3 Chapter 3: A Conversation with Steve Harrington
Conversation with Steve Harrington
Senior Pastor, Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church and Founder of Wilderness Ministries
August 4, 2004
Pastor Steve Harrington’s outdoor training includes the National Outdoor Leadership School and the American Mountain Guide Association, and his congregation has discovered what a gift his outdoor leadership skills are to his ministry. He says the outdoor adventure trips are the most effective ministry he’s ever known. They were the reason he was willing to do this interview, even amid a very busy pastor’s schedule (this interview occurred the night before he caught an early morning flight to Africa). Harrington shares a number of favorite moments in wilderness ministry; he particularly values how climbing and adventure experiences build and renew resilience for life.
How does wilderness ministry fit into the larger scope of your work as Senior Pastor of the church?
Well, it’s really unusual, my friends can’t believe it— the last two years, including vacations, I spent like 40 and 50 nights out in the wilderness— a lot. Last year, as part of my continuing education time, I spent two weeks in Alaska doing Wilderness First Responder certification and then spent a week in Joshua tree just a week later doing American Mountain Guide Association certification for top rope climbing, in addition to some nights solo. I think the way it works involves a couple of things: I have two associates, and they’re good folks, and they’re good preachers, and so the church wants me to preach 66% of the time, and the leadership of the church really “gets it.” If I’m not preaching, would you like me to stay home and do email and visit a few more people, or would you like me to be out with 10 or 12 folks in what may be one of the most intensely transformative experiences of their lives? And they’re like, “Well, duh! Go!” And so I do.
I run a number of day trips every year. December 26 to January 3, I go sea kayaking in the Sea of Cortez, and we camp on islands, which probably four or five of those days would have been days off for me. And then in the winter, I usually run a snow camping trip— that happens kind of mid-week, so nobody knows I am away. And then spring, I’ve just run a Celtic pilgrimage to Iona, in Scotland. The year before that, I went to Alaska sea kayaking and backpacking; the year before that, Iona; the year before that Alaska again. And then a couple years before that, I ran a trip to the desert, and this next spring I’ll do that again. Anyway, a winter week-long trip, a spring week-long trip is what I generally do, but, I could fit in maybe another weekend or so— it’s a congregation of 1,000.
I think they also know that this is what keeps me energized. My first church— when they were having salary discussions for me and considering a raise— one of the elders said, “We’re not going to lose Steve to money; we’re gonna lose him to the wilderness.” We started laughing because that was the truth. So, most of them get it. Some of them are still frustrated: “Why aren’t you here, why aren’t you around.” But, personnel and session write articles in the newsletter, and they defend it and explain it, and it does keep me around. It’s part of their retention plan — we’re pretty intentional about retention plans, and that’s part of their retention plan for me. I’ve talked them out of giving me raises for the past two years and talked them down to half a raise from the usual one the year before that, so [laughs] I think they figure, “Well, let him do it!” A number of them have gone on my trips, so they get it, personally. And not many churches can offer something like this, so it’s a unique outreach.
You know, I don’t know how many great sermons I would have to preach before I could accomplish, or be a part of, a ministry this effective. On one of the first desert trips that I ran—in fact I ran it for my dissertation as part of a case study—I think something like, not that this can be quoted as an exact percentage, something like 65% of the people came back and made major changes in their lives: quit jobs, changed jobs, changed lifestyles. Now, they probably went because they were moving that way, but it became a catalytic moment for them. They kind of said, “What the hell am I doing back there? Why am I doing it?”
This idea of living at a different cadence – living by sun-up, and moonrise, by high tide/low tide – it’s just a whole different cadence that moves into people’s lives and slowly, it reorients you – the way a shifting tide would change if you weren’t watching where you were kayaking, and presently it’s drifted you off, significantly off course. And I think the wilderness can move in like that tide and wind that sneak up on us.
Well, I was doing a solo trip through Joshua Tree out in the desert, and the first two days I was just kinda going – I was working the trail for a trip I was going to run (I always like to go out first to visit ahead of time), and I just was kinda ‘focused’ and moving along. And then, I just came to a point about the second and a half day, and I just sat for about five hours in one place… and finally got into a place where I could just sit and center. I’d walked enough of ‘the burb’ off—you know, the suburban lactic acid.
There was a woman, a young woman, who lost her father to brain cancer and was devastated by that, and she went on this desert pilgrimage. And we rock climbed for three days and backpacked for two days, and then there was a day solo when they’re out, on their own. I invite them, if their bodies allow it, to fast— and they stay in a very focused place and have a limited area that they are in and able to move about. She sat and sat, and then just really came to grips with God and her father’s death, which you could see when we talked about it later. She’d come to grips with it in a way she hadn’t been able to previously.
And sometimes the wilderness just invites us. You know that it’s time to get out there because you’re working on something (inside yourself, maybe) and you need the metaphor to express itself through what you’re going to find out there. My first year here, I arrived in July. Starting a large church, senior pastor— it’s overwhelming. Many jobs are overwhelming and this one was. And back at Christmas a member’s baby died, two-three days old. Just devastating. And I did the baby’s funeral, and she’s from Ghana, and so her culture is much more effusive in their emotions, which was lovely but hard. I came home, I flopped down on the bed, and I said, “I gotta go to the wilderness.” And I went down to REI, and I just started looking around, and I got up into the Sierras for two days and just went back-country skiing. I had that sense that “I just gotta get away.”
I didn’t do this stuff much as a kid. The first trip I ran was in ’73, through Young Life’s LaVida, which is a wilderness program at Saranac, New York. It’s the outdoor adventure thing.
I was a part of Young Life, as a student and then as a leader and all. Then, I just kind of heard, “Well, here’s this kind of camp,” and thought, “Well, gee, yeah, that would be fun to be a guide for that.” [laughs] Guide — I’ll be a guide for that. My recollection is that they brought us out—there were all these folks who were going to be doing this for the whole summer—and kind of like took us on a weekend campout. And said, “Well, do this, do that.” Procedures, gear, cooking—though we never even used stoves, I don’t think. I mean, it was ’73 – we were building fires.
I don’t know what they were thinking, [starts to chuckle] letting me do the trip. They took us up for a weekend of training— we college students who were going to run the trips— and the training was like, nothing! What were they thinking, sending me out for ten days with students? It was just ridiculous— it was not responsible at all. But, I did it.
