This past Saturday night, while at a speaker’s club meeting, a fellow I have known for a long while (though not very deeply) commented on how he had spent 17 of the 34 years in the church we have both attended in the doghouse.  I knew what he meant–and I could feel much the same way about myself.  In many ways, though, the “wilderness” can be defined differently depending on what aspect of the wilderness one means.

For example, in quite a few ways my long residence in Central Florida has been living in the wilderness.  As a quirky violist with a love for both high culture and a concern for the mundane and ordinary, it is hard to develop a sense of community with other like-minded people.  Most of the culture where I have grown up has seemed to either consist of touring Broadway shows leaving New York City to go “out into the provinces” or be based around partying and the club scene.  It’s hard to find something that is creative and original instead of derivative.  And sadly, those few oases of quirky culture I have been able to find I am often unable to enjoy because it’s simply so difficult to get around.

In other ways I have lived in the wilderness not for geographic reasons but for cultural ones.  It’s hard for me to feel comfortable as an insider, as I have spent almost my entire life as an outsider, on the opposition, critically observing what is going on but not having the interest or experience in political wheeling and dealing and the fakery that goes on in the halls of power.  It’s a hard thing to keep up one’s nobility of character when the pulls of power and glory and office seek to influence someone to give up their integrity bit by bit to put on a good show for the audience or preserve one’s public image, just like there is a certain easy selfishness in being deliberately hard to relate to or difficult to understand because it’s easier to keep others at a distance than let them in.  Sometimes being on the outside is the easy way out because it frees one of the horrible dilemmas and questions that one has to wrestle with being both a person of integrity and a person whose life is meaningful and influential.  But if you want to make a difference you have to accept the responsibility of not only being true to yourself but being concerned enough about others to meet them halfway–or more.  That’s not an easy thing to do–to be both accessible and real.

In many ways, though, being in the wilderness has to do a lot with politics.  If you bend with every wind of politics, you can be the Vicar of Bray in any regime, if the position is all that matters.  If you have genuine principles, though, or genuine loyalty to certain people, then you are going to have to face your time in the wilderness.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  A willingness to spend time in the wilderness means that your principles and integrity are more important than the trappings of power and position–and once you learn that about yourself you become, in some ways at least, less easily corrupted by the pleasures of power and office.  Those who leave in a huff because they lose power and cannot accept exile and obscurity never develop that integrity, just as those who sabotage their chances of influence never develop that sense of responsibility and maturity in taking one’s lessons learned in the wilderness and bringing them into the community for the good of the people at large.

It is a curious thing that one finds that in nearly every biblical case of leadership that there was time spent in the wilderness.  Abraham was the father of the faithful but he was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and even out of Haran into the wilderness of Hebron and Gerar, where he wandered over land he was promised but did not own, a prince dwelling in tents.  Joseph spent years in slavery, and then undeserved years in prison, before he was made second in command of all of the Egyptians.  Mordecai spent time on the ash heap in sackcloth and ashes.  David had armies chasing after him in the wilderness, Elijah was fed by a raven, Jesus was tempted by Satan, Paul escaped the King of Arabia and fled out of the wall of Damascus in a basket.  Moses wandered around as a herder, as did Jacob, herding for his father-in-law whose house he entered as a destitute refugee escaping death.

The same is true not only of biblical leaders, but also historical ones.  George Washington honed his chops as a surveyor of wilderness lands, which led him into positions of responsibility in the French & Indian War, with its repercussions for his own life.  Abraham Lincoln grew up in one kind of frontier wilderness and then spent most of his adult life in the political wilderness until his hard-earned wisdom allowed him to be possibly the greatest president the United States has ever known.  In both cases the time spent in the wilderness gave these leaders the tools they needed to be successful leaders in difficult times, and without that time in the wilderness they would not have been the great men they were.

All of these people were called and led out into the wilderness, but none of them were called to stay there.  Their time in the wilderness was necessary for them to develop that humility, that strength of character, and then they were brought back in having been made better by the experience.  The time in the wilderness forces them to develop patience to work on God’s schedule and not their own, and they are better for it when they return into the larger community with the lessons they have learned from the lonely and desolate wilderness they endured.  Perhaps it may be the same for me too, when my time in the wilderness is through.