Isabel Mukonyora was born in Zimbabwe, but moved to England as a young wife and studied religion at Oxford. Years later, she returned to Africa as a scholar, but also a divorced mother—a status that marginalized her in her home country. She used to walk to work at the university the long way around, via the outskirts of the city of Harare, through a dried up marshland because, she said, the barren environment symbolized and mirrored her social and internal condition of feeling isolated.
Isabel soon discovered that the path she was following had been blazed by groups of people who came to the marshland to pray. They gathered in small clearings amid the dry grasses that were home “to all sorts of birds, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, and snakes.” Even in the rainy season, when the mud was so deep one needed boots, these people –white-robed Christians known as the Apostles of Johane Masowe—would spend four or five hours praying and singing in their sticky surroundings.
In the Shona language of the Masowe Apostles, the places they gathered are called sasa, the “wild grasslands” and forested fringes of a landscape otherwise uninhabited by people. Sasa is a word that evokes feelings of dread—of places that are feared because they are wild, “dark,” and dangerous. But sasa can also be places of illumination.
From time to time, we may be cast into sasa—into the wild, dark and dangerous places of our lives—by circumstance: by devastating illness or the death of someone we love. Because we lost our job, or realized, gradually, that a marriage of many years was not going to work out.
It’s also possible for us to wander into sasa in our sleep—in that dulled or depressed state that can characterize our lives for a time—only to wake and find ourselves in a wilderness, lost and afraid, not knowing where to turn.
Didn’t Dante write in the first book of the Divine Comedy:
Halfway along the road of this life of ours I came to myself in a dark wood where the right path was lost. Ay, it is a hard thing to tell what it was, this wild wood so tangled and thick that but to think of it brings back the fear; such a bitter thing that death itself is scarce more so…
Sound familiar? Dante had been “so full of sleep” when he “forsook the true way,” that he wandered into sasa. Once he awoke, though, Dante’s poetic journeyman persisted on a difficult, even fearsome path, struggling to know the answers to life’s persistent questions. Dante knew full well this lonesome and dangerous journey, and lived to write his trilogy because he found something good and meaningful in his effort.
Jung cautions that, on the journey of life, we may set out to discover the “direct experience of the eternal roots.” But if we travel unconsciously—what he calls “undercover or by devious paths”—then we travel by the “lure of the restless, unconscious psyche” and at some point we will “find ourselves in the wilderness.” That is, we, like Dante, may find ourselves in a dark, tangled wood, unsure of where to turn.
But we may also find our selves in the wilderness…
You will recognize the truth in this if you, too, have had a wilderness experience. And while you may well wish there was another way you could have learned what you have learned, you know that it is your life--with all it’s rich, difficult, dark, even traumatic experiences--that has taught you what you know, and made you who you are: a survivor of the wilderness.
Not all wilderness experiences happen to us without our say so. We can also choose—of our own free will—to enter the desert, the wilderness, sasa—to sing or pray, to sit quietly and reflect, to meditate, write, create—because we know from experience, or because we trust the teachings of many ancient traditions and contemporary psychology, that we can find ourselves—we can know ourselves, confront ourselves, learn to accept ourselves—in and through our wilderness experiences.
Noted preacher Barbara Taylor Brown makes the connection with Outward Bound, an experience were people volunteer and even pay good money to be exposed to life without any comfort. Through exercises like rappelling down the side of a cliff, or walking across a tight rope high above the ground, participants are forced to confront their fears, their sense of inadequacy, their failures, and addictions.
Brown defines addiction as “anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone.” She is convinced that 99 percent of us are addicted to something, whether it is alcohol or security, eating, blaming, or needing to be needed.
During Lent—the liturgical season of fasting, praying and repentance that began last month for much of the Christian world and takes its name from the old English word for spring, lenten—adherents are invited to discover the empty places inside us that belong to something greater than our addictions. Lent is 40 days to “cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone.” Forty days to confront our personal demons and find our way in our spiritual wilderness.
There was a wonderful cartoon in The New Yorker recently. A couple is standing outside in the dark, holding hands under a canopy of stars. She turns to him and says: “I’m not religious—I’m just scared.”
If you have ever been afraid to enter the wilderness—to find yourself in the wilderness—you are not alone. Keep in mind, though, that the wilderness, sasa, is not only dark and frightening. It is also a place of illumination. The question is: who or what will show us the way through and out? Dante had Virgil. And Jung had his dreams. Today, we have two stories, one featuring Jesus being tested by the devil in the wilderness, and the other a tale of unexpected deliverance in a bar.
The story of Jesus in the wilderness is a deeply human one with great cinematic overtones.
In this story we learn that Jesus has been fasting in the desert for 40 days. This is a long time. He was tormented by the devil the entire time, but we hear only of the last three temptations or tests to his identity and faithfulness.
First the devil said to Jesus: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus was famished, as you might imagine. Despite his pain, he reaches deep into his integrity and answers, “One does not live by bread alone.”
Next, and this is the one that requires special effects, the devil showed him--in an instant--all the kingdoms of the world and offers them to Jesus IF Jesus will worship him, the devil. But Jesus knows his Deuteronomy and answers, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only God.’” Very good answer.
Finally--and this is another cinematic moment that has been used to good effect in other stories--the devil whisks Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and taunts him to prove he is the Son of God by throwing himself off the tower and letting the promised angels catch him. But Jesus does not take the bait (although I would have wanted to shut this devil up and show him a thing or two). But he is Jesus and answers: “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And then the devil went away—and here is the kicker—until an opportune time…
Jesus entered the wilderness well prepared; he was a student of holy texts and his inner compass was well fixed: was deeply faithful. He emptied himself through a period of fasting and strengthened himself with prayer.
In these three trials, Jesus confronts his most human desires and demons. He resists the test to turn stone into bread, demonstrating his willingness to give up his own basic security for the sake of something larger than himself.
He is able to resist the offer for power and authority, even though his family, friends and neighbors are being oppressed by occupying forces, because he has staked his life on his faith in God and God’s mercy.
And he passes the third test because, empty, he is filled with humility and grace. Jesus is led in the wilderness by the holy spirit—a good guide. And he finds himself—his truest, highest, bravest, humblest self—in the wilderness.
Having been raised Catholic, I was formed within the Lenten tradition of “giving up” something for Lent. As children we were asked to give up the things a child might consider valuable or hard to do without--things like dessert or candy. Occasionally, a wise teacher might push us to give up ways of being, like being impatient towards a younger sibling, or lazy about doing chores.
Fortunately (in this case), old ways die hard. I’m tempted, of course, to say I’ve given up Lent for Lent.
But I don’t because I still find great value in this liturgical season—a quiet time in the dregs of winter when I can dig to the roots of my being and seek the green shoots of possibility and new life. A time when I can examine my conscience and my life and consider whether an alteration in the course of my journey is called for. Is it time to turn back, turn around, push forward, or just sit still?
For Lent, we might consider giving up a way of being. We could relinquish a way of being that makes us feel bad about ourselves and for 40 days try being more patient with our selves and others, more forgiving, more joyful.
Or you could, like me this year, stick with the tried and true: giving up something you like. Let go or go without something that, if you were to look at it carefully, isn’t that important, but which has gained, through habit, a surprising level of importance in your life.
Of course, I say this out loud to you and suddenly think: Seriously, couldn’t I just give up these mini, self-imposed sufferings and undertakings of depriving myself little luxuries and sweet treats? After all, what could sacrificing a grande non-fat chai from Starbucks gain me on the path to humility or self-knowledge? Could skipping that comforting morning ritual really bring me into closer relationship with God and lead me deeper into a life of right action and compassion? Doesn’t it have to be something bigger to be meaningful?
I don’t think so.
Try it. Try something small. And then notice the internal debate that begins almost immediately. Notice the arguments, the nagging, the testing that start inside you, as you try to convince yourself that you really don’t need to make this choice to fast, to pray, to face the test. You don’t need to enter the wilderness to find yourself—to know yourself and accept yourself--complete with a frailties and desires. Do you?
The passage from Luke recaps what teachers from many spiritual traditions teach about what we need to know about getting through and out of the wilderness: Get a guide; take on a spiritual practice; be willing to risk your security for something larger; be patient and trust in God’s mercy; empty yourself enough to make room for humility and grace to enter in.
And the story of the two factory workers in a bar? It, too, is instruction in the simplest way to stop being lost: Stay still. Listen.
If you are lost in a dark forest, in sasa, Native American wisdom says:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
… Stand still. The forest knows
where you are. You must let it find you.
So there they are in a bar near the stadium, a punch press operator from Flint and the assembler from West Virginia. He’s pretty sure he knows what he’s looking for, and it isn’t her.
Then he remembers his wilderness experience—the time when his wife left him for her high-school sweetheart. About killed him. And in that moment, he gave something up: he gave up being so sure, so right, and so alone. He stayed still and began to listen. And something was illuminated—like tiny spots of gold in her eyes.
He saw something he had been blind to just a moment before: that her fingers were slender and fine beneath the yellow calluses.
And she saw something, too. Some kind of schmutz above his left cheekbone that she wiped clean with her spit on a bar napkin.
In the stillness, in the mutual moment of emptying and waiting patiently, “what she showed him was nothing he could see.” For a moment he thought—as anyone facing a test thinks: “better get out of here before it’s too late, but [he] knew—[he knew!] too late was what he wanted.”
This Lenten season, in this springtime for the soul, however you got there,
may you find your self –your truest, highest, bravest, humblest self—in the wilderness.
May you be blessed with wonderful guides:
poetry, dreams, good friends and trees.
May your dark places be illuminated.
And may you be filled by the holy spirit of amazing grace.
Happy trials—I mean trails. AMEN.