Yeah, [chuckles] it was like, “Here’s the place to be for your rock climbing day, we’re going to bring somebody out to you. See ya.” So, we chose to go this route – the Adirondack trail was pretty clear, so we took the blue trail high up over… And it was fine. I mean, there were a number of challenges, [laughing] but it was fine. But it might not have been. It didn’t have to be fine. But, I had a good experience with that. Yeah, it went great. I mean, we didn’t have any problem, but in retrospect— I didn’t, I had no advanced wilderness training, I had no… I mean, I decided one day, “Let’s go look for Lost Pond; we’ve got an extra hour.” So we went bushwhacking up this mountain [laughs]. Yeah, and then, we backpacked for a day, rock climbing, canoeing… so that’s how it started.
When I got to my first church in DeLand, Florida, the guy who had become my best friend, Kemper, was doing rock climbing for his staff— he was at Stetson University and was a Residential Assistant, so he did rock climbing with his RA staff as part of their training. So I thought, “Let’s do this for the church.” So we started, and we added a backpacking component. And we just developed it and worked on it over time. So we went in North Georgia— I was in Florida at the time. I spent some time later convincing the Presbytery in Florida that they needed to pay for me to go through rock climbing school and buy me rock climbing gear, and they just thought it a big joke. But they did it. In fact, you know, when I announced my dissertation at seminary, several of the professors laughed and thought it was a joke, and then the next day—I mean literally the next day—a couple came to me and said, “Have you got an advisor yet?” [laughs] “Sounds kinda cool…”
So, in ’79 we started wilderness trips, and they were in North Georgia. We would backpack for a couple of days, then we would rock climb for a couple days, and then raft the Chatooga. For that we would contract with Nantahala Outdoor Center because we didn’t have the training to do that— the other stuff we thought we could do. So that’s it; that’s what we were doing. We’d drive ten hours to rock climb.
Later I went to NOLS [National Outdoor Leadership School], did an outdoor educator program for the summer and then went to Cedar Rock Climbing School, which was kind of a local thing in North Carolina. Anyway, I just developed that and worked on debriefing the experiential education reflection sort of thing. A lot of our debriefing at the time, especially with the rock climbing, was taking different quotes and asking the participants— this is kind of Kemper’s process, which worked well— so we’d say, “Pick a quote to capture your experience, and tell us why you picked that one.” So they would use those words to tell their story. And we’d use some group initiative sort of stuff, and things like that, and Bible study as well.
We were doing two trips a year: one for high school students in the summer and one, a shorter trip for young adults, in the fall. And then we’d do some backpacking trips: a couple of weekend trips into the Ocala Forest in central Florida, which was lovely.
So, when I left Florida, I was solo pastor there. Then I went to Colorado Springs and was a young adult pastor for college students. And so, working with Colorado College students in particular, they had a very interesting schedule. If they started, let’s say, the first of the month, they would go three and a half weeks, and then on that third Wednesday they would have their testing. And then Wednesday afternoon they’d be off— from Wednesday afternoon to Monday morning— every month. They called it block break.
So I’d run trips, all kinds of trips. Lots of opportunities in Colorado. So that was great. We’d be rafting, and winter camping, and rock climbing, and backpacking, and all kinds of things. And I liked it because it was also in the context of the church. I developed a whole recreational ministry at that church, part of which had a wilderness component, but it was quite more extensive. I think maybe now there’s two full time staff people, and it’s kind of huge— it’s a church of 5,000 people. Big church. But the recreation ministry included a volleyball league, basketball league, craft stuff, seniors, you know, things like that.
So by the time I arrived here, wilderness trips were a pretty important part of my ministry. And the church seemed to go along with it and buy into that. So, now I do this post-Christmas thing: sea kayaking in the Sea of Cortez, December 26-January 3. And then usually a winter camping trip in like February or January into the Sierra. We make snow caves and quinzhees, and teach winter travel and safety and camp stuff.
Actually, a few years ago I realized people will spend $1,000 to go on vacation. I hate to make it expensive and tried to keep it low cost. So a trip might be $250 total, and you get two days rock climbing, four days backpacking, plus the transportation because, they’re not paying me— I mean, the church is paying me, but, they don’t pay me (meaning the participants). But people said, “Well, people still need to go on vacation,” so I started running a little bit more exotic trips— because you had to fly. Alaska sea kayaking, and you get in and out of Whittier on Prince William Sound, where Valdez is. But then you take a water taxi to get to your fjord, so you rent your kayak, get on a boat, get the boat to take you 20 miles out… so the price goes up. Transportation issues are expensive to get anywhere you’re going. Three days sea kayaking in Alaska, calving glaciers, soaring eagles, bears, moose, Orca, whale, and my little campsite, at least this particular one, was stuck out on this peninsula— the photo is on my refrigerator— and it was just awesome. So we kayaked there for three days and then backpacked part of the old Iditarod Trail in the Chugach mountains. It was just amazing. I mean there were snow fields to cross, and rivers to ford, and all kinds of seriously dangerous things if you don’t do them right—in terms of the environment, for hypothermia. River fording is probably the most dangerous thing you do, and glacier travel in groups…
We do some group preparation and orientation ahead of time. I think one of the transformative things about wilderness ministries is that it’s about interrupt. And frankly, if we all lived out in the wilderness in cabins, maybe I’d run an urban plunge trip because it’s about interruption. It’s about moving out of your usual life, and that’s not pejorative about that life at all. It’s just that sometimes you need to be in a different place to hear different things, and to consider who we are and why we are. So, how we cultivate malleability, I think, is really important. So that preliminary stuff begins to do that.
People know when they’re going to go out in the wilderness that they will have to go to the bathroom out in the wilderness— there’s a lot of anxiety over that, usually [laughs]. It’s interesting, so many of the questions they come up with. I love that. One of my participants, Jim, comes back and says to people, “Ask about the bathrooms… best part of the trip— the view was great.” But for most people, that’s a high anxiety thing. But once they’ve decided they’re going to sleep on the ground, and they’re not going to have lights, and a thermostat, and all those things that are blessings, it’s like Jeremiah 35, the Rechobites, who wanted to go back to the exodus experience and thought that spirituality consisted in a return to that— not just nomadic, but that exodic dimension (not exotic, but exodic, exodus lifestyle). I mean, I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t begrudge any of the amenities of life that make it more comfortable; that’s fine, but we have to be aware— I think that they do insulate and isolate us. And, I think that we need to have at least forays back into whatever it is that moves us out of comfort because I think gospel momentum is— I mean it’s always about moving us out of the comfortable place.
