The 24 Rhythms of Hearth & Hinterland: Wilderness Walking

Words on our call to be a light and presence in the darkest periods of peoples' lives

Wilderness is the space we walk when we no longer belong where we were but aren’t quite ready for what is to come.

Spiritual seasons of walking wilderness are rarely predicted. They are seldom sought. They are never comfortable. But all that discomfort aside, they are the vehicle the Creator most often uses to move us from one level of our divine dance into the next.

He led Israel through the wilderness for forty years.

He drew the prophets into the wilderness to learn how to listen.

He sent John the Baptist into the wilderness to announce the coming kingdom of God.

He even led Jesus into the wilderness after his baptism to be tempted by the Satan before his ministry.

The wilderness, scripturally speaking, is not just a place. It’s a process or refinement. A proving ground. A pilgrimage. And if we’re honest, it’s often the place where the truest parts of us get carved out from the lies we’ve been telling ourselves.

Bone-Rattling Beginnings

My own passion for this was shaped by a seminary professor telling me that she felt like God was calling me to walk among the dry bones in this world and speak life to the places and people that had been forsaken. She gave me this verse and told me like a prophet herself, that she was certain this was why I had always been drawn to shadow and discomfort.

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones… and he asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’” (Ezekiel 37:1–3)

You see, I’ve laid in that valley long before I learned to walk again. I’ve been the bones before I was the voice. I forgot what it was to see light or a smiling face. I forgot entirely how to dance.

I’ve also always had an eye for the bone piles modern life leaves behind: hollow-eyed men burnt out and at the end of themselves, tired women who have been wrung out by a world that only loves them when they’re young and beautiful, whole neighborhoods forgotten by time and policy and prayers that were never backed by presence.

I’ve walked through streets and hollows and sat in my own shadows. I felt the Spirit set me down and crushed my spirit when she said, “Preach to these bones.”

So I’m trying to live in that, and I’m encouraging you to do the same.

Not with microphones and pulpits, but with presence. With invitation. With fire pits and trail maps and prayers whispered over the broken who still don’t know they’re holy or can be holy again.

I carry Ezekiel’s question in my marrow: Can these bones live?

And my answer is always yes. Yes, they can. But I don’t know if we can get there efficiently with lectures. Not by branding campaigns or church growth models. Not by barking theology and doctrine into the wind.

The healing wind of the Creator comes to life when someone walks into the valley with them and stays long enough to see the sinews grow again.

We don’t revive people. That’s God’s work. But we do bear witness to the breath when it enters. And then we dare to dance with them again when they find their joy.

That’s the sacred work of wilderness walking.

Walking The Wild Without

There’s a reason I take those seeking council or direction into the woods when they’re facing periods of upheaval and unknowing in their lives.

The physical wilderness, whether it’s woodland, desert, or some other uncivilized region, strips away the distractions and lies we tell ourselves about who we are.

Something happens when our feet touch grass, dirt, and sand. There is something old that awakens in us when the smell of pine and life-giving decay gets into our lungs. We remember that we are both fragile and infinite at the same time, that we are a part of a creation so much bigger than ourselves, that we are uniquely created and creator.

It’s hard to stay in denial when you’re five miles from the nearest road. Nature doesn’t care about your personal brand, your inbox, or your theological hair-splitting, or your denominational background. She’s got her own doctrine. And if you get quiet long enough, you’ll hear the Holy Spirit speak through her, and she’ll give you a name.

The Celtic Christians called these quiet, holy places in the wilderness, thin places. Thin places are where the veil between heaven and earth feels worn and see-through. Where the wildness of the Creator meets the wildness of what was created. For me, the theology and experience of wilderness is a liminal kind of holiness that doesn’t fit neatly inside four walls or a cleanly organized systematic theology.

As St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne said, “Take time to be holy. Find the quiet places where the soul can breathe.”

We go into the wild places on purpose, not just for solitude, but for soul-stripping.

For rewilding.
For rewiring.
For remembering.

But, like most things in life, it is entirely possible to enter into a physical wilderness without intent. And those experiences can be valuable in their own right. But, for me, the real power comes when we invite the Creator to join us with intent as we strip away our physical comfort and invite him to do the same in our inner life as well.

Walking The Wild Within

It is one thing to walk knowingly into the wilderness of creation. It is an entirely different thing to walk unknowingly into the wilderness of your soul.

There is a type of wilderness that doesn’t begin with neatly defined trailheads and offers no trail markers along the way. These are the seasons of wilderness that we all face in our lives. The hard years. The broken seasons without summit photos or influencer-worthy shots for Instagram. They are seasons of addiction, of divorce, of grief so heavy you forget what light feels like. They are marked only by grief, doubt, and a tangible sense that you may never see light through the canopy again.

None of us are immune.

The height of every mountain vista is only possible and present by the depth of the valley that runs below.

You’ve known people in these seasons. You’ve walked through a few yourself. Maybe you’re in one right now. If so, take heart.

Wilderness seasons are not always signs of failure, and even when they are entered through our own bad choices, they remain invitations to move into something transformational. If we let them, our dark valleys of the soul can shape us in ways that mountain top success never could.

The Scriptural Case for Spiritual Wildlings

Scripture and tradition are filled with wasteland walking spiritual wildlings.

