Walking Wild
Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
February 8, 2015
Her life was falling apart. A few years before, at the tender age of 22, Cheryl had watched her mother suffer and die from cancer. She felt her family rip apart in the wake of that devastating loss—her step-father distancing himself as though they were no longer family, her siblings in conflict as they expressed their grief in divergent ways. She found herself compulsively cheating on her husband and ultimately divorcing a good man whom she loved. She dropped out of college one class shy of graduation. She began using heroin.
One day, Cheryl happened upon a book about the Pacific Coast Trail, a 2600-mile path extending from the California border with Mexico all the way through Washington State. Desperate to stop her own downward spiral, she decided to hike the Trail, or 1100 miles of it.
Cheryl Strayed chronicles her three-month sojourn along this wilderness trail in her book Wild. Her journey took place in the early 1990’s, before internet and cell phones were common. The Pacific Coast Trail is lightly traveled; hikers can spend days, or even weeks, without seeing another human being. It traverses brutally hot desert, dangerous ice fields, and everything in between.
Cheryl admits she was poorly prepared. She had never gone backpacking before; at the start of her journey, her pack weighed more than half her body weight. She could barely stand up straight. But she did it anyway—painful step by painful step, exhausting day after exhausting day.
Her journey was full of discoveries. Cheryl did the best she could to plan her trip—calculating how many miles she would walk every day, how many days between post offices where she could pick up supplies her friends had mailed, and how much food she needed in between. Other hikers she met on the trail did even more careful planning. However, none of them could stick to their plans when they learned that a huge section of the Sierras was buried under snow and ice. No one intended to take a bus past the most beautiful part of the trail. While their planning was crucial, it was even more crucial to realize they were not in control.
One day, Cheryl’s encountered a man doing research on modern-day hobos. “I’m not a hobo,” she said to him, “I’m hiking the Pacific Coast Trail.” He ignored her repeated protests and kept asking questions about her life as a hobo. In her mind, she had a plan, a purpose. What he saw was a dirty, smelly woman carrying everything she owned on her back. On the road, on the trail, all the distinctions humans made about each other fell away. Everyone was on a journey. Everyone–hobo or hiker–was vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the weather, the unpredictability of life.
Cheryl’s journey was a solitary one, an opportunity for her to dig deep and discover her own strength. The more she claimed her independence, the more she realized how much she needed other people. Her friend Lisa mailed the right packages to the right post offices at the right time. When her camp stove broke, she left the trail in search of a store—and happened upon three miners in a truck who gave her a ride, fed her dinner, and got her to the only store in miles that could help her. Another hiker helped her lighten her pack so she could stand up straight. REI mailed her new hiking books. She was on her own, and she was utterly dependent on the kindness of friends and strangers.
Cheryl was overwhelmed by the scale of what she faced. With dismay, she saw how tiny each of her steps was in relation to an 1100-mile journey. She marveled at her insignificance beside Mount Shasta, in the midst of a seemingly endless desert, looking over the edge of a cliff into a huge lake. She felt so small. She could harbor no illusions that she was the center of the universe. Ironically, it was in that experience of her smallness that she began to claim her true worth.
So many discoveries: the simultaneous importance and futility of planning; the leveling of the distinctions she was inclined to make amongst the people she met; her awakening to both her self-reliance and her dependence on others; the worth she began to claim as she acknowledged her smallness.
Cheryl’s discoveries mirror the paradoxical truths proclaimed by Isaiah. “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” God’s creation is so vast—in comparison, we are like grasshoppers. Look up at the heavenly host, stars so brilliant and so far away we see them only after their light has burned out. The same God who creates these vast balls of fire created us. The same God who names the heavenly host calls each of us by name. We are so small, Isaiah reminds us, and we are precious in God’s sight.
“Have you not known? Have you not heard?” Isaiah goes on. God is so powerful that in comparison princes and rulers are like plants that barely take root before they wither and die. In the face of God’s greatness, the power of the most powerful people on earth is fleeting. All our human plans—national priorities, alliances, plots, strategies—they are important, and they fall away in the face of so many forces beyond our control. From God’s perspective, princes, rulers, subjects, hikers—we are all hobos, vulnerable, scruffy, beloved children of God on a journey.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Isaiah offers a final truth: on your own, you can’t do it. No matter how young or in shape you are, you will fall exhausted, short of your goal. You will collapse on the trail if you rely on your own strength. Once you discover your need, once you stop and wait for God’s help, you will renew your strength. You will find strangers to help you through. You will discover something so deep within you it cannot possibly come just from you. You might fly like an eagle, you might run, or you might, with God’s help, just keep going, putting one foot in front of the other over and over again, trusting in the promise that each step matters.
I read Wild in the car on the way to Florida. When I described it to Fran, she asked me if I ever wanted to hike the Pacific Coast Trail. No way, I replied. I love to hike, but I don’t like heavy things on my back. Give me a day pack, a beautiful trail, a few chances to scramble on the rocks, and I’m happy.
I don’t have any desire to emulate Cheryl Strayed’s journey. I do long for opportunities to reawaken to those paradoxical truths Cheryl discovered, the truths proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah.
There is something so life-giving in experiences that awaken us to our smallness. It is a gift—painful and ultimately freeing—to stand in the face of such enormity and remember we are not the center of the universe. It is a gift to claim that our worth doesn’t come from how much space we take up or how important we think we are—our worth comes from God who calls us, tiny as we are, by name.
Many of us awaken to that truth in nature—swimming in the ocean, standing atop a mountain, marveling at the night sky. Some discover it through music—a symphony that opens up the universe. When we gather to worship, we proclaim God’s greatness, and our gratitude for the gift of our worth.
In the face of the vast universe, in the light of God’s creative power, the distinctions amongst human beings fall away. The capacity of a CEO to affect the well-being of thousands of employees is all too real—and it is not absolute. The power of a lobbyist, a senator, a terrorist—real and also fleeting, just like ours. In the end, we all join the hobo on the plodding journey through life’s uncertainties. We dare not be naïve about the realities of power differentials in our world; we can proclaim that they are nothing compared to the power of God’s creative spirit, the power of God’s love. What changes in your life when you refuse to accept our human-made distinctions as absolute? What is it you need to do to open yourself to awe—to the twin truths of your smallness and your worth?
The journey–the pathway toward healing, the quest to make our world a more just and loving place—is arduous. It takes us through desert that parches our throats and saps our energy. It leads us into snow squalls that confound our sense of direction, onto ice fields that leave us struggling to keep our footing. If we think we can make it on our own, we will collapse by the side of the trail. If we dare to acknowledge we need help, if we wait on God in prayer, we will renew our strength. We will awaken to friends and strangers who will mail us boxes and lighten our load, who will strategize and advise and walk beside us. We will discover holy strength from within and around us. We will mount up with wings like eagles, we will run, we will walk. We will journey into our own healing; we will make the world a better place.
Remember: We are so small, and we are so beloved. The people and forces that seem hugely powerful are nothing compared to the power of God’s love. With God’s help, we can walk this road toward healing, this journey toward a world transformed. Let us walk together. Amen.