Introduction
Over 25 years ago, environmental historian Max Oelschlaeger wrote that perhaps the last, best chance to establish more sustainable patterns of living in the United States was to draw on the distinctive values and traditions found in faith communities. Since that time, many promising developments have indeed emerged.
One example is a Jewish environmental organization based in New York City. Since its founding in 2000, Hazon has become the world’s largest Jewish environmental organization and has sparked transformative Jewish environmental education programming in the areas of food, environment, and climate change. One of the key approaches that has allowed Hazon to grow in this way has been their organizational commitment to transformative programming— to taking deep dives rather than seeking to generate and proliferate larger quantities of briefer programs.
To wit, Hazon’s founding program was a cross-country Jewish environmental bike ride during the summer of 2000, and they have become known for their weekend-long Shabbat bike ride and retreat programs and their annual Jewish food conferences. Some of the growth and evolution of such programs can be seen in the JOFEE report, which characterized a selection of such programs in 2014. To understand the culture-changing power of Hazon’s work, it helps to understand the motivations of Hazon’s founder, Nigel Savage, which are outlined in Chapter 11 of this book. Nigel’s story is just one poignant example of how drawing deeply on wilderness sensibilities can inform and motivate work for positive social and environmental change.
The work that organizations like Hazon and individuals have done to intersect faith communities with sustainable living, environmental concern, and wilderness experience is profound. Although Hazon has reached thousands of people, a larger majority have yet to experience the transformational impacts of a spiritual wilderness experience. Under the strains of a climate crisis, ongoing pandemic, and social upheaval, the ability of faith and wilderness to inform, inspire, cure, renew, and satiate has the potential to impact—and transform—a far larger sum of people.
In recent years, there has been an increasing and renewed interest in spending more time outside, for our own sake. The benefits of this time outside are both tangible and immeasurable, but altogether undeniable. At the same time, progress on sustainability has remained a challenging, sometimes mysterious task. Political, economic, and ideological forces are aligned against shifting away from the impactful and consumptive patterns that represent life in the Western Hemisphere.
The complexities of finding a sustainable future are a bit like travelling in the wilderness. Charting this course will not be something where scientific predictions will have the final say. Complexity theory tells us that we can’t predict all the outcomes of complex systems such as this, even when we know all the inputs. The challenges of creating a better future remind me of a backpacking trip to the Badlands region of South Dakota. I was charting a path across a land of varied topography in which no sure trails already existed, and the life and death gravity of the situation became a reality—I could really die out there. I used my compass and relied on a sense of safe travel to traverse the landscape. But mostly, I realized I just had to keep going despite the obstacles, because there was a long way to go yet. In an exasperated moment of 104-degree heat and with a monumental decision in front of me, I had a bit of a Zen moment. I knew I had to do it myself, but I couldn’t get there without higher help.
I have found in my own experiences that the outdoors provides a space for transformative moments in environmental education. Many others have stumbled on similar answers, that one path forward in the direction of a sustainable world is best achieved through stepping back. Environmental education in the modern world can be realized when people discover the basics of a more sustainable life, when they step out of the rat race and fast pace of consumer life.
Just by the virtue of being Americans, we consume more than our share. It’s hard to do otherwise, because it’s just the way things are done in this country. We’re not bad people, we’re just living in a wasteful system. Trying to live happier and more sustainable lives can be a bit like paddling upstream. Happiness is conversely tied to consumption. American’s happiness index has gotten worse as materialism and consumption have increased. The more we consume, the further we get from happiness. It should be noted that there is a minimum threshold at which this occurs. There is some evidence now that, for some communities, African Americans and women in particular, happiness does go up with materialism. They are getting happier as they reach this threshold level of material and cultural happiness. But this isn’t the full picture. Beyond that threshold, it is not materials but more spiritual values that must carry one to the deepest happiness.
In summary, don’t give up on meeting the basic needs and meeting them well. But once you’re there, re-prioritize away from “more and bigger” and toward “better.” Sometimes it takes a retreat, a stepping back, a chance to reflect and immerse yourself in a very different way, to find that even without all our stuff and waste we can flourish, and maybe even more. This is where wilderness experiences converge with finding that deeper happiness, realizing that living simply is surprisingly nourishing. Perhaps the poet Walt Whitman said it best when he wrote, “Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.” Continuing that sentiment with the wisdom of John Muir, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” It’s not about seeking deprivation or glorifying sacrifice—it has much more to do with re-discovering the basic values and ways of life that are enriching, life-giving, and sustainable.
