Curious, how the word “wilderness” can mean opposite things: a place of barrenness, such as the desert, or an unspoiled ecosystem teeming with life, such as the Amazon rainforest. Wilderness can be enthusiastically sought, such as a pilgrimage journey or Outward Bound experience, or earnestly resisted, such as unexpected grief or doubt. And too, wilderness can be both fallow and fertile all at once. It’s all about perspective, which is often hard to conjure until it appears in the rear view mirror.
When wilderness comes to us unbidden, it can feel as inescapable and deadly as quicksand. In times of such struggle, what if our best action is simply patience. . . a state of grace made possible by the practice of faithful framing or reframing of our context? What if we found the spiritual courage to just endure, despite a dearth of immediate solutions? If we could keep calm and not carry on (i.e. charge ahead), would we then be freer to recognize positive possibilities as they emerge?
Recently at my daughter’s middle school, her class studied the art of filmmaking, especially the way certain choices by a director can impact the way an audience experiences a story. In one particular video clip, the power of “framing” is made very clear. What happens if you take a well-known, uplifting film . . . and simply change the background music? How does the frame impact the experience?
Lordy, what if we are listening to the wrong soundtrack for our lives? What if we are misunderstanding our very own reality? What if God watches our straining with great sadness, saying, a la Eliot's Prufrock, *“That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” *
Our perspective is so flawed by our low-slung earthy perch, like earthworms instead of eagles. Imagine this: what if we are not banished by an exasperated God to die of dehydration under the beating sun of our failures? What if God sees wilderness not as a prison but as a womb, and actually approves of us being here, like so many saints and situations of scripture, because we need the kind of growth that can only come through an Outward Bound-style radical dependence? Upward Bound for the soul!
Such a frame might protect us from the distress of thinking that we are inept, deserving of exile.
Such a frame might lift from us the pressure to immediately and inadequately “solve” the problems of dwindling congregational programs, overstretched volunteers, sparsely populated pews, challenging budget deficits, or cultural apathy to religion.
Such a frame might prevent us from suffering under the illusion that times of spiritual dryness, disorientation or doubt is a final fate. If we remember to trust the rhythms of Life itself, we will know that the flower is already in the seed, and beneath the drought, the green blades riseth.
I vow now to practice reframing each day. I vow now to “act as if” the promised land awaits on the other side of the next ridge, that I have been Upward Bound all along. As I imagine this, a refrain from the poet Neruda makes my heart quicken. What if God has indeed been waiting right here with us in the winter of our discontent, and is whispering to us:
“I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.”