But when I left that day, I looked up and saw the sky and the trees and the immense beauty around me for the first time in a long time. It's doubtful I heard a single bird sing. When I walked into the chapel I don't think I noticed anything around me. I sat there, in all my brokenness, until I felt a shift within. I still have no memory of how I ended up there in the first place. There were days (a lot of days) when I couldn't get out of bed.Īnd then one day I went to the little Stone chapel at Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee, very near where I lived at the time. As time went on, I got sicker and sicker.
#Wild arms into the wilderness series
Additionally, I was poor and lonely, and I had a series of projects that hadn't gone anywhere - heaps and heaps of empirical proof, in other words, that I was failing in every conceivable way. I was crippled by huge amounts of guilt and shame. The thoughts in my head were so toxic and heavy that I was crumbling beneath the weight of them.
When I first went into the Wilderness, meditation in its purest form was impossible for me. (Incidentally, it can also an excellent way to deepen your practice, if you already have one.) If sitting for a silent meditation has been deeply uncomfortable in the past, this is an excellent place to start. Consider this Wilderness practice a prerequisite to STILL/WILD, or a more traditional meditation or contemplative practice. A Wilderness practice means making a little time each day, or as often as possible, to set aside your distractions and to engage in a period of deep introspection. We go into the Wilderness, then, to clear and cultivate it - to identify the unhelpful habits and patterns that keep us from moving forward and to bring those habits and patterns out of the shadows and into the light where they will be transformed. More importantly, we can think of the Wilderness as the place where the light breaks through. What do we mean by the Wilderness? We can think of the Wilderness as the place in which we find all of the obstructions between ourselves and the ability to be profoundly still between ourselves and lives that are rich, (relatively) peaceful, fully realized. I didn't know what to do when I got there, but I was desperate enough to go anyway and willful enough not to leave until I found some relief. I was so sick and sad and tired I could hardly function. In the beginning, however, I went into the Wilderness only because I was too broken to do anything else. These days, I inhabit the Wilderness because I crave the prayer of Union, as St. Apologies in advance for typos and worse. Quick note: This is a raw, unedited version of these first four chapters.
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