wind and air . . .
I nose in the dark night and
take sleepers and eat them
and hide the feathers . . .
I circle and loop and double-cross.   There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a
machinery for eating and grunting . . .
a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—
I got this too from the wilderness
and the wilderness will not let it go.   There is a fish in me . . .
I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . .
I scurried with shoals of herring . . .
I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . .
before land was . . . before the water went down . .
. before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.   There is a baboon in me . . .
clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . .
yawping a galoot’s hunger . . .
hairy under the armpits . . .
here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . .
here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . .
here they hide curled asleep waiting . . .
ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . .
waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.   There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . .
and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains
of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . .
and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon
before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope,
gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—
And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.  

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs,
under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—
and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

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