assignment 2

visit a place that you consider a "wilderness." It might be in the country or in the city. Either make a sound recording or take a photo. Email, including details of the location and what you experienced.









And J writes: My wilderness place is anywhere in the hilly farmland of Banks Pensisula where I grew up. As a child, when I wanted time to myself I saddled up my horse and spent hours riding over the countryside.

In doing so I was deliberately taking myself to a place of wilderness to find refreshment and quietness.

But our wilderness experiences aren't always voluntary. Sometimes we are thrust into them without warning and with a real sense of not wanting to go there. In fact, we often want to run away and hide.

At times like this we need to remember that there is nowhere we can go that God is not with us. So this means that it is safe for us to move into and through the wilderness no matter how incredibly hard and difficult it is.

As I looked at the cartoon images from days 13, 14 and 15 of 40 Lent 08 I found myself reflecting on the intensity of a wilderness experience and realised how cathartic and healing it would have been to be able to dance off some of the hurts and pain I felt, to move my body through the air in abandonment in the way of some cultures at funerals.

To shout my hurts to the wind (a metaphor for the Holy Spirit); to keep going until exhaustion set in and to come to a place where I was ready to receive the comfort offered by God who had been waiting patiently and ready to console me when I finally cried out to him.