Into the Wilderness

"The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness."

-- Henry Ellis

Reading: by Sara Campbell from Into the Wilderness (p. 1)

Wilderness is a part of every person’s soul-journey, and part of our journey together as human beings who seek to live in community. Time in the wilderness is always a time of struggle. It is also a time of transformation and renewal. In traditional terms, it is a time of purification. The journey into the wilderness reminds us that we are alone and not alone. We are neither where we have been nor where we are going. There is danger and possibility, risk and promise. In the wilderness, the spirit may descend like a dove and lift us with a gift of grace, then challenge us to change. In the stories and rituals of Eastern as well as Western religions, a journey into the wilderness represents a time when we both pursue and resist the Holy.

We may choose to enter the wilderness like the people of Yahweh, to escape bondage, or, like Henry David Thoreau, to “live deliberately.” Or we may, like Jesus, be driven there without much choice. Once there, even our markers of time and space collapse, for this wilderness is not in space or time, but is the boundless territory of the soul.

Reading: by Jon Krakauer from an article entitled “Death of an Innocent – How Christopher McCandless lost his way in the wilds” (Outside Magazine January 1993)

In 1977, when I was 23 (—a year younger than McCandless at the time of his death—) I hitched a ride to Alaska on a fishing boat and set off alone into the backcountry to attempt an ascent of a malevolent stone digit called the Devils Thumb, a towering prong of vertical rock and avalanching ice, ignoring pleas from friends, family, and utter strangers to come to my senses. Simply reaching the foot of the mountain entailed traveling 30 miles up a badly crevassed, storm-wracked glacier that hadn't seen a human footprint in many years. By choice I had no radio, no way of summoning help, no safety net of any kind. I had several harrowing shaves, but eventually I reached the summit of the Thumb.

When I decided to go to Alaska that April, I was an angst-ridden youth who read too much Nietzsche, mistook passion for insight, and functioned according to an obscure gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end it changed almost nothing, of course. I came to appreciate, however, that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

Reading: by Carl Sandberg from a poem entitled “Wilderness”

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 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.

Into the Wilderness

A Sermon Delivered on March 18, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

When Jon Krakauer was a young man, he had a strange and powerful fascination with wilderness. Some combination of a youthful yearning for independence and a sense of invulnerability, coupled with a longing for adventure, and adolescent angst, drove him to Alaska and on a dangerous journey to the top of a treacherous mountain peak. He was hoping for some transformative experience that would change his life. He didn’t find it. But, despite the dangers, he was able to safely return home and tell the tale.

Krakauer’s own adventures in Alaska contributed to his sense of kinship with another young traveler, who, years later, attempted a similar feat, but whose journey ended tragically. His name was Christopher McCandless. Also in his early twenties, McCandless left the comforts of home behind, adopted a new name, calling himself “Alexander Supertramp,” and traveled the American West for two years. His travels took him to Alaska, where he attempted to leave civilization behind, walking a remote snow-covered trail into the mountains with little more than a small backpack, 10 pounds of rice, and a rifle. It was the greatest adventure of his life, a spiritual pilgrimage. McCandless survived for over a hundred days, but underestimating the challenges, he died in the wild.

Krakauer wrote a book in which he tried to recreate the events that led up to the young man’s demise, and understand his motives. The book Into the Wild, was on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years, and was even made into a movie. Clearly, his fascination with the wilderness – its dangers and its allure – struck a chord.

* * *

According to the Christian calendar we are, today, 25 days into Lent. Lent is a forty-day period of penance, penitence, and prayer. It is a time when observant Christians give up selected luxuries, practice some form of self-denial, perhaps a fast, restricting what they eat and drink, perhaps meat or chocolate or alcohol.

These self-imposed deprivations are meant to remind the faithful of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, eating nothing at all. Right after he was baptized in the Jordan River, the Spirit of God descended on him, like a dove, and then told him to head into the desert. For forty days Jesus faced trials and temptations. After forty days he returned to civilization and began his public ministry.

This Christian story echoes an older Jewish story, in which the period spent in the wilderness was not forty days, but forty years. God led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, and into the wilderness. The Spirit of God wasn’t like a dove descending, but a like a pillar of smoke, which the Israelites followed by day, and a pillar of fire by night. And the people of Israel faced trials and temptations as well. But they persevered, and in the end reached the Promised Land. Though their leader, Moses, died in the wild.

* * *

Why does God send his children into the wilderness? Is this an example of God’s capriciousness? Is God trying to punish his people, for no good reason? Does God get a sadistic pleasure in making life miserable for us?

