The Well-worn Path in the Wilderness
The Well-worn Path in the Wilderness
by Xenia Chan
Jeremiah 31:31-34
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
We were five minutes into the woods, less than ten minutes away from a busy street. All I could hear were the ins and outs of my breath, the soft crunching of snow beneath my feet, the blowing snow, and the sound of squirrels chattering, when, suddenly, blissful silence. Not even the whistling of the wind could be heard.
Gazing up, I saw the boughs of the evergreens, sheltering and still.
***
From October onwards, I had the worst case of writer’s block I’d ever had. I found myself at various points on the floor, staring desperately at the ceiling, grasping for words just out of reach. Books piled precariously high around me. My laptop seemed to stare jeeringly back at me, with too many tabs opened and too many articles in my “to-read” folder.
At some point, I had given up on my to-do list too.
If at the start of the pandemic there was fuel from recognizing, reckoning and revelation, I was now journeying in the wilderness, staring at a mountain where a stormy cloud perched and the ludicrous sight of dancing and falling before a statue of my own melted gold. The frenetic pace of the past had caught up to my present, and I felt the urgency to keep up. “Why couldn’t I keep up?!” was the refrain that echoed round and around until I grew dizzy enough to close my eyes.
The grating sensibilities of “normal” scrape across the wounds of our abnormal. The Israelites felt it, too.
“If only we could return to Egypt.”
“If only we could shut our eyes and hope Egypt will rescue us from the Babylonians.”
“If only we could return to our frenzied regularities, our pace of production, our maladaptive coping mechanisms—”
“Would we then not be saved? Would there not be respite?”
***
In December, I brushed off my old pair of winter boots and looked up the nearest hiking trail.
We got lost a time or two, even accidentally stepping into a thankfully mostly frozen marsh. But I could hear my own heartbeat and my body’s own ragged breathing, a sign of having spent too long stationary. I could hear the birds, and in the distance, children, laughing as they skated on the freshly iced-over lake.
Away from the known and what seemed the most tangible, away from the expected sensibilities with only my senses and sore muscles, I glimpsed in the smallest of ways the cleansing that was the wilderness wanderings.
The well-worn paths of the trail marked a way forward, and they also marked a way back. Here and there we noticed markers that had been put up—the one most helpful for us was a bright orange sash that helped us remember how to get back to where we’d come from.
There was a renewed sense of focus and clarity, of remembering what it was like when there was space in my head and my heart.
There were also a few spills and falls, and breathless laughter bubbling out of me out of sheer joy at experiencing something I hadn’t done since childhood (after checking I hadn’t accidentally sprained anything, of course).
As I looked up into the trees, it occurred to me that for the first time in a long while I was not simply a bobbing head in a Zoom cut-out. Cleared of the unnecessary tumults and agitations, I came again to myself—limited, embodied, known, and whole.
***
Amidst the evergreens in the woods, grace finds me.
Here, I hear the words of the prophet Jeremiah. In the trauma of the pandemic, the frenzy, the panic, the overwhelming, the story is not just dislocation, disembodiment, and dysfunction.
This is not the normal, or at least, not the one that the LORD has set. The exile that the Judeans were entering was not one of abandonment, but one that offered space for the opportunity for return, and to hear again the LORD’s longing for his people. The LORD equally has not abandoned us but invites us to a different way: a way that remembers the faithfulness of God and re-treads the well-worn path, looking for bright orange markers to guide our way home.
A way that is noticeable in its opening space for grace, for joy, for laughter, even amidst holding great pain.
A way that acknowledges our limits and reveals how we are known.
And a way that gets marked into our very being, that we remember whose we are and with whom we belong.
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