It’s not like God’s an irritant— well, yes it is [laughing] because we always have a tendency to sort of atrophy and to insulate ourselves. Once the participants have made the realization in their mind that they’re gonna sleep out, and they’re gonna go to the bathroom in the woods, and they’re gonna not have all of those things that make life comfortable, they’ve already made a major shift to be open to change. And I think that being stewards of that malleability is key to creating a transformative wilderness experience.
How we build on that malleability, without necessarily allowing the environment and the experience to eclipse that moment—because it’s so powerful to be out there, and the beauty of the creation, and it’s so powerful to climb up the face of a rock— that those experiences can eclipse the reflective aspect of those experiences. It’s not like the adventure experience is totally there for some religious agenda we have. But, it’s also not that the wilderness experience is pure adventure with no interpretive or reflective piece.
I think we have to keep these together. And frankly, I think that we’re to be stewards of that malleable teachable moment— to be stewards of the tremendous transformative power of creation and adventure experiences and allow them to come together in a way that a person can choose to take steps of faith and personal growth. I think that’s at the essence of a good guide. A good guide has to have skill and knowledge and has to have judgment because judgment is discerning the difference between the risk that stretches somebody and the recklessness that endangers them. And that judgment is specific to each person. This person can do that and it can be for them risk, but this person, that’s a reckless act. The first person can go ahead and walk across the log with their backpack on… and the second person, bless their heart, their fear and their balance is such that it’s a dangerous thing for them to do, and, no, they can’t.
And so that judgment comes into play as well. And all of that becomes this really interesting alchemy of moments that can result in a positive experience. Or, I’ve seen a couple of cases when it’s resulted in a really negative experience. The wilderness and adventure, high adventure wilderness, is always high impact. And so, if you’re not a good steward of how that impact is experienced by the person, then its high impact is negative. And that’s irresponsible, I think – the high impact negative thing.
So cultivating malleability does begin with some letters, with what they’ve heard from others about their experience, and the group meeting tries to give them a feel for what’s happening. It tries to begin to articulate your experiences without an expectation because my trips are in general for novices. They articulate their experience, articulate their fears, and I articulate, without trying to be boastful, my training and my abilities, so that there’s a confidence that they have. And then those meetings will kind of give you a feeling for what we’re going to do. And begin to prepare you with gear lists, and those sorts of things.
I also at that time talk about the ritual of divestment, in which I ask them to bring something that represents their life as they live it on a normal basis. And people come up with anything from cell phones to pictures of family to keys to palm pilots because my life is run by schedules, my life is run by other people’s demands, and this object reflects that, whatever it is. So, they’re thinking about their life when we do this at the group meeting. They’re already thinking about, “So what is it that epitomizes and characterizes my life?” And, again, this isn’t a pejorative view of it; it’s not a judgment upon it, but then when we’re gathered that first night we put these things— these symbols of our lives at home— aside. And in a ritual kind of setting, we lift those things up in prayer: “Lord, this is our lives, this is aspects of who we are, and they define a lot of what we do, but we’ve moved away from that now. And for this time we’ve become companions together, we put these things aside, for a while. And we commit ourselves to journeying together and open ourselves to new things you’ll bring to us .”
This tends to be a sort of trailhead portal. It’s a liminal ritual, in a sense. And then in some cases I’ll do some wilderness skill education in our meetings ahead of time and talk about sanitation, backpacking, gear lists, and all. And that will continue throughout their time – we get to lighting stoves, and setting up tents, etc. And so there’s a backdrop of wilderness skills that kind of follows a NOLS philosophy and understanding, that I think’s real important. So I want them to come away not only able to camp well, but to recognize what that means. To be able to kind of— well, like with rock climbing I want them to be able to recognize when something’s safe or not so they can say, “I may not climb with that person because I know what safe looks like, and that’s not safe.” So with the backdrop of wilderness skills, there’s also an ongoing experience of community that happens from the tent groups I assign to the cooking groups that work together — and those are different groups. And, so I’ve made up menus, and I’ve bought the food, and I tell them what I was thinking when I bought those supplies. They can cook what they want with it… But I’ll generally be there, especially early on, to answer some questions but to also allow them to discover— not to rush to fix the stove, or to decide how they’re gonna fix this food. I can still be a resource, so they’re not frustrated about things and just dump in the ingredients.
So there’s the backdrop of wilderness skills that we’re teaching right along. [Smiling] On the last trip I ran in February with our youth (and usually I don’t take youth any more, usually we are adults, anywhere to as old as 72 and with that one guy who was rock climbing probably even 75— but this was youth), I’d been talking about camp skills and all. And so there’s this particular night, it had gotten dark, and we were about ready to go to bed, and I turned to my group and I said, “Okay, before we go to bed, I just want to point out this and that.” – as I’m putting the light on gear that’s just been left and strewn about and said, “You always want to be ready for a storm to hit camp…” I mean, we’d just had beautiful weather. That night, at like 2a.m., I mean, how fast would the car be going if I had my head out the window and this was the wind that was hitting it? And I thought, this is maybe 50 miles per hour— I mean it came howling, and the kayaks were rolling, the paddles were rolling, some guys were holding onto the poles of their tent and they broke— Sierra Designs tent poles broke— I mean, it was howling. And they’re running round, diving on equipment and stuff they’d not picked up— that I’d said to, you know… and we got some of it back when low tide came down because it had sunk as soon as it had hit the water, but, I think we lost about $200 worth of gear.
So the next morning, we’re like, “OK, guys, let’s talk about last night— what happened? How could we do better?” And one of the students, she said something like, “Well I think we should all help one another to know— to encourage one another to put things away…” or whatever. And so I said, “OK, what could I have done more than pull out the flashlight and put it on things and say ‘you need to put these things up?’” And then, I said, “This is too expensive a moment not to glean from it some things of value. So what do we learn here?” And people just made some wonderful connections; students just made some wonderful connections about what happens when life is untended to. And when crises and the storms come through. And they were recognizing kinda how they sorta sometimes leave some things out hanging in life. In life, untended … you know? And it was great. So I said, “OK, great – alright. And how shall we deal with the lost money?” And they decided, well, we should all be responsible for that, and pitch in for that. Well, OK then let’s let that go, and go on…
So there’re the ongoing teaching examples, and there’s also the ongoing community that happens when you take groups, in tent groups, and obviously they’re traveling together, whether it be paddling together as those kayaks move from one to another and regroup themselves or hiking along. And then we have intentional times where we sit down and just reflect on “What’d you see? What’d you experience? What’d you notice? What’d you learn? What’d you think? And what worked for you today; what didn’t?” So there’s that group process: typical experiential education reflection.
