Lexie Carroll’s Reviews > Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith > Status Update

May you become friends with your sorrow &longing; honor it with lament that engages God in your suffering. May darkness & the slower path become friends to you. You don’t keep time with anyone else but the Spirit now. Take all the time you need, you’re not late/lagging. Healing doesn’t mean that pain disappears in a puff of smoke. Embrace a plain ordinary healing that prioritizes rest, joy, ritual & compassion.

It takes such holy audacity to choose a new path when the old ways turn into dead ends for you. It takes guts to realize that God is bigger than a church, a tradition, an interpretation. We are learning to receive, not control. We are learning to improvise, to play again, and to reclaim our joy. I’m thinking of you tearing up your scripts, tossing pieces in the fire and whooping under the full moon.

Joy is never intellectually, emotionally or spiritually dishonest. Nor is it doubling down on “we’re fine, everything is fine” when things are clearly not fine. Joy isn’t a good time earned through denial or performative sentimentality. Moments of joy don’t erase reality, they are a part of it. It isn’t only sad and tragic things that are real; redemption is real, renewal is real, joy is still real.

There is a Jewish concept called “tikkun olam” meaning “healing of the world”. It is considered the work of all of us; we’re all called to repair the world.
We can’t save the whole world. We can’t fix everything that’s broken. There will always be something to be Against here. But the cure for my despair and inaction has been the hope of being For the repair of the world.

As we work to imagine something better, we can develop a rhythm of turning away (from the things we’re against) and then turning toward (the hopeful future we imagine), like a beautiful dance. ‘Not this, and so this’. It’s a form of restoration. What we turn toward should reorient us to the world of love, joy & service. Naming what we are turning toward is a rebellion against the broken story itself.

Handle your old ways with gentleness and compassion. Even among the ancient paths, there is more room to wander than you were told. There are so many beautiful, complicated, twisty, weird old ways to love God and love people. It might look differently than it did, and it might be a bit outside the lines, but it’s an old path and you belong on it, too.

As we rummage through what we believe over time, we may throw out beliefs, practices and opinions that don’t serve us anymore. It turns out that some things we once scored are actually precious to us; we may be surprised to be re-enchanted by their beauty from a new vantage point. We aren’t required to toss everything we were taught as “worthless” or “toxic”. It’s okay to bring some things with you.

If we’ve been privileged, centered & empowered, we’ve also been told that our way of reading scripture, doing church & moving through the world is the right one. And that isn’t always true. We still belong- don’t mistake me- we’re still beloved & capable & invited. But we must remember that privilege & power are rarely the best tools for discerning the truth.

Discernment of good fruit is essential in the wilderness, especially when we’ve spent a lifetime denying our own inner knowing in service of someone else’s idea of the greater good. Many of us have spent too long being told rotten fruit we’re eating is actually good. Our discerners are a little messed up, aren’t they? For too long we’ve been expected to toe the party line of our church without question.

“More & more, I crave being part of a congregation, a group with whom I can gather to reflect & contemplate, to hear how others have solved this puzzling problem of existence. Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder & challenge me.” K. May