As author John Lionberger sees it, the wilderness is the ideal place in which to gain a sense of the sacred. Because the wilderness stretches our physical and spiritual boundaries, it opens us up to the possibility of radical changes. Religions around the world and throughout history have recognized the power of the wilderness to grant people an authentic experience of the Divine. This experience is so universal, it seems to be rooted in our DNA.

Lionberger says it is the very unfamiliarity of the wilderness environment that helps us live more fully in the present moment, keenly aware of nearly everything. “There is nothing we can take for granted, so we have to think intentionally about everything we do.” He calls the wilderness God’s “hull-scraper”: “it strips us of the barnacles of civilization that slow us, distract us, and divert us in our pursuit of God – and God’s pursuit of us.”

Our civilized lives are defined by ruts and routines, that invariably confine us and at times enslave us. Our everyday habits create barriers between us and an awareness of the cosmic forces that create and sustain life. In the wilderness, when things aren’t quite so comfortable and predictable, when we are in unfamiliar territory that is so vast and we feel so small, we come to realize both our finitude and the infinitude of the universe.

As Lionberger sees it, the world’s “wild places allow us to live with more open, honest hearts than civilized places ever seem to allow… In the wilderness we can move beyond what the rational mind can explain to experience the transcendent, to rediscover a life-renewing joy in being alive.” (Renewal in the Wilderness, p. 4, 5)

* * *

Jon Krakauer and Christopher McCandless share Lionberger’s sense of how the wilderness can be a place of spiritual insight and personal transformation. They each chose their own path through trials and temptations, adhering to their own regimen of self-denial, simplicity and solitude.

Krakauer’s course involved plenty of dangers and deprivations. But the personal transformation for which he longed eluded him. Despite having reached from the summit of the Devil’s Thumb and returned, for him, it changed almost nothing.

Judging from his journal entries, the journey McCandless undertook was more successful. Settled in the Alaskan wilderness he writes, “and now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage.” After two months of solitary existence, he was ready to head back home, satisfied, it seemed, to have accomplished his goal. What he hadn’t considered was that the frozen river he crossed on his way into the wild, was now, in the summertime, a powerful stream. It was an unanticipated obstacle, which he was unable to overcome. And so he remained in the wild.

* * *

Countless men and women have attempted to find some variation of the experience Krakauer and McCandless sought in the wild - a search for solitude, serenity, and spiritual awakening - though only the fewest of us have likely taken it to the same extremes. The fewest of us have traveled to the northernmost regions of the country, through snow and ice, in search of the sacred.

But fortunately for those of us who are older, less mobile, and not likely attempt such an adventure in this lifetime, we don’t need to travel to Alaska to find wilderness.

As religious scholar Walter Brueggemann puts it: “It is easiest to take “wilderness” as a geographical reference, and that is surely what the tradition itself understood. As a geographical location, the term refers to the area traversed by Israel between Egypt and the promised land.” But the literal realities of a desert wilderness devoid of water and sustenance, are metaphors for human experiences of chaos and disorder. (An Introduction to the Old Testament p. 59)

Whether a wilderness of sand or a wilderness of snow – both are outward expressions of an inner state of mind and heart. The experience of wilderness is not something that can only be found far away from home. The universal truths conveyed in wilderness stories resonate so widely, because some variation of the wilderness experience is a common, and unavoidable dimension of every person’s life.

* * *

Wilderness is a part of every person’s soul-journey, Sara Campbell writes. And it is part of our journey together as human beings who seek to live in community. It is a time of struggle, of transformation, and of renewal. It involves danger and possibility, risk and promise.

Most of us try to live our lives in safety and security. I certainly do. We maintain a house and home. We pay our bills and try to be good neighbors. We watch our health, put away some money for a rainy day, and save up for retirement. By organizing our activities and assets, we take control of our lives, and shape our destiny. We find comfort in the familiar and the predictable.

But the truth is, no matter how conscientiously we plan for life’s contingencies, no matter how dutifully we fulfill our obligations, how diligently we watch our diets, how carefully we look left and right before crossing the street – the circumstances of our lives are ultimately out of our control.

Woody Allen got right to the heart of the matter when he said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

The joke is, that even our best-laid plans are no match for life’s unpredictability. No matter how careful we are, no matter how many insurance policies we purchase to protect us from the unforeseeable – all our efforts are no match for what our insurance carriers poetically call “acts of God.”

