Wilderness.

"...make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty."

Letter from Chris McCandless
John Krakauer – Into the Wild.

So for a little more than a week now I’ve begun making London my home. Amidst the searching for homes, meetings, disorientation, and all the other things that naturally are a part of the process of immigrating. I have been enamored by how deep in the throes of this wild city I’ve been thrown. Prior to leaving the states I coincidentally was provided a few tidbits of adventurer’s morale, one of which came from a letter written by Chris McCandless as presented in the book Into the Wild (quoted above). If you know the story you might think following the spirit of such a wayfarer might be misguided, but despite the ultimate detriment of his journey, McCandless had the right heart towards the wild spaces of this life, however poorly they manifested.

If you don’t know the story check it out here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

Over the past few days, the wildness of this city has been remarkable to take in. My life in Texas was far from ordinary, and probably to the naked eye spontaneous and uncalculated, but if I have learned much in these first days it is how calculated and tame my life used to be. Over the course of a decade in the south, I had slowly concocted a network of security, comfort, and seamless execution of my life and my desires. And as my comfort and my processes became more refined, the deeper entrenched I became; it is this very type of attachment that inhibits us all too often, it is the comfort the predictability that is hard to let go of. At the end of the day, McCandless’s undoing was not his desire to break free from the soul constraining process of routine, but rather it was his pursuit of liberation through destitution and isolation.

All this to say, London for me is as untamed and wild, a place which over the course of no more than 7 days time has managed to disrupt a decade of patterns and predictability. It has been amazing to see what such a short stretch of time can do to see the world as a vastly different place.

As I’ve begun to process these thoughts, I was sitting in the UK immigration office, and fittingly this place couldn’t be riper with God’s great creation. Though frustrating as it may be, the scents of this diverse place, and the sounds of crying (read, screaming) children, this is nature, wild and untamed. Amidst the cold and sterile rows of the blue painted metal benches, sit dozens of warm bodies blooming with life, wild, and of themselves wilderness. The irony is that this simple ballet of lifeless processes, forms, stamps, and fees has for itself generated quite a remarkable collection of life.

I’m very quickly learning that the illusion of control in my life has been quickly dispelled by life here in London, for there is no amount of planning, calculation, will, effort, or resources that can prevent the circumstances of this city from having their way with you. Much of the unpredictability and I love about the natural wilderness I am learning to love about the urban wilderness to which I have been thrust. The sheer size of this city is beyond the grasps of my control, and so I’m learning to surrender all the more each day, and with this has come a sense of appreciation and enjoyment that I might not be able to possess. Each day an infinitely new adventure…

As I’ve been thumbing the pages of the Krakauer chronicle of McCandless’s story I’ve come to understand Alexander “Supertramp” (Chris McCandlesses’s self adopted moniker) as a kindered spirit in some respects, and in the bit’s and pieces that were gathered in his wake, I’ve been left to consider the wilderness I am in, and the wilderness I am invited to explore as I begin this chapter of my life.

I do believe that nature, and isolation can radically change our perspective on the modern world, yet only to the extent that we allow our the perspective that the natural wild provides to drive us to engage the civilized wilderness in which we must live. Being alone in the natural spaces of creation does a great wonder of right sizing our perspective on where we fit, but that perspective is useless if it does implore us to engage humanity on Christ’s behalf. Chris McCandless’s plight was not a pursuit of wilderness, but the confusion of wilderness and solitude with isolation and desolation.

Christ in fact began his ministry in natural wilderness for 40 days, and then from there, he went to engage the wilderness of humanity. He did it through wild love, untamed, unbridled…and it is just about the only thing that could rescue and redeem the wild and deep depravity that the modern heart/mind might find. And thus the true wilderness is humanity, and to go into the wild we mustn’t withdraw carelessly into the barren caverns of isolation, but we must dive further still into the human heart, into the wild places of our souls that long so deeply to be loved and to know love as true in this dangerous world.

I am now more than ever convinced that the world will only be changed by wild radical love. It is how Christ loves us, it was not without cost, it was not safe. But it was the only thing that could in a single breath bind us to something great and set us free, to make us wild as we were intended to be.

I do so deeply hope that this place, this great wilderness, will not let my heart grow bitter or cold in the slightest. It seems that the interferences of this wild place, the inconveniences, the natural elements of humanity in proximity to itself, and the disruption and interference on our daily course could pose as daunting for me, but yet I’m learning to surrender my clock work agenda to be able to deal with the incalculable disturbances to my “plans”. If you’ve ever swum in a flowing river, you most certainly found that the easiest and safest way to navigate a river’s rapids is not to fight against the current, but rather to use the river’s strength as your own and to go with the flow. But rather I hope I find instead of bitterness and frustration, opportunities each day to love and live wildly and radically.

I’m learning much, to embrace this uncalculated wilderness as my home. I’m learning to trust that my daily will be provided. To patiently, yet tactfully engage with the chaos that each day may bring.

I leave you with a few lines from one of my favorite poems by Robert Service; who wrote much about the Alaskan Wilderness that did McCandless in. Service, a banker by trade, became one of the many men captivated by the great white northern wilderness of the Yukon territory…I love his presentation of the two wildernesses…both cold, both hard, both dangerous…but only one needs redeeming.

“I'm scared of it all, God's truth! so I am;
It's too big and brutal for me.
My nerve's on the raw and I don't give a damn
For all the "hoorah" that I see.
I'm pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again --
I'm scared of the terrible town.

I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains;
My rivers that flash into foam;
My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns;
My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome.
My forests packed full of mysterious gloom,
My ice-fields agrind and aglare:
The city is deadfalled with danger and doom --
I know that I'm safer up there.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I'm lonesome -- I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole. “

- Robert Service; I’m Scared of it all – Full version here Here

Its also to important to note, that after nearly 100 days alone in the wild, McCandless ventured to leave his wilderness home and go back to life in human civiliazation realizing, that "happiness isn't real unless its shared"

Getting Wild,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com