Through the season of Lent, I find myself wondering: in the wilderness, how do we know what is the voice of truth? In answer through the lectionary, I am reminded of a time when Truth came through as streams in the desert. 

“If I just walked out there, it would kill me.” I thought out into the desert I found myself in. 

In the summer of 2020 I was (regretfully) a brand new Army tank officer. When I got to my new unit in El Paso, Texas, I was trucked hours north into a wide, dry valley to participate in weeks of what were understood to be highly important training exercises.  

These “highly important” trainings were (and are) a tremendous waste of tax dollars, and harmful to everyone involved. “Everyone” included the people called soldiers: torn from home for weeks at a time, made to work unceasingly on toxic, broken tanks and useless tactics that would never be used in any war, let alone one “worth” fighting – this dissonance was felt and expressed through harmful coping mechanisms like alcoholism and depression.  

“Everyone” also included the more permanent residents of the space: the jack rabbits and ants, thorned creosote and honey mesquite trees, the soil, the gentle air. If a tank driver found themself off-road, the tracks of the 72-ton machine destroyed in seconds what could have been decades of delicate ecosystem growth – smearing away the memory and identity of that land. 

Wasteful, self-important, and abusive, the military machine went marching along. Until one evening:

As I hurried between one command tent and another on some errand, I found myself caught under an absolute downpour. From cover, I watched as all the very important happenings in our glorified parking lot ground to a halt. In seconds, every single uncovered person, sleeping bag, and piece of equipment was soaked through. 

No one moved until the deep blue cloud, unbothered, had drifted on its course across the thirsty landscape.

And in its wake, streams had formed. Streams running into pools or out into the desert; these fed and reflected the deeper wadis further out in the desert, which had also filled with puddles and life after this mid-summer rain. The earth bloomed with petrichor, leaves urgently opened to the sky, the muted tones of the desert became a vibrant, unearthly, dripping rainbow. 

In many traditions, water is a force of connection – water is necessary for all life on this planet. I am reminded of this power of water when I read the works of Ivone Gebara, ecofeminist theologian and Sister in the Augustinian Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady. Gebara named relatedness in her book Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, which “points to the vital power of the interconnectedness among all things” (84). Relatedness means recognizing God in everything, and in the relationships between, amid, and around all these. God is relationship. 

The prophet Isaiah called for the conquered people to remember that military power, the power of death, is nothing to their God. Ours is the God of life when life seems impossible. Isaiah says:

For I will put water in the desert

and rivers in the wasteland

for my chosen people to drink,

these people whom I formed for myself

so that they might declare my praise.

God created us for God’s self, for relationship and for praise. To the desert, this rain shower was a prophetic declaration of identity in defiance of the invasion of tanks, the vibrant colors and luscious air as praise. Actually, everyone there was given a moment to breathe the sweet, clean, alive air, together: everyone was called to remember that God formed us for God’s self.

In the wilderness, we come alive and awake to our truth, this presence of God in and among us, through water, streams, petrichor, vibrant alien rainbows; through breath, through the gift of relationship. 

So, this Lent, I recall looking out into the expanse after the sun had pulled all the unused moisture back into the air, true and alive to the presence of the Holy, who causes streams to flow in the desert.

As we strive to differentiate between the spirit of wisdom and the lies of evil, I invite you to engage in the practice of calling out and naming evil, as Jesus did in the wilderness. From Liturgies from Below: Praying with People at the Ends of the World compiled by Cláudio Carvalhaes, I offer this prayer to read aloud:

Evil One

Evil One,
I see you.
I see what you’re doing.
You may think I’m dumb.
You might think I’m naive.
But I see you.
I see what you’re doing.
You make the government
lie, cheat, and steal.
You infest the government
and it does me wrong.
You make the market
run and jump fast.
You prod it this way and that
and make me chase it always.
You’re the cancer that mutates the church
into an institution of complacency–
one big viper, deaf to my cry,
that slithers away from justice.
You’re the contagion of distrust
that turns my neighbor into my enemy,
my competitor and adversary,
self-serving, greedy, thieving.
But I see you.
I see what you’re doing.
I seethe with righteous anger.
I am hot with Jeremiah’s fire.
It’s true, Evil One, that
judgement and justice are God’s.
But God’s work is done
with my hands.
I see you, Evil One.
And with God I come to make things right.
Amen.

Reflection Questions: 

1. Where do I feel or access the spirit of wisdom? What are my sources of water in the wilderness?
2. Where could I name Evil in the world? What would its Name be?
3. Which of my relationships are mutually sustaining? How might I strengthen those to be more life-giving and transformational?

I have found that The People’s Lobby (TPL) in Chicago is an organization that practices relatedness in the wilderness of political and social injustice.

Members of this grass-roots political organizing organization practice basic organizing technique of “one-on-ones,” extraordinary relational meetings between two people for the purpose of uncovering self-interest – one’s stake or need. Starting here, members can invite others into meaningful work according to their passions toward collective liberation. 

I have found that church people often shy away from the idea of self-interest, insisting that a sense of “selflessness” or “service” is more Christian: “self-interest” is too self-ish, they’ll say. 

However, Gebara’s relatedness theology is actually an argument for the spiritual practice of one-on-ones and the honest sharing of self-interest in community with others. 

Gebara often speaks against the learned disconnection of self from body, insisting instead that relationship necessitates and feeds wholeness: all beings in a relationship need to have a “self” in order for the relationship to be whole – alienation from that self, those needs, in fact, is part of the greater sin of separation. Organizer and healer adrienne maree brown also writes of these “Transformational Relationships” in their book Emergent Strategy, and we can even point to Jesus walking the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13) for biblical inspiration. 

By naming my own stories and motivations, I am actually more able to recognize – and trust – these in others. We strengthen our relationships when trusted with the gift of another person’s sacred self, too. We find ourselves sustained in the wilderness of lies and fear then, when we are held in these deep relationships with others.