Moses wandered the desert for forty years before he led the people to a promised land he would never set foot in.

Elijah hid in the wilderness under a broom tree and begged to die until an angel fed him through the mouth of ravens before sending him back out to his calling.

Jesus, as we said, went out for forty days and came back speaking with authority no man had seen before.

And in each case, it was the wilderness that shaped them into what they needed to be for the next season of their lives. They may have entered the wilderness for a myriad of reasons, but the Creator always used the seasons to forge them into something new and stronger than they thought possible before.

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna… to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deut 8:3)

The wilderness humbles us by stripping us of our own faculties.
The wilderness teaches us hard truths not accessible to us in our successes.
The wilderness nourishes us in simple ways we may have not appreciated in comfort.

Posture of a Pilgrimage

When we say “wild walking,” we’re not talking about a one-time occurrence or even something that happens occasionally. We’re talking about a way of life. We’re talking about being a people that actively patrols the boundaries and forgotten places of our communities to walk slowly with the hurting and forgotten. Wild walking assumes a posture of availability and the tending of a hearth in the middle of shadows that the rest of civilization has perhaps forgotten about but have certainly moved on from. We build a place not for leaving, but for tending, where the lost, lonely, and left out can find warmth, safety, and a nourishing meal at their lowest moments.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the poustinia, a small cabin set apart for prayer and listening, was offered not just to hermits, but to those in grief, loss, or transition. You didn’t have to say anything profound to someone who came out of that silence. You just had to be ready with a warm cup of tea and an open heart.

St. Seraphim of Sarov once said: “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.”

That’s what wild walkers do. Spiritual wildlings carry peace and presence in the places where none of that exists natively, where people are apt to forget that hope springs eternal, where we are able to gently remind the world that on the first day, God spoke the light of life into the chaos.

We don’t have to fix people. We have to walk with them while they remember.

Community as Spiritual Wilderness Stewards

The Anabaptist stream of our faith gives us a different angle. The Anabaptists practiced a kind of community-based discipleship that didn’t just preach peace—it walked it out, even through persecution.

When one among them lost a child or was imprisoned, the others didn’t say, “Let us know if you need anything.” They didn’t send them a card or offer their “thoughts and prayers.”

They showed up. They brought bread. They did chores. They sat on front steps in the cold. They held their tongue unless it was time to pray.

There’s a kind of holy stubbornness to that. A refusal to let someone suffer alone. It’s what Deitrich Bonhoeffer meant when he said, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

Walking in the wilderness means choosing presence over performance.

Becoming A Companioning Spirit

And what people need in these seasons, and that includes ourselves, are often not platitudes or sermons. They need someone to simply walk with them through the bogs and boundaries. To sit with them silently by the fire through the night. To be present without performing. To fill spiritual space without needing to shape the space.

I think of the Emmaus road, where Jesus’ disciples walked heavy-hearted, confused, and grieving following the death of Jesus. A stranger joined them, walked with them for a while, and then asked them what was wrong.

They didn’t recognize him at first.

Imagine that, being so overcome with grief and shadow that you can’t see the light of the person you are grieving for right in front of you, that you can’t see that what you grieve for is actually cause for celebration and the opening of a new age.

Sometimes Jesus comes to us disguised as a stranger willing to walk beside us. Sometimes he sends us to be that stranger. But no matter what side of that equation we find ourselves, one thing is certain, when we invite the Spirit of the Creator to speak to us, the whisper reveals itself.

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself … Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”( Luke 24:27, 31)

The goal isn’t to be profound. The goal is to be faithful until the Holy Spirit lets them see.

Wild Love, Rooted Feet

So yes, we’ll keep taking folks on hikes and retreats.

We’ll keep gathering around the fire and telling the truth.

We’ll keep packing trail mix and ibuprofen and extra socks and telling people to leave their cotton clothing at home.

But more than that, we’ll keep walking with the ones whose wilderness can’t be seen on a topo map. The ones so deep in the unknown that there is no way of knowing when we’ll find the next water source. The ones whose marriages are breaking, whose faith is unraveling, whose addictions keep calling their name after dark.

We’ll be the kind of people who say: “I don’t have all the answers. But I’m not going anywhere.”

That’s the wild kind of love we’re after. Not quick fixes, but long obedience.

Not social niceties, but sacred shiva.

Not curated religion, but the raw gospel of Jesus with dirt on our sandals and ash under our finger nails.

As St. Brendan the Navigator prayed before launching his coracle into the wild sea:

“Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and forsake my friends for a desert of the sea? Must I go alone to a land unknown?”

Yes. For love’s sake, yes.

The Invitation

If you’re in a wilderness season, know that you don’t have to walk alone.

You are not forsaken. The manna is coming. The pillar of fire still burns by night. And the God who met Moses in the burning bush still knows your name.

If you’ve made it through your own dry season, look around. Someone near you is still in it.

Don’t rush them out. Don’t pull them forward. Just walk beside them. Carry their water. Let their tears fall without comment.

And if you’re neither here nor there, pack your bag anyway. Be ready.

I’d like to leave you with a quote from the Anglican mystic, Evelyn Underhill. “God is the only reality, and we are only real insofar as we are in his order and obey his will. Therefore, the soul’s first business is to find the way to God.”

Wilderness walking isn’t a program. It’s a calling.

Because the wild is where God does some of his best work.