Reflecting on the financial meltdown a few years ago, which suddenly led millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes, and their life savings, a theologian observed that even when you are in the Promised Land, you are never far from the Wilderness. The entire country has suddenly transported from a promised land of abundance to a wilderness of economic uncertainty. Our orderly lives were hurled into chaos.

* * *

We get a taste of the wilderness whenever a crisis – whether large or small – reminds us that many of the comforts and pleasures of life we easily take for granted, are not forever guaranteed.

I got a taste of wilderness last week, when our big, strong, and healthy son Noah, complained of a strange pain in his abdomen, and asked to be taken to the doctor. My carefully planned afternoon was thrown into disarray, as we were ushered from waiting room, to examination room, to Emergency Room. And all my regular routines and responsibilities were upended and pre-empted by worries about tests and scans and ominous medical conditions.

I got a taste of wilderness the week before that when I got a call from my mother in Germany, that my grandmother – who I will be visiting in Frankfurt next week for her 100^th birthday - was in the hospital. Back pains were the symptoms that led her there. But once the doctors began examining her, they realized her red blood cell count was dangerously low, water was accumulating in her lungs, and her heart valves aren’t working right. And there is not a lot they can do about it.

As it turns out, my son was suffering from some sort of infection I had never heard of, which cleared up quickly. And my grandmother is back in her home, and thanks to some new medications, feeling better.

But what remains with me is a renewed sense of how suddenly we can be moved from a place of safety and security, to a wilderness of chaos and uncertainty. In the wilderness our lives are stripped of comforts too easily taken for granted, and we are reminded of the essentials. We leave our ruts and routines behind and are reminded of what really matters.

* * *

The wilderness is a place of unpredictability, but also a place of promise. It is a place of deprivation, but also a place in which the essentials of life are more clearly understood and more deeply appreciated. The wilderness cannot be captured on any map, we will invariably be disoriented, our assumptions will be challenged, and we will possibly be changed in process.

The wilderness is a place of risk and danger, but it is also a place beauty and wonder, a place of solitude and serenity. It is a sacred place worth seeking out.

May we cherish every experience our lives offer us.

May we cherish moments of scarcity and moments of abundance

Moments of clarity and moments of confusion,

May every moment remind us of what truly matters,

That we might live and love to the fullest.

Amen.

The Voice of God

"How is it, then, that the voice of God is not more distinctly heard by [all]? The answer to this question is: To be heard it must be listened for."

-- Désiré Joseph Mercier

Mediation: by Wendell Berry, a Sabbath Poem

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

and the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,

mute in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

and I sing it. As we sing,

the day turns, the trees move.

Reading: by Marc Hartzman from God Made Me Do It – True Stories of the worst advice the Lord has ever given his followers (p.32)

False Prophesy – “I heard the Lord saying, ‘I have something else for you to do. I want you to run for president of the United States.’ I assure you that I am going to be the next president of the United States.” (Pat Robertson, religious broadcaster, during his presidential bid of 1988)

Robertson has been chatting with God since the 1950s, when he received divine instructions to purchase a bankrupt UHF station. It eventually became the Christian Broadcasting Network and has spread to 180 countries, where it is heard in seventy-one languages.

Since that time Robertson’s many conversations with the Lord have led to many not-so-accurate predictions over the years. Of course, in this case, Robertson may have simply misinterpreted the message. God said, “I want you to run.” He didn’t say, “I want you to win.”

George H. W. Bush won the election in a landslide, while Robertson didn’t even make it on the ticket…

Reading: from a poem by Pattiann Rogers entitled “The Creation of the Inaudible”

Maybe no one can distinguish which voice

Is god’s voice sounding in a summer dusk

Because he calls with the same rising frequency,

The same rasp and rattling rustle the cicadas use

As they cling to the high leaves in the glowing

Dust of the oaks.

His exclamations might blend so precisely with the final

[Cries] of the swallows settling before dark

That no one will ever be able to say with certainty,

”That last long cry winging over the rooftop

Came from god.“

Breathy and low, the vibrations of his nightly

Incantations could easily be masked by the scarcely

Audible hush of the lakeline dealing with the rocky shore,

And when a thousand dry sheaths of rushes and thistles

Stiffen and shiver in an autumn wind, anyone can imagine

How quickly and irretrievably his whisper might be lost…

…Even if he found the perfect chant this morning

And even if he played the perfect strings to accompany it,

Still, no one could be expected to know,

Because the blind click beetle flipping in midair,

And the slider turtle easing through the black iris bog,

And two savannah pines shedding dawn in staccato pieces

Of falling sun are already engaged in performing

The very same arrangement themselves.