And I create journals for these trips, and they tend to have some scripture suggestions, some quotes from authors—in the sea kayaking one, lately I’ve been taking all the quotes from Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift of the Sea —and then reflective questions on that in journaling time. So this is an hour to half hour a day of journaling, and then we come back and have small group time where we talk about that and process that. So that’s kind of how we might go. And then they can do more of that on their own.
And lately I started saying, and this has been wonderful, “Tell me about a time, tell us about a time, when you had courage in your life. Tell us about a time when God was close to you. Tell us about a time when you know, whatever…” I forget; there are a few other things, but it just gets them telling stories of their lives and then some of those crux moments in their lives.
And, you know, all we have is stories and hope – in life, I think. We just have our story, which is history, a bit personal, and hope. Telling stories is a wonderful thing. And, talking about these other kind of group times that we have, towards the end, I like to invite the group to choose one person, and then we’ll all say what we value about that person. So it’s kind of affirming. And then we choose another person and go all the way around. And we usually have communion as a part of that as well.
In the desert, I usually have them do a foot washing. And we talk about “these feet, you know, have hiked over desert ravines, and down paths” and do kind of a neat narrative description of the foot’s journey in the past several days. It’s really marvelous for community.
For communion, we bake our own bread in outback ovens, and I have on occasion squeezed our own juice out of blackberries, but mostly I take some juice or wine with us. And I’ll speak ahead of time to folks who may be kinda out of the church tradition because that certainly is the case sometimes. Somebody will hear about the trip, or a friend comes, and I try to be sensitive to the fact that communion may not be something that is meaningful to them. Or, it may not be something that they want to participate in, and as I talk about that, I’m holding in abeyance the question of whether we’ll have communion or not. Maybe that doesn’t work for them, and I don’t want to make them feel suddenly apart from the group at a very crux moment. But, if it’s something that we’re all from that tradition, and it’s appropriate, we just sit in a circle and sometimes talk about spirituality and being nourished and nurtured. And we just break the bread, and pass it around, and share the bread and the cup.
How do the trips you lead depart from the NOLS or Outward Bound models because it’s the church? Does this change the way you reflect on teachable moments in the wilderness?
I’m on the ski patrol, the California back-country ski patrol, and so when some patrol members heard about this and wondered about going, I said, “Well, that would be great, but let me be clear what this is.” So everybody is clear up front [that this is a Christian ministry trip], I don’t expect them to believe what I believe or believe what the group might hold in general. But, I’m clear that’s what we’re going to do. It’s a distinctly Christian experience, and there’s some shared values and certainly a common Christian articulation that I’m going to give, and I expect them to participate in this thing. What they choose to do, and how they choose to draw on it, or whether they go to church or not— that’s not restrictive or coercive for them—but also it’s clear to them that it’s not just a stewardship of the earth thing, not just a religious thing, but a Christian thing. So, I don’t have those problems that a NOLS person should (to add religious stuff…), and it’s clearly out of that context. And that I’m a minister, just makes it all the more clean.
I think most of my participants see the trips as an interesting type of church offering, church activity. Some people might think it sounds like a good outdoor trip, with kind of a spirituality thing. I think that they ought to, and they do say, “Hey, sounds like a cool trip, and I can do that sort of stuff – I don’t think that, I don’t believe that, but that’s ok.” They should have come to that conclusion because that’s kind of the deal. I did have in one trip to Scotland, someone who invited someone else whom they knew but didn’t really explain— I don’t think she really explained to her friend that the Celtic theme would involve a lot of religious moments. And she just wasn’t ready for that, and she didn’t participate the way that I’d hoped that she would. And it created some real challenges.
A story that shows what’s possible, though— well, I’m spacing on her name right now— but this woman went, this young woman with us, and did north Georgia rock climbing. And she really struggled up the rock, but did that, and later that night as we were kind of debriefing the day, she said, “You know, when I told my friends I was coming up here, they told me I’d never be able to do this stuff. And now that I have, I wonder what else they told me I couldn’t do.” I love that moment.
The woman who I mention in my dissertation, who I just saw tonight, her experience was so profound because in the desert silent time, solitude time away, she was devastated by not having a profound experience . In my own spiritual life, I’ve really had to kind of wrestle with that: having expectation and imagining myself to be somewhat of a poetic kind of person. I had the expectation that my encounter with God will not only be significant and profound, but I will be able to express the moment significantly. And in fact, sometimes God’s just there and doesn’t seem to be really impressive. Of course, chalk that up to my, the filters of my soul, but frankly, it’s just the God of the ordinary time.
Well, she had the expectation that it was going to be this profound, significant, existential moment, and she was crushed by the silence and by the emptiness. And for her, it really spoke to her of what she didn’t have inside. And she hadn’t been much a part of the church, and this is early on in her kind of religious journey, or at least her recent iteration of that, and, well, I think, like all of us, we imagine there was more structure there than was borne out.
I guess when she turned inside to pray, or maybe even when God was present there, it echoed too much for her, in her soul – it was emptier than she thought. And she was really undone by that. But in that broken place, of coming to grips with her own emptiness, emerged this totally full moment. And it was just wonderful.
And I remember it. I remember my only words, as we gathered around her, and she was crying, and we were caught up in the emotion of that— you know, grace is always best poured out in brokenness. I think of it in terms of delivery through the hard-panned desert upon which water can’t seep in and the fissures and the breaks, which allow it, and I think it’s that way in our lives and our marriages and our relationships and our souls—in the broken places, grace is able to seep in. And that was her broken place, and she kind of articulated the emptiness, and in that moment, there was a filling that was wonderful.
And I remember anointing her with my tears, as we were praying for her. In the desert, what water do you have? Not for baptism, my theology won’t quite stretch that far, but yes, for baptism. You know, ecclesiastically, re-baptisms and all that. But frankly, to baptize her in tears of resonant sympathy was very powerful. And, it was hugely transformative for her. She came back; she joined the church; she began to study a few years later. I think two different times she was a major instructor in a Crossways Bible Course, which is a two-year Bible course—every week for two years you meet—and she just really got into it. And right now, she’s going through some very challenging times. And I looked over to see her today, and she was, ah— we’re not a charismatic church— but even so, she was kind of uplifted hands and praying and singing. There was a resilience there that defies some of the rifts that have come up recently in her life. It didn’t all come out of that desert experience, but it was catalytic and otherwise has been strengthened through other opportunities and experiences.
