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 100th 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.
