It is the strangest of feelings.
For decades I worked this relentless public life trying to save the world because I believe God wants it saved and I want to do my part. So I worked hard surrounded by others who believe the world should be saved too and we accomplished a lot. It was a whirlwind of a life that took me around the world, got me published, won me stuff, let me carry the Olympic Torch and have way more than my fifteen minutes of television time.
Of course it had its cost ... two marriages, burn out, estrangement from those who love me, a cynicism for everything about the political system ... and churches and synagogues and Mosques ... they're all the same.
For the past year or so all of these things happened and I left it all ... or it all left me ... I have felt like Moses and the Jews wandering around in the Wilderness. What that must have been like.
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"Shut up and keep walking or I'll whack the shit out of you with this staff."
"Alright," they said before muttering under their breaths, "he's an ass."
So they wandered.
For forty years.
In Hebrew there is no sense of time.
Forty years means a long time. Same as when Jesus was tempted in the desert for forty days. It was a long time. A long time can be four minutes when you get the phone call in the middle of the night that something bad has happened to one of your children ... or it can be forty years of bad marriage. Too much much time working a job you hate ... suffering through illness ... or enduring what politicians do to us "for our own good".
So for the past couple of years I've been wandering around the wilderness. It's been a long time.
I left the comforts a career that had served me well as I served others. It was all so perfect ... until it wasn't. The bliss of marriage fled leaving me with a dog ... so Goddess has been my constant companion as we've marched through marsh grass, paced a back deck, took walks to a beach swing, made bar tours, or sat for hours on a sad little holy dock.
So the thing about the wandering around the wilderness ... or combing the beach ... walking through the woods ... sitting on a mountain ... pondering what we've left behind or what has left us ... imagining what it's going to be like when we get to wherever we're going ... hoping ... wishing ... praying
... is that in Hebrew one of the many things that "Wilderness" means is that it is the place where God speaks.
It has been difficult for me to give myself permission to wander around like I've been doing. I should be working like I've always done. I shouldn't be spending so much time alone doing just what I want to do. I should not grieve for so long. I should get off my ass and pull myself by own bootstraps and do ... the same old stuff that I was doing before.
But I didn't.
I kept wandering.
For a long time now.
And God is whispering secrets in me ear.
Now the wilderness feels like home.