My friend Kemper— we’d done rock climbing together, and my good friend—and now almost 20 years ago, suddenly my wife Nancy and I hit on really hard times in our marriage— it was just, uh, boom – you know, it was quite a crisis for us. And I called up Kemper that Monday morning, and I said, what are you doing today? He said something about work, and I said, “Well, I’m more important than that, I need you today.” And he said, “ok, well, I’ll cancel out on that.” And he came, and was with me, and we spent a lot of time then. And then, later in similar places in his life, we spent a lot of time there— just you know, using metaphors of rock climbing to talk about, you know, hanging by your fingertips, and I’m run-out 30 feet on my last piece, and frankly that wasn’t a good one. You know, and then, to have him say, “you know what, I’ve got a rope on you, and I’m above you, I’m on belay.” And that kind of stressed that for me, and I think the rock and the wilderness has been a great mentor to me in my life.
I once was asked to write an article that was— well, it’s past now— on the wilderness as spiritual director. And you know, it really has been that for me. It’s never been, “I’m going to conquer this rock and piss off the top of it.” It’s always been a pas de deux (a two-person dance), a choreography on the rock, and a learning along the way. And, just, for me, there’s this area in Sheep’s Nose, in Colorado, and I was climbing on this climb that I’d not been on before. It’s an on-site lead; I’ve got two friends with me, but I’m the only leader, about 200 feet up, maybe. It’s obviously an easy cruise up to the right, and I go up to the left and put in a little piece in a little crack that doesn’t look very good, and I pull up above that, and then the whole next stretch of rock is—there’s no place to protect. And, I don’t want to down climb because I’ll fall farther than 80 feet and hit the ravine that I came out of, the crack, the belay ledge. And, so, I think, “OK, well I’m just going to climb across this, which means every foot I climb, I’m increasing my fall by two feet.” And while I’m kind of there, doing that, and barely hanging on, then my partner says, “Your piece just fell out…” So, there I am. I’m climbing across this open stretch that isn’t that difficult, but I know the deal. And I know how high up we are. And so I’m climbing, and one guy’s on belay, and the other guy—they’ve sort of talked among themselves—and that guy’s going to try to pull up the slack if I fall. And then at some point they told me, “Pshhh, forget it.”
And so, I’m halfway across, and I’m definitely off-route – wherever the route was, it wasn’t this way because I reach up to grab this handhold, and it breaks off in my hand. The rock breaks, and it’s like, “Shit.” And I catch myself with my other hand, and I found another hold, and I’m fine. But you know what? For me, it’s like I discovered that beneath my fear, there was a courage and ability to go on. And that’s not stupid, though it would be stupid for me to go back there.
But what I learned then, and what I could pull on for years since, has been, in these panicked moments and the most dreadful moment of my life, I’ve learned how to breathe and realize that it doesn’t take that much strength to stay on the rock and to know that beneath all this fear—that is real, and the consequences are grave—that I have the ability to go on if I have to. And you know what, sometimes, you know what, I’ve been here… And yeah, I mean, I preach those moments at times, and the congregation knows a lot of wilderness stories. But also, I write my sermons Saturday, and I’ve been here Saturday night, and I’ve got nothing— it’s just not going. And I just sorta…I’ve done this on the rocks— like, ok, alright, well, I’m just going to put it away and go to sleep then. And, then, I’ll wake up, and I’ll do something for the sermon, and it’ll be OK. It’s kind of an ability to not overstress because it doesn’t help and to know that I can do a lot more than I thought I could. It’s been incredibly transformative in my life. I don’t particularly like to call on this because I don’t like to be in a situation like that— but when there, I just go back to that, and I think, “Yep, I can do that.”
It’s like proportion in life: understanding sometimes what’s really going to happen, “what’s the worst that could happen” kind of thing, and then also moving ourselves out of that which insulates and isolates and that cause fear. I say to people on rock climbing sometimes, ”Look, if you’re really scared, let go. Just fall. Get it over with .” And they’re like, “That’s it? Oh – psshh – well let me at it!” So it just helps to do that.
There’s a lot of theology in what you’ve described. Do you make explicit connections during the trip between these transformative experiences and relevant or resonant scriptural themes?
We could look perhaps at some of those journals to see exactly how that plays out… But on the sea, there are the tides of our lives and the shifting tides of life— so, that’s taking that natural phenomenon and talking about it in terms of our own experience. In some ways that doesn’t have to be Christian— obviously, that’s a truth about personal development and the reality that one brings out of reflection.
I think other things can be more substantive— maybe Elijah’s experience out in the wilderness, beyond Beersheba, when he’s in the cave, and God is not present in the fire, and the earthquake, and the wind, but in the still, small voice. And so, to talk about the prime ways we expect God and also talk about the ways in which, in the slight rustles, in the ordinariness of God, that God is still present. So there, I think, it is more directly thinking about how this experience relates to that.
Or towards the end of a trip, I will often talk about Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, and Peter wants to build a booth for Moses and Elijah— where he says, “It is good for us to be here. Let us make a booth, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.” And I kinda go off from that. I don’t think it’s exegetically amiss to say that Peter wants to preserve that moment. Peter wants to stay on the mountain; he wants to be like the docent or the ranger, to tell the story about when he was there and this and then that happened, when in fact what happens next is they go down in the valley, literally, and there’s this epileptic boy, and they can’t heal him. The truth is, we go back to the places of life that we are unable to deal with. And so I’ll talk about coming away from this mountain top experience that most people have, literally as well as emotionally, and not imagine that spirituality, and faith, and all this sense of God’s presence that people often have, and have developed, to not imagine that that is specific to this place. And try to commit ourselves to not looking back and saying, “Remember when God was present,” but to asking how do we take that back into our future?
And what happens there on the mount of transfiguration is that the cloud envelops them, and the voice of God says, “This is my son who I am well pleased with; listen to him.” So I think that the point is not preservation of an experience in time but obedience from now on.
Which I think is really powerful because people go back and the question is “What are you going to take from this, back down? What’s going to help you when you feel unable, incompetent, and fearful?” So there are abilities like that, which I think are more specifically important to make portable the wilderness experience.