Reading: by Anthony De Mello from Taking Flight (p. 29)

An old man would sit motionless in church for hours on end. One day a priest asked him what God talked to him about.

“God doesn’t talk. He just listens” was his reply.

“Well, then what do you talk to him about?”

“I don’t talk either. I just listen.”

The Voice of God

A Sermon Delivered on March 4, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

“You have the voice of God.” That’s what someone said to me after a worship service a few weeks back. “You have the voice of God.”

Now, it often happens that after church a few folks tell me they enjoyed the service, or that a reading I selected seemed particularly relevant to them that day. And, of course, I am always glad when that’s the case.

But what doesn’t often happen, is that someone describes my delivery of the morning’s message as “the voice of God.” “Wow, was the sermon that good?” part of me wanted to ask. Before I could, though, he continued, “yes, the settings of the sound system are just right.”

You see, he was one of the audio experts who helped acquire and install our new sound system last year. He has a keen ear for the pitch and timber of a voice amplified with the help of this pulpit mic, the loud speakers, and all our new and assorted digital and computerized audio equipment I couldn’t begin to explain to you.

The voice of God, he told me, is when a voice has that perfect round and full tone. You can sometimes hear it on a well-done radio show, or when using a particular old-fashioned but high-quality microphone.

I was humbled to learn that the divine dimensions of the morning’s service had less to do with my brilliant theological message, and more to do with technologies I could neither control nor completely understand. But, I was glad that our sound system was working well.

The exchange has stuck with me, because it left me wondering, where can we really hear God’s voice? If not in a preacher’s pronouncements, or in perfect sound system settings – where then?

Have you ever heard the voice of God? A lot of people claim they have. Prophets and politicians, it seems, have a direct line to the divine. Pat Robertson’s story about God telling him to run for president is just one of many examples of people claiming a divine mandate. Strangely, it often seems God’s will is remarkably compatible with their own ambitions.

“I heard the Lord saying, ‘I have something for you to do…’” Robertson recalls. I wonder what God’s voice sounded like to him. Did he hear the Lord, the way I hear Morning Edition on Public Radio? Was it like my wife Elaine’s voice on the phone, telling me what I should get from the grocery store on my way home?

I wonder if Robertson had a chance to engage God in conversation, like one of the people we see more and more often at street corners now, who seem to be carrying on animated conversations with themselves. And only as we walk by, do we see they are wearing a wireless cell phone earpiece, and we realize they are not hearing imaginary voices in their head.

* * *

It is a wonderful thing to have a clear sense of the sacred. Feeling God’s benevolent presence in our lives, seeing a divine design in the events of the world, being seized by a sense of wonder and awe at the splendor of the stars on a clear winter night, or the beautiful blazing colors of the sunset across a big mid western sky – these are surely some of life’s deepest joys.

But things get a lot more complicated once God actually starts speaking to us. People sometimes do dangerous and desperate things, because they believe God told them to. God tells some people to bomb abortion clinics, or to fly airplanes into tall buildings, or to go to war.

We are right to be wary when anyone claims to have heard the voice of God, and uses God’s ultimate authority as justification for unthinkable acts: It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t want to do it. God told me to.

Some people who hear voices in their head are mentally ill. There is a medical term for this. Doctors and psychologists have studied it. There are treatments and medications that can help.

With these pathologies in mind, some say all “God talk” is nonsense. There are no voices and there is no God. But I think that is going too far.

People whose religious imagination allows for the possibility of a heavenly voice are not mentally ill. Imagining God’s voice as an audible sound, powerful, loud, compelling, and clear as a bell – throughout religious history this has not been considered pathology but poetry.

The poet who wrote the book of Job beautifully describes one way we might imagine the voice of God. He or she writes:

Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice,

to the rumbling that comes from his mouth.

He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven

and sends it to the ends of the earth.

After that comes the sound of his roar;

he thunders with his majestic voice.

When his voice resounds,

he holds nothing back.

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;

he does great things beyond our understanding.

(Job 37:2-5)

This is the way someone imagined God’s voice twenty-seven centuries ago. But this is not the only way it was understood. Another ancient author from the same period describes God’s voice in a story about the prophet Elijah.

