Through Stained Glass: The Third Week of Lent -- The Inward Journey

 

In the wilderness

a brilliance of bloom awaits

punctured eruption

Photo from Riardo, Italy

                                                                     

During these early days of Lent, we have been thinking about journeys into the wilderness, about taking risks, and about how God’s commandments provide a powerful guide to spiritual freedom and community responsibility. I hope you have used the good weather to be outside and to visit the places of peaceful isolation that inspire contemplation—places that open your mind, heart and soul to God’s presence within and around you. 

As I watch the tulips emerge in my garden, listen to the spring wind, and laugh at the antics of my birds and squirrels, I feel myself beginning to open up again, too. I feel freer, more gregarious, more social. It’s not just my muscles stretching, but my spirit unbending in welcome. As an introvert, these feelings can be a little unsettling. I am comfortable alone, and the inward journey for me is one of spectacular discovery—not always easy, but ever illuminating. I know that’s not true for everyone, and I am so deeply grateful for my more extroverted friends who insist that I come back from my self-imposed wilderness sometimes!

Torn edges of self--

raw revealing of desire

sings of bold frontier

Photo from

Dauphin Island, Alabama

I’ve just finished reading The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah about a family that moves to the Alaskan wilderness. Life there is full of external danger, physical struggle, and sacrifice. But this landscape is metaphorical. The real wilderness is the one within, and the violence that lurks there—within and among individuals—leads to loss, even death. The good news is that there is also love, self-discovery, and the power of community to heal. The internal wilderness is indeed a complicated place—both frightful and awe-inspiring, threatening and healing. For those of you who have been watching “The Bear,” it feels a lot like the last episode in Season Two when Carmy is locked in the freezer (a kind of industrial wilderness) and faces his personal demons while the restaurant spins on without him, his only conversations with the external world happening through the door. Consider that metaphor for a moment! Unable to guide his crew through the restaurant’s test run on “friends and family night” (another great metaphor), he has lost control of his dream, as well as his relationships. It feels like a kind of spiritual violence, and we are left with a sense of loss and heart-break. Is there healing to come in Season Three? Stay tuned!

 It's not easy to venture inside ourselves, but it is necessary if we are to truly grow our spiritual capacity. And I would be bold, perhaps, in saying that growing our spiritual capacity is critical to fulfilling God’s expectations of us. To travel into our deepest selves—and to be self-conscious about it—is to approach the real frontier: to embrace our public selves as well as our shadow side, to enter the liminal space where we meet God and where God brilliantly expresses God’s love for us, and to experience the freedom to become who God wants us to be. It is the ultimate risk-taking thrill ride. I encourage you to go back and read Exodus Chapters 19 and 20. When Moses takes the Israelites out of the camp to meet God, there is “thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all of the people who were in the camp trembled.” For some, the temptation might be to stay there in that space, enjoying the excitement; for others, the inclination might be to run away as fast as possible. Neither response is really possible. As they say, we can neither run nor hide.

Empty path unfolds

as journey invites wonder

beneath rocks and dirt

Photo from Riardo, Italy

So how do we take this inward journey? One way is to participate in the powerful centering prayer that Adam leads on Sundays. Another might be to follow the Lenten Guide or join the Wednesday night book study and discussion on Kirk Night. Journaling, spending time in meditation and reflection, cutting down on activities and distractions, sitting alone on the porch or in the woods….there are many ways to begin the process. It takes effort and a brave soul, but I promise you will be richer for the journey. Whatever you choose to do—whether finding the random opportunity or establishing regular intentional practices—your choice should be infused with purpose, desire, awareness, and hope. God will surely meet you there.

Where fences confine

Where abundant hope insists

Where blooming resides

Photo from Riardo, Italy

One of the things about inward exploration is that it is both a journey to everything and a journey to nowhere—a visit to the “great alone.” That’s what’s so scary AND so exhilarating about it. One of my favorite poets is John O’Donohue, an Irish writer and Celtic spiritualist who died unexpectedly in 2008 at the age of only 52. His hauting poetry evokes both the external beauty and mystical dimension of his Irish home and the inner world of self-examination, love and blessing they awaken. Both earthy and spiritual, his poems are radical expressions of the hope and longing that emerge from the human soul.  I share this poem which, to me, celebrates the power of going nowhere and everywhere. May it inspire you in your own journey.

They are to be admired those survivors

                                 of solitude who have gone with no maps

                                 into the room without features,

                                 where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,

                                 no path of danger to a cold summit

                                 to look back on and feel exuberant,

                                 no clarity of territories yet untouched 

                                 that tremble near the human breath,

                                 no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores

                                to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,

                                no friendship of other explorers

                                drawn into the dream of the unknown.

 

                                No. They do not belong to the outside worship

                                of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior

                                space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,

                                where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human

                                and a poultice of silence pulls every sound

                                out of circulation down into the ground,

                                where in the panic of being each breath unravels

                                an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,

                                shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost,

                                where only the red scream of the blood contiues unheard

                                without anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring

                                is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere.

 

Web of weaving mind

risks the interior space--

                                   in deepest silence                                    

(for John)

Photo from Kickapoo Park