In the Sea of Cortez I’ve taken to doing a thing I really like and others do as well. And I don’t do as much environmental education other than low impact, no trace camping stuff— I probably should more, but I don’t. But, we do a pilgrimage on an island, and I start at a place where they have a sign about being ecologically sensitive. There in the middle of the marine park, we sit down. And I talk about how when I first arrived here, now 12 or 13 years ago, this used to be this huge garbage heap— I couldn’t even camp here because of all the smell but also because of all the fish from the fish camps— and the hammerhead shark heads and tails that were huge, and I never see them anymore. And so I do this whole talk at that station. I do this whole explanation of the geology, and the ecology of the sea, and what’s happening with birds and sharks, and the shrimp trawlers, and the devastation of the sea, and the loss of the pelagic birds, which are barometers for the sea life, and that I don’t see hammerhead sharks anymore. Then, we reflect on our ecological place and responsibility, and we talk about how long it takes for things to degrade when simply left out in the environment as trash. I read a scripture that has to do with creation, and then we might be silent and pray. And then we move to the next place. We walk on the island to this place where a number of topographic variations are evident as well as paths, and I ask them then to do, well, what I guess I’ve come to call it—would you call it terra divina or lectio terra? It’s to use the environment in a lectio divina context, and reflect on that, and try to get them to think about what piece of topography resonates with where they are. And then they tell a story of why they chose it – “because my life right now is going this way…” Yeah, using the features of the topography, they tell their story. So it’s cool.
And then we sing, and we read a scripture, and we pray, and then we move to the next part, which is on top of this island where there is this large cactus— it’s become a friend of mine, and I always give it some water— and I talk about desert plants and their adaptive nature to live in the desert environment. And they also know some things— how does this do this, what happens— and that the desert adaptation has a purpose: the plants can live on meager amounts of water. And then I suggest that we don’t let our spirituality do that. I suggest we can just live on meager amounts of water, in a spiritual sense. The way the adaptation functions is the plants will withdraw, or close down, or shut off. We do that with our spirituality, and what we are really created to be is much more tropical, lush folk. And we talk about whether we have lush lives of spirituality or meager lives of arid spirituality. Are we getting by on little dew drops and occasional cloud bursts? And then, ‘what’s up with that?’
And the challenge is to think about what we suffice our souls to live on. Then we pray and eat and sing. Then we walk over to another place where someone put a 13-foot concrete cross. And I just say, “How did this get here?” And I don’t know— I want to hear a description of how did this get here, how’d they make it, why’d they do it? And so they give their answers, and they’re probably fairly right, and then, we talk about those people who we don’t know, whose work and efforts have helped us to come to know the faith. And we just recognize that in our spirituality, as a part of a large momentum of community, that there are many we’re not aware of. I’m trying to challenge some of those individualistic sorts of perspectives we have about life and spirituality in general.
And then I invite them to talk about those who we do know who brought the faith to them, and I invite them to name those folks in prayers— it’s always just really wonderful to hear them name parents, and friends, and teachers, and pastors, and whoever that helped them. Then, it’s just a long prayer time of naming those names at the cross, and then I have a large Para-foil about the size of this table [a coffee table of normal size], a kite, that I sometimes use in kayaking for wind power. It has a tail of 20 nylon strips that are 20 feet long, and so I’ve taken to letting them write prayers on the tail, on one of the nylon strips, and so now there’s a bunch of prayers from people— I just take some sharpies with me. Then I fly the kite, and then I attach the tail to the string, and it ascends. So the prayers ascend up into the heavens. It’s just kind of a really cool thing to watch that— and then, if they want, we end by putting a rock at the foot of the cross to perhaps represent some commitment they want to make to be someone whom others would name as one who has helped them grow in faith.
And then we get up and go to the other side of the island, and gather for lunch, and look out at the sea, and talk about the desert of the sea— how we can’t live there, but how we know that in even the small things we can see, there’s a whole life underneath here that you could never imagine. And we talk about life that’s not readily visible to us, reality that’s not readily visible to us, and talk about spirituality – is it truly under there? Life under the water— invisible to us— is a metaphor of the spiritual reality we can’t see. And then finally we go back to camp, and meet in the middle of the tents, and talk about community as a last station of our pilgrimage.
So it’s about four hours that we do this, and at each point focus on whatever that topic was, using features or the aspects of that land-station— whether it’s the topography or the ecology or whatever. It’s a really powerful thing— people like it a lot.
That pilgrimage is often one of the more meaningful things for people, but they find other parts of the trip equally valuable: being together in community and doing those things, stepping away from the tempo of life dictated by other things and renewing faith, living with that different cadence, certainly the outdoor adventure itself— sea kayaking, rock climbing, whatever, because these folks are generally novice.
So what advice would you give to someone who is hoping to start doing some of this?
I think there is an essential wallpaper to doing this that is consistent with what NOLS and Outward Bound would expect: in terms of an understanding of no trace minimum impact skills, general camping skills and wilderness safety, and route finding. So all of those type things— core curriculum— I think you gotta know that, and I think you have to have at least advanced first aid. Wilderness First Responder is better— it’s becoming the standard in the field. And that’s just the wallpaper. I mean, you gotta know what you’re doing. If you can’t rig a harness with a ring bend without looking at it on somebody in the dark, I don’t know if you should be out there. If you don’t know how to safely ford a group across a river, it doesn’t matter how spiritual you are— I mean it’s just Maslow’s hierarchy, you know? We’re into self-actualization and spiritualization, but you know what? That’s not responsible; there’s no excuse for— I mean, even the gospel is no excuse for running people out there when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Assuming you have that—I think a lot of trips go out without that. I call them cotton trips— people certainly get away with the cotton a lot of times, but that’s just so— letting kids go hiking in blue jeans in Alaska, you know …
But after that, I think just understanding the value of the interruption . Last night, I said about the Gospel of Mark, “This is really about the kingdom of interruption.” I think the gospels often do that— Mark’s struck me particularly in that sense— maybe it’s just because it’s so condensed and, therefore, more intense. But, understanding the value of the interruption and how that functions and is nurtured in life and on the trip. And being a steward of the malleable moment— and obviously the teachable moment, that’s been a phrase we’ve used for a long time, but I’d say the malleable moment too. And having judgment with regard to risk versus recklessness, with regard to not only how to help people navigate their way over the topography but negotiate their way through their own spirituality— to not hand them answers any more than you’d say, “Look stupid, it’s right there, there’s the path.” But, you let them find it, and you provide some of those important landmarks and contextual references that help them to know that.
Sometimes I think that what humility can bring into the wilderness is the articulation of God’s praise in the midst of that. I think birds do that, when they chirp. I think they are fulfilling their created purpose, and they are praising God. But I think that part of our role also is to name things. We’re namers, that’s our deal. We come into the wilderness, and we give names. And maybe that’s distinctively our call. Romans 8 talks about the groaning of creation, waiting for the glorious freedom of the children of God. Maybe there’s something about that, which is remembering our names at least and certainly the name of God, and finding out and embracing who we’re named as— precious creatures— in the great sense of that, as the children of the creator. But I think that correctly naming things is part of the art of life and relationship.
So, while the bird praises God by chirping, I think our role is also to make evident and articulate recognition and celebration of God through our experience of creation— I think we bring to completion something there in creation. I mean, sometimes we imagine that we’re intruders into that created place, and we can be— I mean, certainly what we bring with us and how we conduct ourselves—impact has as much to do with sound as much as it does garbage. But ultimately, no— we’re part of creation, and, however you want to interpret the fact that humanity was created last and was called very good, nonetheless— I think we’re to be there, and part of that is to be able to articulate the creator’s praise.
And so, I think that the guide somehow has to bring that reality into the experience, without bringing one of those clip art labels and passing it off as creative or without doing what will just piss me off, but take a beautiful creation picture and then have to write on it, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” Like, you know what, if I can’t praise God from a picture of creation and get in touch with that, then your words aren’t going to help me. But no, the church always has to make sure you ‘get it.’ I think we have to be as nuanced as a breeze on that and not force the creation or the creator onto people.
But in any case, I don’t think you can train someone to do this. Or, perhaps you can— I shouldn’t say you can’t teach that— I don’t think I was taught that much, so I don’t know how to teach it. I’ve intuited my way, and it’s been a choreography between the spirit, and the wilderness, and me, and the groups I’ve been with, that I’ve just kind of observed, and sometimes I don’t know until I say it. Well, so, maybe you can teach it; I just haven’t.
I think this general, undefined “spirituality,” which I think is oftentimes a part of wilderness experiences, has no demand to it. It’s just—I will be pejorative here— it’s all about the glow of the mount of transfiguration. It has no consonance with “this thing only comes out by prayer and fasting.” None of the disciplines and none of the connection to a Christ centered life— because that’s what I think we need. Neither that [an undefined spirituality] nor the, “let’s put people on a high emotional experience and then use that to slap them with the gospel” – I don’t know if either of those work.
And I don’t know if that’s exactly right. Experientially, intuitively – I mean, could there ever be a simple formula for this? And, you know, it may not be right, either, but it’s kind of what I’ve perceived, and what resonates for me, and certainly has been of value to ones who have gone.
Have I had any surprises? I don’t know if I’ve had any surprises. I might be real surprised that my church gets it so well, that the leaders are so affirming… I’m not surprised when people do their dumb things— I was somewhat surprised when that woman was shaving her legs using our cooking pot— surprised isn’t quite the word, pissed is more like it… um, Shaving her legs with the cooking pot? Yeah, in it— dipping and shaving. Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve had a lot of surprises. I think between things going in the general direction of either how I wanted them or of how I’ve come to learn they go, it’s been so long that I’m not sure I know the difference. And, holding a pretty open understanding that they often don’t go that way. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t know that I’ve been surprised by much, seems like I should be… hmmm… I’m surprised by other groups I’ve seen and the asinine things they’re doing, “he said arrogantly.” [laughing]
There are plenty of things I’ve had to learn. I’ve discovered that I have be clear to parents of children who sometimes attend, and mostly to the parent, to say, “Yes, you can come, but not as a parent. You both come as participants. And if any parenting needs to be done, scolding or redirecting, I’ll do it, whether it be of your child or of you” [chuckle]. And that’s out of an experience of one family who came that I thought pretty counter-productive to the group.
No, I guess there are some things I do differently, unless there’s some things that should never work— I think I learned this past Scotland trip that the woman who came, I don’t think she was really told what was going to be the case, and that wasn’t really fair to her. I don’t think her friend— I mean, bless her heart, her friend had an agenda, and she wasn’t willing to sell the whole product.
And, I find that most people don’t want to go snow camping— they think it’s a lot colder and more miserable than it is, and it’s just wonderful. And, once in a while I’ve had difficulty getting critical mass to go on these trips— it’s really kind of periodic in that sense. But generally, no, the trips fill up. I generally like to have— to Alaska I think it’s been about six or seven, and we’ve got some limitations with the water taxi cost, which goes up significantly if we add a few more people. And I don’t like to take more than 12, and generally backpacking, I’ll probably be taking more like 10. Sea kayaking I’m taking I think 11 now. To Alaska, six or seven, to Joshua Tree, which actually might be the one that I could do more if I wanted to—there’s not the same limitations of transportation—but still, probably in the vicinity of nine. I don’t want to overwhelm the wilderness, and groups can, and frankly mine does— and I really try to talk to my groups about being really respectful or about all these times. Like, you know, I feel sorry if you’re camped on the beach, just the two of you, and I paddle up with my group. We’re a good group, but we’re still maybe nine folks, and they’re like, “Crap,” you know? So there’s that whole protocol that goes on. I tell a group, especially on an island, “If someone comes up and asks you, ‘Can we camp here?’ you send them to me” because how that goes depends on a lot of things, but, “don’t you mess it up.” There’s a deal here that changes according to the sites left, and the time of day, and the weather that goes on. And I’ll just stop and ask people to send them to me. And it’s just interesting how I think most of the leaders I’ve seen kind of have a similar way of working with that.
I don’t ever run into anyone out there who’s a pastor. I know there’s a few programs that do, and I don’t know that much about them. Summit Adventure, or summit something out here does, and… Yeah, when Nancy and I were backpacking in Alaska, we just called this church and said, hey, “Have you got someone who can drive us? We’ll pay them money.” They did— it was an intern, and she was telling us, “Our youth group is going out hiking,” and that’s great, so we talked. When we returned, we read in the paper how one of the advisors died, and the reason he died was that they were hiking in Resurrection Bay, and he was joining them late and wanted to catch up with his fiancée, who was already there. And the tide had come up, and so he was like, if not a Ranger, he was like kind of an Army guy, and he was climbing the rocks trying to get past a section where there wasn’t a trail, and he fell to his death. So, that’s a church that’s done that sort of thing. Meanwhile, I would never let someone do that. I never let someone turn back— “Oh, I’m tired, I’ll just go back.” Well, no, I mean, we have to have someone go with you, or the whole group turns back.
