She recommended me a book that just based off of the title, seemed like one I would love. I went to look up the author— the current lead pastor of a church I still very much admire, but now from afar and in a different way. His church is one, 2 years ago, I would have dreamed of working at. Now is one I hold hope can defy the odds of a structure and a system that all too often squanders the sincere vision and conviction of it's leaders and even congregants. He wrote of desert fathers and mothers, monks, and mysticism— all topics I have come to enjoy greatly. And yet, even still, I couldn’t make it past the first chapter.
This is an occurrence I have, unfortunately, grown quite familiar with in recent months. A once devourer of all things christian and theological literature, eager to learn and always excited about the next book on the way, I have come to struggle with this piece of my identity that still longs to grow in knowledge and study, yet now feels unable—for many reasons—to sit at the feet of teachers I once admired.
And those reasons in their numerosity often have nothing to do with the content or even the character of he or she that is writing. Often, the tension comes from the place from which they are writing. A place, a dwelling, a residence, I simply no longer feel at home in.
And I guess that is the reality of living a nomadic life of ministry like the one that I am currently in, of having no denominational nor ecclesiological “home.” It becomes hard to ever feel “at home.” To ever feel like the words being written hold you in mind, to feel like the lessons being taught are coming from a posture that knows you, that understands you, that has carved out a space of rest and welcome for you.
I have found rest-stops, motels, even cozy airbnbs over the last couple of years that have served to shelter me for a few nights or more. But none have revealed themselves to be that safe place of permanence that I felt I once had before.
And for a long while, that non-existence of a home felt really wrong. I thought that leaving one home simply meant needing to set off to find another. The nomadic existence was temporary, only until I could find once more a destination of rest and stability.
However, the longer I spend in this wilderness state, even choosing in ways a permanence within it, the more I have come to believe our seasons of stability and security are what are meant to be momentary. Nomadic life is meant to be our place of continued dwelling. The wilderness is actually our home.
Maybe we were never meant to define nor understand our relating to the divine amidst fixed beliefs and immovable rhythms. And maybe our most dangerous and harmful beliefs about the divine are because they were formed out of such a commitment to remaining moored.
Yes, for far too long religious and spiritual maturity has been measured by a sense of stability— a never wavering-ness that projects the idea of security and trust. However, as we are coming to find again and again, both systemically as well as interpersonally, that projection of stability, more often than not, will inevitably reveal itself to be a whitewashed mirage, covering up long ignored ugliness and decay. Pastors whose theology was long praised for being “truth-centered” and “biblically based” reveal themselves to be liars, manipulators, and bullies. Churches and denominations long relied on as stable environments for believers to gather in unity reveal themselves to be toxic and abusive at even the highest levels of authority. The days of trusting a tried and true institution, framework, or even leader solely based off of it’s staying power and projection of certainty are numbered. And let’s be honest: that is terrifying.
For many of us, such stability found via our pastors, churches, and frameworks are what defined the entirety of our relationship with God.
But what I am finding in the midst of this collective uprooting and scattering, this untetheredness and what some would call waywardness, is not a huried nor rushed reaction from our God, urging us once more to find places of stability, nor necessarily encouraging us to just find new homes, unpack, settle in, and get cozy once again.
No, I am sensing instead, an invitation. A bidding us back to our true home and intended state— into the vastness of the desert, the uncertainty of the wild, the obscurity of the unlit road ahead, beyond just the next few feet we cannot see nor fathom.
I am sensing that what we feel is an ejection and a banishment from our homes of comfort and ease, is actually a welcoming into our true homes of peace found only in the midst of the jungle.
And I believe that the work that we do in the mist of that wild terrain— the learning how to remain faithful in the midst of constant change and upheaval, the learning how to experience God in the midst of conflict, uncertainty, and grief, the building of an intimacy with God whilst predictability and security can no longer be guaranteed— this laborious and trying work is the work of the Spirit. It is what, I believe, will be the future of the Church as we know it.
As the Church continues to be brought to repentance, to reckoning, to deconstructing and rebuilding, many of us will continue to find ourselves longing for homes and places of dwelling that can replace the ones we lost in the purifying fire. Some may even find them. But to those who do not, to those who God has firmly and declaratively led out into a place of unfamiliarity, silence, and void, consider me the crazy feral woman wrestling out from the darkness of the trees ready to join you and say:
This can be our home too.
There is more peace and security here than you know.
We listen for the winds and whispers of the Spirit out here.
And She hasn’t led us astray, not yet.
For the place we dwell is not built nor constructed.
Our place of abiding cannot be entered nor left.
Our home is in the silence of our being present and still
with the Divine inside.