Dear Glen Morris United Church, 

Peace be with you! This week's Passing the Peace message is a short video made by yours truly: 

For those of you who would like to read the audio from the video, here is it: 

The season of Lent is 40 days and 40 nights, which reflects the time Jesus spent in the wilderness right before he started gathering disciples, it’s where we join Jesus in his ministry. 

Especially in the colonial imagination, wilderness  - is a story we tell about spaces that are dangerous and uninviting because they are unknown. I took a walk down to the river this week, after we were covered in that heavy blanket of snow and this is what thoughts came up. 

I can’t help but wonder if the real wilderness is not these spaces we have that are an opportunity to connect with our beautiful interdependent creation, but that wilderness might be better understood as places of disconnection where we feel alone, uncertain, and without the resources or support we need to find our way through. 

In that sense wilderness might be a home broken by abuse, or a workplace where we’re feeling undervalued or exploited, it might be the start of an unexpected grief, and maybe what we need more than anything is to find ways to immerse ourselves in nature in what we call wilderness, so that we can pay attention to all of the conversations we are a part of simply by being a living thing sharing space with the animals and trees and waters. This is not a place of despair or abandonment, it is schoolhouse of abundance and cooperation. We are in fact in the company of many teachers, like willow who grows back stronger after being pruned, like geese who fly better taking turns breaking the wind, like maple going dormant in the winter to rest. 

When we talk about Jesus in the wilderness, I think it’s easy for us to imagine that it was a time of trial or punishment, it was a harsh experience and Jesus’ faith was being forged in a fire but - what if, that Holy Spirit that pushed Jesus into the wilderness, was a guide, inviting Jesus to listen, learn, and see God in all of creation. What if Jesus was given 40 days and 40 nights to build relationships that would act as comforts and guides as he stepped into the real wilderness of temples turned to markets, and courts turned into a mockery of justice? 

May the peace of Christ be with you, in whatever wildernesses you are journeying through these days. 

 

Yours in Christ, 

Rev Michiko