the invitation of the wilderness...

At the moment I’m afforded a couple hours to write and read while sipping my americano in one of Denver’s massive sea of coffee establishments. Technically, I am working. It just looks and perhaps feels different than the job that occupied my father’s time and far different from the job and sense of desperation experienced by his father.

I’m among several coffee-consuming peers in this place who are pressing keys on laptop computers, checking and sending email or leisurely updating our favorite social media, which of course we can also do on our mobile devices when we walk out the door. 

A window separates me from a cocktail of local and non-local tourists walking alongside a noticeably increasing population of the wandering poor. I fully inhale this scene with its distinct urban rhythms and tempo. I observe the obvious crescendo of technologies and a mobility by which folks seem to relate to few things and often times few persons for very long periods of time.

It doesn't take long to recognize that the expansion of affluence and knowledge is invariably accompanied by its faithful companion named loneliness. So, while the lady at the counter orders a highly customized extra-shot extra-foam latte the rest of us order only those customized conversations and events that bring immediate satisfaction to our own craving needs.

As I reflect and observe I can't help but see a radical individualism and loneliness that powerfully carves out a cultural lifestyle in the way a river shapes a canyon. Investing in that poor wanderer on the other side of this convenient glass seems like a great idea at first glance, but when considering the expense of asserting a conversation that will both inevitably take too long and be too complex for any quick feel-good solutions, well...

From the looks of it, those of us sitting in this coffee shop are not working with the same sense of desperation to provide for our individual families like our grandparents did. So, since I'm not too concerned about how I'll get my own family fed this week I'm tempted to bypass any sense of desperation that would come with adopting my neighbors (the immigrant, homeless, or addict) need to care for theirs.  

The temptation for us is to avoid the reality that we are no less in a time of great wilderness and waiting than the Israelites who walked in the grueling desert for 40 years or of Jesus who took on the temptations that came in 40 days. There is just as much of a re-birthing going on now as in any previous individual or generation that has come before us. Not unlike those who have come before us, our wilderness is a re-birth of consciousness and compassion.

In the scriptures, the wilderness is the place where God speaks. 

What i believe is hard to comprehend is that the wilderness is a way of being. It's a place where our possessions cannot surround or protect us and our endless access to information cannot promise us the future. It is a place that demands being present with all of ourselves. A place that requires risking excruciating loneliness in order to learn to love 'the Other'.  It is a place that requires both expectancy and patience. 

The following thoughts from Henri Nouwen describes this type of patience,  

"A waiting person is a patient person. The word “patience” means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her womb." 

~ Henri Nouwen, The Path of Waiting

I recently discovered a profound connection to the quantity 40 which is often associated with the duration of wilderness time endured by God's people throughout the scriptures such as those referenced above. 40 is the standard number of weeks that a child is nurtured and developed in the darkness of her mother's belly. The wilderness then is our opportunity to come into contact with our origins and our origins are quite humbly, ex nihilo, from nothing. From the scriptures it seems that every wilderness experience of which we are reminded of the poverty of our nothingness can be a healing experience, one that makes us whole again (or born again). In his book, Original Blessing, Matthew Fox, writes,

"Without making this connection with the nothingness from which we spring, we fail to appreciate how unique each one of us is and how unique every being with whom we share the cosmos is." 

At our fingertips are all types of attractive somethings tempting us away from the tension of the great nothingness of the wilderness. Like Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian slave, we often have to be pushed into the terror of the wilderness amidst excruciatingly painful circumstances. Although each of our wilderness experiences are unique we go into them trusting the archetype experience of Hagar who discovers this beautifully hopeful prayer,

"You are the God who sees me. I have now seen the One who sees me." 

Comments

[Trsavage]

Thought provoking, I like your comment on the wilderness as a way of being. I think that's what many of us are trying to come to grips with more or less.

I'd like to post a link to this post.

Peace.

[Ryan]

Glad I provoked, Tyler. Thanks for the re-post and the encouragement. Blessings on you and your work. brother.