When we think of wilderness we usually think of forests or jungles full of wild animals. Areas that are undeveloped. Living in the Piney Woods of East Texas, we have some areas designated as National forests and wilderness areas. These are places we often seek out to find some peace and quiet, away from all of the things we are responsible for and all of those we are responsible to on a daily basis.
A trip to the wilderness is highly recommended. There we experience some solitude and the silence of creation. This silence includes the silence of the expectations and demands of the world, the silence of our own egos telling us who and what we should be. The silence that opens our spiritual ears to listen for that still small voice.
Often, when we think of the wilderness, we think of it as desolate, lonely and kind of frightening. What if that isn’t exactly the case? What if the wilderness is us without all of the trappings of the world? A place where we wrestle with who we are in the world and who we are before God. Think of this example: as soon as Jesus was baptized, he learned that he was the beloved and the Spirit descended on him like a dove and that spirit drove him out into the wilderness.
It was in that wilderness that the Spirit led him to that Jesus experienced the temptations, each of which boiled down to doing things his own way and not the way of the Father. Are we not the same? When we learn our true name before God (most often called salvation and grace) we are then in the wilderness of our own lives and have to decide how to deal with the temptations of this world.
The wilderness can be frightening because our ego and most base desires reside there. We have to experience the wilderness to know whether we will go our own way or if we will choose a “more excellent way”. Stop avoiding the wilderness and enter it often. St. Ignatius taught the Examen (to look at our whole life each day, good and bad) and that has to be done in the wilderness. The wilderness is the solitude and silence of our very souls, where the Creator of All tells us, over and over again, that we are Beloved.
TMM