This approach to sustainability does mean giving up comfort and convenience as our guides, and replacing those with wisdom, prudence, justice, stewardship, love, charity, sufficiency, and other virtues. As it happens, those are not just virtues of a life well-lived but environmental virtues, too. We shouldn’t merely live in a way that the environment and our sustainable use of its material goods is our main goal. Rather, we should live as we know, value, and believe we should, for the right reasons. When we do this, we find that a side effect is that this path, our way of living, is in itself life-healing, reconciling, sufficient, joyful, and full of integrity. If our guiding norms are universal—like reconciliation, peace, love, incarnation, simplicity, prayer, meditation, contemplation, restraint, discipline, sacrifice, justice, faith, and hope—then we can live in a way that is both earth-healing and soul-healing.
We live in a world that is far from holding those virtues as guiding norms. Instead, we’re in a culture that aims to permit anything you think you can get away with. This moral decline sets us up with all the wrong role models and examples of how to live. It leads to misery and dishonesty. It’s time to turn that around. These are not problems that our kids—the next generation—can simply get done. Our generation, this one, has to put it in motion. If we can’t be the generation with the wisdom and vision to point the next generations toward reconnecting with God and reality, sustainability, and a true path, then our children and grandchildren can’t get there. They won’t even be on the way. We have to live honestly, trying to help others, and maybe then we can get out of the get-ahead-at-the-expense-of-others-and-nature culture that prevails today.
By finding the more basic, spiritual truth about life, we can steer away from the wasteful, unhappy, materialistic life that is destroying our planetary future. The values found in wilderness might be an important part of the answer. All faiths have formative stories of the return to wilderness to re-center. From the Israelites wandering in the wilderness to Jesus’ own time in the desert, all the way up to the retreat and camp ministries of the early United States and the creation of the US national parks as an escape to Eden, wilderness has been of profound benefit to those willing (or forced, as in the case of the Israelites) to take the road less travelled.
From 2002 to 2004, as part of my dissertation, I interviewed over a dozen experts in the then-emergent field of biblical wilderness spirituality. Those individuals were pioneers in the art of experiential education as a means of achieving spiritual renewal and sustainable thinking. These individuals, from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions and backgrounds, were on the forefront of a now popular movement to use the outdoors to bring about growth. Since those interviews, the No Child Left Inside movement has blossomed and wilderness education, both in a secular and spiritual sense, has become a thriving endeavor.
I summarized the findings of those interviews in my doctoral thesis, but the publication of that paper was never the goal. The purpose was always to share the stories and insights of these pioneers of spiritual outdoor education. Now, eighteen years after hearing those stories, and after a career devoted so far to finding the intersection between the environment and religious values, I am publishing the stories in their fullest sense.
The wilderness gurus who tell their story in this book have collectively spent more than 300 years exploring and leading others and creating viable pathways back through the wilderness for the sake of our lives out of the wilderness. Their work is dynamic—many challenges remain and may even be perennial. But for those who have tired of seeking the modern, sought-after “silver-bullet” solution, maybe a perennial effort is precisely the sort that is sustainable, provided we are perennially renewed in our vision and strength to meet that challenge. This circles back to the complexity of building a sustainable world to live in and the struggles of charting a path through the endless mountains that rise in challenge to our goal. These pioneers, the gurus, perhaps offer our brightest path yet through the maze and out of the wilderness, precisely by stepping back into the wilderness.
Wilderness has always been evocative and restorative. Mark’s gospel is a classic example, beginning with a voice out of the wilderness— preparing a way— and ending with the great commission to take the good news to all creation. Wilderness stories and ethics have particular intensity for those who live in wilderness, but they’ve also always been evocative as a general life metaphor— for finding our way and navigating challenges in those “wilderness” times of life. The significant transitions, degradations, challenges, and dysfunctions of contemporary life are like a wilderness, and call us to step into our journey to better ways. Indeed, we are in a wilderness time. The skilled and inspired lessons, practices, and values that these gurus have put into play to create and sustain their wilderness programs can perhaps, therefore, point a way for all of us. This guidance is not just for wilderness times, though. Just as Jesus repeatedly and continually went to the quiet places to pray, and just as Sabbath time is needed, so this wilderness wisdom can be incorporated into the fabric of one’s life in life-giving and sustaining ways, ways that also will be life-affirming for all creation. What is in the wilderness is available to us all the time, but in the chaos of everyday life we miss it. Thus, we go to the wilderness to sharpen our sense—and deepen it and habituate to it— of what is always true. It becomes clearer in the wilderness.
The interviews compiled here provide some good insights to the different paths by which people become environmental leaders in religious communities and the outdoors. These immersive, transformational, experiential programs can be wisdom for those who develop their own organizations and communities. Maybe what we often need for better and more sustainable impact is a deeper dive. These types of programs take a lot of work to facilitate, but they give back even more. Transformation happens and community is built. Weaving that together in the fabric of a community allows it to be sustained and to grow. This collection is, in some ways, a manual of how you might facilitate experiences, learning, and practices that build organizations amidst the chaos of partisan polarization and political dysfunction. Building deep, personal, and communal transformation proves successful and enduring. The deep-dive and steady trust foundations of wilderness programming are a ready antidote to our contemporary madness.