Field Notes for the Wilderness Quotes

“You are deeply loved and God is not worried about you. You can rest and abide in that Love even as you throw a few things into the fire.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Cultivating hope isn’t an empty or naïve thing for you anymore. You need to fight for it, you have to contend for it. Because you’ve suffered and you’ve grieved. You’ve had your certainties blown to hell, and it turned out that God was the One who lit the match.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“The wilderness is home to God, even the wilderness inside you. Your life is already a place where God is quite at home.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“I discovered that the wilderness isn’t a problem to be solved, it is another altar of intimacy with God.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“To me, an evolving faith … has proven to be about the questions, the curiosity, and the ongoing reckoning of a robust, honest faith. An evolving faith brings the new ideas and ancient paths together. It’s about rebuilding and reimagining a faith that works not only for ourselves but for the whole messy, wide, beautiful world. For me, this has proven to be deeply centered in the Good News of Jesus ... An evolving faith is a resilient and stubborn form of faithfulness that is well acquainted with the presence of God in our loneliest places and deepest questions ... Anyone who gets to the end of their life with the exact same beliefs and opinions they had at the beginning is doing it wrong. Because if we don’t change and evolve over our lifetime, then I have to wonder if we’re paying attention to the invitation of the Holy Spirit that is your life.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“We are often discipled in hiding or suppressing anger, rather than feeling it, so when the full force of our anger manifests, yes, it is scary for us and those around us, but that’s only because we haven’t learned the strength and healing that’s possible on the other side of our anger. As author Glennon Doyle writes, “Anger delivers our boundaries to us.”[4]”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Turning away is a good start, but it isn’t going to sustain us over the long haul. Naming what you are turning toward—especially ordinary, good, lovely, nourishing things—is a rebellion against the broken story itself.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Just as metanoia shows us to turn away from sin and toward love, now we turn away from those things we’re against and toward the hopeful future we imagine. In a purposeful movement, we turn away from the practices or beliefs or habits that consume us, threaten us, reduce us, and distract us. And then we turn toward what brings flourishing, goodness, and truth to us. Turn away, yes, and turn toward. Not this, and so this. It’s a form of restoration. What we turn toward should reorient us to the world in a posture of love, joy, and service. It can be a simple rhythm to begin with. Turning away from spaces in social media that have become toxic for you and turning toward inviting a lonely neighbor over for tea. Turning away from voices that bring shame and guilt to you or others and turning toward voices that preach freedom and wholeness and love. Or turning away from shrinking back and shutting up to keep the peace; turning toward owning your voice, your body, your experiences with boldness. Turning away from gossip and petty nitpicking; turning toward language of blessing. Turning away from a toxic relationship; turning toward developing healthy boundaries. Turning away from excuses and justifications; turning toward accountability.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Just as metanoia shows us to turn away from sin and toward love, now we turn away from those things we’re against and toward the hopeful future we imagine. In a purposeful movement, we turn away from the practices or beliefs or habits that consume us, threaten us, reduce us, and distract us. And then we turn toward what brings flourishing, goodness, and truth to us. Turn away, yes, and turn toward. Not this, and so this. It’s a form of restoration. What we turn toward should reorient us to the world in a posture of love, joy, and service. It can be a simple rhythm to begin with. Turning away from spaces in social media that have become toxic for you and turning toward inviting a lonely neighbor over for tea. Turning away from voices that bring shame and guilt to you or others and turning toward voices that preach freedom and wholeness and love. Or turning away from shrinking back and shutting up to keep the peace; turning toward owning your voice, your body, your experiences with boldness. Turning away from gossip and petty nitpicking; turning toward language of blessing.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“You don’t have to make fun of everything you used to love, and you certainly don’t need to despise it. Handle your old ways with gentleness. You might find something to love here eventually. Even if you do end up leaving behind all of what you once practiced, you can spare a bit of compassion for the version of you who loved those things and needed them. Perhaps you can offer some kindness to the ones who still love them, too.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Look for what is bringing life and flourishing into the world. In short, look at the fruit. If the fruit of a movement or a community or a leader is more hatred, more division, less compassion, especially for those who aren’t at the center of the conversation in politics and history and government, church and social services and economics, then we need to stop consuming or passing around that bad fruit.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“The first thing we need to learn in the wilderness is generous gentleness. Toward ourselves. Toward the old versions of ourselves. Toward those around us. Toward the universe eventually. Toward the holy work of our own life. The wilderness isn’t your place for striving, not really.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“But when what you’re going through is terribly depressing, it makes sense to be depressed. You are having an appropriate response to something sad or traumatic.[*2] Your sadness is bearing witness to the depth of your love.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Our grief is as individual as our lives.”[3] You’re not meant to hit each stage and check the experience off a list; you’re charting a new map of your life by living into it.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Life may feel like that for you. You’re disoriented because everything you knew has been destroyed or it’s upside down and flooded. The map is obsolete and you need a new one.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“If we don’t deal with our trauma or our sadness or our anger, it begins to deal with us. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our feelings, they have a habit of peeking around the corners of our lives, breaking in at unexpected moments. Trauma or disruption or betrayal manifests differently for each of us—rage, anger, self-harm, self-neglect, frenzy, numbing, posturing, spiritual bypassing…Or in that particular instance, nightmares.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“And yet religion in our modern era seems mostly concerned with systematizing theology, charting time lines, answering questions, and making God small and knowable. We have created a God we can regulate, a faith that fits not the little box we've constructed and mislabeled "Abundant Life." So much of our study of theology has become just a way to stop conversation rather than open it up.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Look at your bookshelves, your podcasts, your music, your teachers, your friendships, your understanding of history. Are they pretty much the same? They usually are. And that’s not to discount the goodness you may have found there—although you have likely also encountered a lot of garbage. It’s simply to say that you are invited into something new now.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“let alone the capacity to fold the amounts of laundry a family of six can produce. Fix it, Jesus.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“Hello to all those who deeply regret their short-term mission trips;”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

“I believe the wilderness is an invitation from the Holy Spirit, a gorgeous, rowdy invitation to the life you never dreamed possible, a more welcoming sort of party with a few quiet corners for good conversation. It seems to me that we’re desperate for some gentleness, compassion, wide-open space, and kindness.”
― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith