The idea of “wilderness” is a helpful metaphor for anyone navigating uncharted spiritual territory. It is one Christians tap into during the Lenten season as we follow Jesus out from the crowds and into a time of fasting, prayer and reflection.
And it isn’t exclusive to Christianity. All major world religions and schools of thought recognize something inevitable and essential about “wilderness” in our personal and collective lives.
For author Sarah Bessey, who lives in western Canada, minutes away from forests and mountains, “wilderness” is an accessible metaphor to describe where many people find themselves during precarious stretches of their faith journeys. She uses it to frame her latest book, “Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith.”
I recently spoke with Bessey about her newest book, the language we use to describe stages of faith and the need to continually return to our stories and see what new lessons they offer.
“Wilderness as a metaphor goes back about ten years for me,” she said. “Maybe it is because of where I’m from. You can quickly get to a place where there are no people here, and that’s nice sometimes. But there was always this sense of companionship that was needed in dangerous places that I really loved as a metaphor.”
She added, “There is a sense of wondering, but there are also equal parts beauty and fear in those places.”
For the past few years, Bessey has helped nurture this companionship for many in the wilderness through the Evolving Faith community. The concept came as she and her close friend, the late Rachel Held Evans, began to have conversations about what it would look like for people in a “wilderness moment” to gather together.
The result of those conversations became virtual and in-person gatherings that nurture community and care for those who are finding the old answers just don’t work anymore.
In reflecting on the beginnings of Evolving Faith, Bessey notes that “one thing Rachel and I realized very quickly was how unshepherded people are in this moment, how there is a sense of loss to it, and how that can often push them to the threshold.”
Like the Evolving Faith community, “Field Notes for the Wilderness” offers trusted guidance to those in the wilderness. The idea came from the field guides travelers can tuck in their pockets that help describe the terrain they may find themselves in.
Bessey says these guides are often meant to be informal and practical. They are intended to communicate, “Here are the spaces to watch for and here are the beautiful things and here are the things to look out for.”
She adds, “So I had that in the back of my head, that I would like to meet somebody at that threshold and tuck something in their back pocket that makes the path a little less lonely.”
The result is more than a dozen chapters describing the terrain as Bessey has experienced it. She weaves reflections, personal anecdotes and gentle guidance to those who feel their faith is in a precarious position. She does this with grace and the hard-earned wisdom of someone who has seen some things.
But she quickly notes that she isn’t an expert “further along the path” than others. Bessey says that one thing that has always bothered her is the idea that our spiritual journey follows “a linear path and that some people are just further along than others.”
She remembers Rachel Held Evans, during the early days of their work, saying that an “evolving faith is just one that has adapted to survive. It’s not that we are further along. It’s not a ranking system.”
I noted our tendency to impose a hierarchy on the concept of evolving.
“Yes,” Bessey said, “and I think that’s the very thing that needs to be dismantled. When we enter that season (the early stages of deconstruction, wilderness or evolution,) we think we are trading one set of answers for another, and now we are ‘extra right.’ And that is not at all the journey God has us on.”
Among the field notes Bessey provides fellow travelers is an encouragement to “Tell the truth and learn to lament.” She tells the story of discovering that nightmares during her fourth pregnancy were due to unresolved trauma associated with the birth of her second child, Joseph. That experience included an “unattended, unintended free birth,” in which Joseph was delivered in an apartment parking garage in front of a crowd of strangers.
She told the story in her first book, “Jesus Feminist,” and it has been humorous fodder for many of her talks and sermons. Since the baby turned out healthy, and it became a helpful story for her work, she believed the circumstances around Joseph’s birth were inconsequential to the emotional turmoil around her later pregnancy. It took an attentive midwife and the courage to tell the truth to see that wasn’t the case.
Bessey believes vestiges of her “Word of Faith” background may have been why she used that experience before fully understanding and dealing with it. “In that background,” she said during our conversation, “we love the notion of being able to control the outcomes. And we love the idea of testimony, of being able to tie a bow on things, of viewing trials as stepping stones.”
It wasn’t until returning to the story that she learned that the story she thought she knew wasn’t the complete story. This helped her see the power of telling the truth and lamenting what had happened.
In a later chapter, “You Have Permission to be Happy,” she learned that there can be space in the wilderness for her to have a testimony to tell. She says there is a lot of loss, which we need to name and mourn, “but there is joy on the other side of this as well. The goodness and welcome of God will bring joy and abundance and life to you. There is hope for that. On the other side of this wilderness, there is something that may look like deliverance. It just may look different than what you expected.”
“Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith,” as well as a guided journal, will be available on February 20, 2024.
Senior editor at Good Faith Media.
