The peace of wild things photo by Melissa bills, 2011. en rout to Kitumbeine, Tanzania

In northern Tanzania, there are (at least) three types of wilderness.

Head out to the the dusty land below Mount Kitumbeine, and you will see flatness and dirt, and only spindly, spiky acacia trees and bushes, sparse, with only the smallest leaves. Everything is brown and cracked. You scuff along in the dirt, and dust fills your mouth and throat. It is quiet, the sky is open, and as far as you can see, it is empty and still.

Travel out to the savannah, and you'll find tall, brown grass, and patches of green grass sprouting up near water sources, and the land is filled with wild things. Zebras and birds of all sorts, giraffes and antelopes. It is wilderness because it is overflowing with wild wind and wild beings.

Head to the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, and you will find yourself in wet, wild, jungle wilderness. It is wilderness because it is wild, overgrown, unruly. Giant banana tree leaves, thickets of coffee bushes, slick clay underfoot, hens and roosters and mysterious misty skies full of humidity and surprise rainstorms.

This first full week in Lent is all about wilderness. We start the week with a story of Jesus in the desert, thrust by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism, left to his weakest, most vulnerable self, contending with tempter and temptation.

Lent is a time for each of us to let the Holy Spirit cast us into the wilderness. A time for reflection, for facing our own weakest, most vulnerable selves, to see our selfish or uncharitable bits, to seek out the places where our hearts have strayed from loving God and loving neighbor, to face down even our own mortality. Lent is the time to leave ourselves behind in seek of God's love, and to head out into a wilderness where we get rid of all of the comforts that keep us from being our real, beloved-by-God selves.

Sometimes this wilderness feels dry and barren - and there we find God waiting to offer us living water. Sometimes this wilderness is full of unfamiliar creatures - and there we find our familiar friend, Jesus, with his arms open to take us in. Sometimes this wilderness feels overgrown and tangled and out of control - and there the Holy Spirit breathes peace into our hearts.

And the joy of the wilderness is the joy of stepping away from ourselves and fully into God's presence. In the wilderness, nature is at peace with itself, and in our wilderness, God helps us to be at peace with our own selves. This wild peace is what Wendell Berry describes in his poem, "The Peace of Wild Things:"

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

So my friends, in this wilderness space of Lent, rest in the grace of God, in the grace of the world, in the grace of divine love, and be free.