As the story goes, Elijah is hiding in a mountain cave, pursued by his enemies, and hoping for some sort of divine intervention that might save him. He is waiting for a sign from God. So while he is cowering in his cave, Elijah hears a mighty wind, that tears at the mountain, and breaks rocks to pieces, but God is not in the wind. Then he hears an earthquake, that shakes the earth and throws him to the ground, but God is not in the earthquake. Then he hears the sound of a raging firestorm that lights up the sky, burning up everything within its reach, but God is not in the fire. And after that there is silence. And in the silence Elijah hears a still, small voice. This still, small voice is the voice of God.

* * *

Silence is a central part of Quaker religious practice. Worshippers gather in their place of meeting, and sit in silence, expectantly waiting for the Holy Spirit to move someone in the room to speak. And when someone is indeed inspired to speak, it is the voice of the Holy Spirit the worshippers hear spoken aloud, by a person in their midst.

The author Parker Palmer is a Quaker. He wrote a small book called Let Your Life Speak – Listening for the Voice of Vocation. It’s a largely autobiographical reflection on the meaning of vocation, and our human effort to figure out what to do with our lives – or how to live a life of purpose and meaning. He writes: “The story of my life journey is no more or less important than anyone else’s. It is simply the best source of data I have on a subject where generalizations often fail but truth may be found in the details.” (p. 19)

He grew up in Chicago, and went to Carleton College in Minnesota and from there to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At that stage of his life, as a young man, he was certain that ministry was his calling - just as certain as he had been a few years earlier, that he should go into advertising, and then into aviation.

He writes,

“So it came as a great shock when, at the end of my first year, God spoke to me – in the form of mediocre grades and massive misery – and informed me that under no conditions was I to become an ordained leader in His or Her church. Always responsive to authority, as one was if raised in the fifties, I left Union and went west, to the University of California at Berkeley. There I spent much of the sixties working on a Ph.D. in sociology and learning to be not quite so responsive to authority.”

As it turned out sociology was also not the final place God seemed to be calling him. Parker Palmer’s journey was marked by twists and turns, that also led him into the deepest depths of depression, and out the other side. Now an author and teacher, his journey continues.

The voice of God, for Palmer, is the voice of his own life. Hearing God means discerning his own deepest knowledge. The insights he gained were not what he expected. As it turns out, God spoke to him through his failures as much as through he achievements, as much through misery and despair as through a clear sense of calling.

* * *

How do we know whether we are right or wrong about God’s voice? Are we deluding ourselves? Are we mistaking our own small-minded interests with sacred intent? We may sincerely believe God wants us to go into advertising, or aviation, or be president of the United States, but we might be mistaken.

What does God’s voice sound like? There is no single answer to this question. But it is still a very good question, that leads to more questions.

“What does God’s voice sound like?” leads to the question: Is there indeed something sacred at work in the world? Is there something sacred in the sound of cicadas on a summer night, in the gentle waves of a lake touching the shore, in the whisper of the autumn wind? Is there something sacred in the sound of the click beetle flipping in midair or the slider turtle easing through the black bog?

“What does God’s voice sound like?” leads to the question: Is a deeper purpose guiding our lives? And if there is, what should we do to fulfill it? And if we don’t have a sense of purpose, what we should do about that?

To stop and think about the possibility of a greater purpose challenges us to be more purposeful. Simply contemplating the possibility of deeper meaning puts us on a path to more mindful and meaningful living.

We will never know with certainty where the sound of God’s voice begins, and the sounds of the world end. Or in the case of the Quaker: where God’s voice ends and our voices begin.

Life will always remain something we can neither fully control, nor completely understand.

The one thing we know for sure, is that we don’t know for sure what God sounds like. Instead of expecting absolute answers, the wisest among us know it is better simply to wonder.

Maybe the old man who sits motionless in church for hours got it right. He simply listens, knowing that God will not speak – not in any intelligible way. But by simply listening deeply he keeps open a door between the highest heavens and the depths of his soul. He creates a direct line between his highest aspirations and his deepest longing.

Maybe simply listening is enough. Maybe listening for sound is the best way to find a deep stillness. Maybe questioning is enough, even if we know we will never find a final answer. And maybe this is as it should be.

Our lives are still unfolding. Deeper meaning and greater purpose is still within our reach. There is more for us to do. There is more for us to learn about what it means to live our lives to the fullest. We can learn to be more loving, more forgiving, more generous, more kind. We can learn to better serve the greater good.

May we have the wisdom to listen and the wisdom to learn.

May we have the courage to live the life we truly long to live:

each of us a better person,

each of us doing our small part to build a better world.

Amen.