Exploring the wilderness
Rats and woodpeckers.
These are the "wild beasts" of my wilderness that I'm challenged to befriend.
As I read the beginning of chapter one this morning, the image of Woody the Woodpecker - a cartoon character that I loved as a child - came to mind. In my wilderness, Woody pecks away at me. There's no hunter with an ax or chainsaw that's come to cut me down, but rather it's like the workings of a small bird pecking away at small things - the comments here and there that run the risk of slowly chipping away at my sense of self.
At a recent retreat I was at, singer/songwriter Barbara McAfee led us in a song about "brain rats". Brain rats run around inside your head, making you doubt yourself, worry needlessly, and beat yourself up for being less than perfect. There are days when I have rats in the brain.
The wild beasts in my wilderness - the woodpeckers attack from the outside, the rats from the inside. Befriending them is an intriguing idea. And so that is what each of us sets out to do. Jesus in the wilderness for forty days - we in our lenten journey for forty days. As Sarah says, "Let's get to know it!". What does your wilderness look like? Where do you go to get away from the demands of the world?
- Melanie
These are the "wild beasts" of my wilderness that I'm challenged to befriend.
As I read the beginning of chapter one this morning, the image of Woody the Woodpecker - a cartoon character that I loved as a child - came to mind. In my wilderness, Woody pecks away at me. There's no hunter with an ax or chainsaw that's come to cut me down, but rather it's like the workings of a small bird pecking away at small things - the comments here and there that run the risk of slowly chipping away at my sense of self.
At a recent retreat I was at, singer/songwriter Barbara McAfee led us in a song about "brain rats". Brain rats run around inside your head, making you doubt yourself, worry needlessly, and beat yourself up for being less than perfect. There are days when I have rats in the brain.
The wild beasts in my wilderness - the woodpeckers attack from the outside, the rats from the inside. Befriending them is an intriguing idea. And so that is what each of us sets out to do. Jesus in the wilderness for forty days - we in our lenten journey for forty days. As Sarah says, "Let's get to know it!". What does your wilderness look like? Where do you go to get away from the demands of the world?
- Melanie
posted by Melanie at 12:51 PM
1 Comments:
"We are driven to this wilderness, asked to sit in it, get to know it, and ultimately befriend its inhabitants." As a stranger in a strange land this seams dangerous. In the Old Testament were we not told to not mingle with the people of other lands lest we go astray? Is befriending our fears, worries and anxieties giving into them, or overcoming them?
Jim Bourdeau
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