I usually work with a co-guide. And it can change trip to trip, like in Joshua tree, when I go in May, Nancy will do that. When I go to the Sea of Cortez, Val goes with me, and she’s really good. In the snow, again I take Nancy. Val and Lisa and John have all gone out to NOLS and done the outdoor educator thing, so they do have that training, but Lisa and John now have kids, so they have less time. But Val and Lisa will lead women’s kayaking or backpacking trips. And John has led a men’s packing trip that’s on the weekend, more locally. I’m the only one who does rock climbing set-up stuff, and I have set the system up and then sat off 100 yards or 50 yards as the women belay. On a women’s only trip, I did that, and supervised from that distance…
Any difference between all-men’s or -women’s trips in terms of the kind of experience they have?
I’ve actually not done either of them, but I think the women’s trips are a good thing because women perceive, or often times my perception is that women perceive, ‘they don’t know if they can do this.’ And they have some anxieties about their own strength and probably not a fair characterization of women as a whole, but frankly there are a number of women who would rather have had their first experience in the wilderness in what they perceive to be a same gender support. The issues of going to the bathroom, that’s potentially embarrassing, or whatever— yeah, and my guess is that they perceive that they don’t want to go out with the kinda ‘bust-ass’ guys. But that’s not the case on our trips— I mean, they aren’t that way, and I wouldn’t really let them be that way. But, the perception is probably valid.
As for the future, I’ve thought about doing some experienced groups, as opposed to novice: those who have been rock climbing before and kick it up into a different place. I don’t generally rappel with groups, so teaching rappelling might let them just develop more skills. I’m also interested in taking a group— I’ve done some personal kayak camping in Hawaii on Maui— I’d kinda like to circumnavigate Lanai. But I would have a requirement to take a surf class first, landing in surf with rocks is a different deal.
My first trip there with John and Lisa, they said, “Here we’ve got a frequent flyer trip ticket, how about you lead us and we’ll give it to you?” And I’m like, “OK.” So the rental people pick us up in the airport in Maui, and we go to Hana. Four o’clock in the afternoon we pack into these sit-on-tops. And so I’m looking at the topo and I’m thinking, well we’ll just pull into a cove and camp; this will be great. But with 30 ft. intervals, anything below 30 ft. doesn’t show, it looks like it’s flat, right? So it’s rocky cliffs and big boulder strewn beaches and the swells are probably 12 and 13 feet high. And you know, we end up doing some dangerous surf riding… But I’d like to circumnavigate Lanai, and camp on that…
And then I want to do a trip where we’d fly to Phoenix or Las Vegas—I don’t know which would be closer (we flew last time to Las Vegas)—drive to Page, Arizona, and do just one day of sea kayaking on Lake Powell, just outside of Page. Just maybe go that night over to whatever that island is, probably Antelope Island, camp there, and then the next day go back Antelope Canyon, which is this really cool canyon— it’s one of those really mellow paddles, and then you can camp in the back of it, and then you come out— because after that it’s kind of just big expanses of water—to get to somewhere else. One night there and then drive an hour or two to Pariah, a slot canyon, and backpack down that, which would be just amazing— there’s a photo of it on the fridge… So those are two trips that I want to do. And then… I’ve returned to a lot of the same places, because I know them, and I don’t have to worry.
I did scuba one time, and we kinda did it with someone from the presbytery; I just had them do it—his brother was a dive master—and, it wasn’t great. I don’t know whether it— if the guy was just a yahoo diver or whether he wasn’t good, but yeah, that wasn’t good. It was off Monterrey— it was a day trip, and I forget exactly what the problem was—– we may have had to take the guy to a pressure chamber – I mean, just really yikes. Um…
I used to do day trips, and I started day trips for rock climbing because the Santa Cruz mountains and the Goat Rocks are great for teaching. There’s just this really nice progression: a very easy start and then one that nobody really can get it— hanging upside down with perseverance— this overhanging roof 5.10 kind of thing. And nobody can ever really pull it off, and, nobody wants to try it, and I sorta climb it and show them how, and then you know, one person does it and then everybody says, “Oh, I can fall” and try it. But if you fall, the fall is big— the higher you get up the more you swing out to free air, so it’s kind of a big thrill ride. And so, then, we used to run day packing trips— we used to do that too.
You can’t include the same spiritual elements in day trips, but you can a little bit. With the rock climbing I’ll talk about the difference between believing and trust— between, “do you think this rope will hold you?” and “OK, Jump.” Or, “OK, then step out like that.” And I talk about the difference between climbing with the rope as a backup, which, often times we don’t need, and rappelling, which I don’t generally do, but they understand—I lower them down; they know that— and, that a lot of times we use God like rock climbing in terms of “if I happen to need you, you’re there” (like in climbing) as opposed to leaning back (as in rappelling), such that if the system is no good, you’re falling. Less so with the day kayaking, if we find a place to stop, we’ll do a little reflection. Yeah, on the short trips you don’t get the same thing.
And I’ve expanded to do some senior day trip stuff— frankly, as much to counteract their feeling of “he’s always going off and leaving us, and we can’t go on those things.” But it’s nice to go down to the Ana Nuevo and the sea lion sanctuary, or bird watching in one of the local refuges.
Any final thoughts?
No, although, we were talking about interruption, and dissonance is another interesting word. And, there are many places in which dissonance can occur, and I think there’s a real opportunity there. Allowing dissonance to occur can create some interesting opportunities for people to say, “Something’s rubbing against something there, when that happens.” I think whenever we’re up against familiarity and complacency, it’s likely there’s an opportunity for some growth. So, it’s interesting, it’s an interesting contrast between you know, sojourners, who live in a place and get settled and rooted— all good things— versus living lightly and ready to move, being whisk-able, right? For the wind of God, to be able to lift us up and move us on to something new. In Exodus 12:11, the people of the exodus for the Passover meal there, they would be with their loins girded, with their sandals on, with the staff in their hand, and all dressed up and ready to travel. And it was suggesting that we not get fat and sassy here with the meal— communal meal for us— but that from here we go out. So, I think those Rechobites wanted to go back to a pure nomadic kind of thing, and we lose all sense of subtleness. And I think it’s interesting to contrast those two values— it’s a good thing to be grounded, to be settled, to be centered, and to be in the land and on the land, and not be so mobile that we’re unattached, rootless. But there’s being rooted and being rutted. That’s kind of interesting— I think that wilderness can affirm the former, and challenge the latter. Or it just seems to.
I love it— it’s so energizing to me, you know, I always find time for the wilderness. I mean, I don’t have time to meet with you, but I do, because we’re talking about that. If it was to talk about preaching, I’d say, “No, I’m leaving for the Congo”… [laughs ]