The Journey of Becoming...

Finding home after the long journey out A reflection on identity, temptation, and the search for belonging 7 min read I'm currently reading a novel by Australian author Chris Hammer. He writes Australian noir — regional stories set within a place, a community, stories about people and life, exploring who we are, usually held together by some form of mystery. This one, The Tilt, is set in rural Australia down near the Murray River on the New South Wales side. The main character is Nell Buchanan, a young homicide detective working in regional New South Wales. She's drawn down as part of a team to investigate two skeletons found in a creek bed. They're murders separated by many years, but the stories are tied together through family and people. This is her home, and her story is connected into it. As she's investigating the background of one of these men, she's given a map to a shack in the midst of the forest around the Murray. This shack was owned by a man who died several years earlier. He'd gone off grid, disappeared around the time of this fellow's murder. Maybe there are some clues in his shack. She goes deep into the forest and finds her way. But at the end, walking the last part of the track, she realizes the shack is on an island. When the wet is up, when the creek is up, it's surrounded by water and she can't get across. She's about to turn back when she sees a canoe coming around the bend through the trees. It stops and beaches near her. Out steps a woman older than Nell, late 60s. Her name is Willow Jones. She introduces herself. Nell introduces herself. Willow knows Nell's family and many of the people. She's grown up in this shack. In fact, the man was her father, and so this has been her home — except she's gone off and explored the world and done her thing. They get in the canoe. Willow says, "Come and have a look at the shack." They go to the island and get out. She shows Nell around. Two simple rooms, very rustic, simple furniture. There's a bookshelf with books and art supplies and canvases. She's an artist. There's a solar cell and a battery that gives a little bit of power for lighting and boiling the kettle. A gas cooker in the corner. Out the back, a little garden and a little greenhouse for other plants and vegetables. A setting where they can sit and look out across the creek and into the forest. Nell sits and is filled with the peace and the wonder and the beauty of this place. The sounds of birds and wildlife and creatures. There's something about it that is just beautiful. Then Willow shares her story. Her story of self-discovery. Of going out into the world, rebelling against her father and this simple life. Exploring the world, experiencing life, trying anything and everything. Coming back and going out and coming back. Finally coming back to look after her father as he's dying. Going out again. Then returning for good. This is her home. She's found her place. She belongs. As she talks and as Nell looks out, there's a simplicity, a contentment, a peace about Willow that touches something deep in Nell. The yearning in her own life for identity and meaning and a place to belong. Nell, like all of us, is on this journey of life, discovering who she is amidst all the expectations and the noises of family and friends and colleagues and society and the media. All the pressures to become and to be what she might be. She's part of the police force with its politics and its male domination, with its questions and ambition and drive and fighting and struggling and striving. Who is she? Where does she belong? What's life about? That's part of her journey and her story. And in this encounter with Willow, something touches her. Something draws her about this simplicity and this beauty and contentment. That is our story. That is the story of each of us. Some people, like Willow, find that place of contentment, home. They return home after the journey outwards and they find that place. But many don't. The garden and the wilderness This week in the stories I've read from the scriptures, we have stories of temptation. The story in the book of origins of the Jewish scriptures, the early writings of being and origin. Man and woman as they are in this garden, this paradise. Told to eat of any of the fruit except for that one tree in the middle — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This symbolic tree with its fruit that's luscious and seductive. This personification of temptation, the serpent, comes to them and says, "Why won't you eat that fruit? Look at it. Look at it." And they eat. Their eyes are open to see what they couldn't see before. Innocence has left them. It's a story of growing up, of leaving adolescence and becoming adult, of time beginning when pain and reality and life begin. We're drawn into this deeper, darker place of life with its joy, but also its pain and its struggle. The garden is no longer the garden of paradise. It's the harsh place of life. We're struggling to understand who we are and where we belong and what life is about. That's also the story that Matthew tells. Jesus' own story of this awareness, this opening, this becoming. He's baptized in the Jordan by John. As he comes up, the spirit descends on him. A voice says, "You are my son with whom I'm pleased, my beloved." That's the story before the story today. After that, he's taken into the wilderness. A wilderness very different from Willow's wilderness in the forest around the Murray. The Judean wilderness of desert. Equally beautiful and wondrous in its own way with creatures and wildlife, solitude and silence. The sounds of the world, not the sounds of people and humanity. As he fasts and prays and contemplates and meditates, perhaps on this sense of identity — who is he? What does it mean to be this child of God? What does it mean to find his being, his sense of who he is, in God? What does it mean to trust in this way? When the fasting and the praying are over, this personification of temptation named Satan, the tempting one, comes. We're given three temptations. He's hungry. "You're hungry. Turn these stones into bread. If you really are this child of God, if that's who you are, you can do it. Be relevant, spectacular. Do something. Do something for yourself. Take control." The second one — he's taken to the top of a temple. "Throw yourself down. For surely if you are who you think you are, God will send angels to save you. Won't let you die or be hurt." The third temptation is to see the kingdoms of the world spread out. "If you bow down and worship me, all of these will be yours. You will have power and authority over all these things. People will look up to you. You'll be famous, well known. You'll have power and control. Go for it." To each of these temptations, Jesus responds with words of his scriptures. Words that come from the time when his people were wandering in that wilderness, led out of Egypt by Moses, wandering in the wilderness on their way to the promised land. The promised land that we all seek. The pot of gold perhaps at the end of the rainbow for many. But the promised land we're on the journey towards. As they grumble and whinge and whine and complain, they're given these words. "Humans don't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." The words of creativity and life and beauty and wonder and of identity. "Don't put the Lord your God to the test." Trust. Have faith. Believe. A bit like in the 12-step program where, having recognized we can't save ourselves and do it alone, we trust in the higher power. This power that comes from beyond. This strength of the one beyond everything. Presence beyond everything that comes to us. And the third one — "Don't bow down and worship these other gods." Gods that can't deliver. "But give yourself into this life of the one true God who is the love and life at the heart of everything. Trust in this one and you will find life." And that's what Jesus does. This is the beginning for him. This journey of letting go of the seductions and the temptations and the lures of the world around that would push him into belief systems and ideologies or taking control for himself. I'm reminded of the words of James Finley, a psychotherapist and a student of the great spiritual teacher and guide Thomas Merton. He says, "We're afraid to lose the control we think we have over the life we think we're living." We're afraid to lose control. The control we think we have over the life we think we're living. In this, Jesus lets go of this temptation to be in control, to be relevant or spectacular, to be powerful, to follow the ways of wealth or fame or whatever it is, power. And to trust in God. To recognize that he is who he is in God. Who am I? At the heart of these stories is the story of identity. Who am I? What is my life? What is life about? How can I live more truly, deeply, and fully? How can I find that contentment and fulfillment of being home, of being in the place where I belong, of living the life that is the gift to me? That's what Willow had found. That's what Nell was looking for, as we all are. That's what man and woman in the garden were lured away from, and then the journey is backwards to find where home is. This is the way of Jesus who finds his identity as a child of God. Out of that flows everything else. He doesn't have to prove himself. He doesn't have to chase the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He doesn't have to be lured and seduced by the words and seductions of the world around us seeking to make us into something else. He's free to be who he is. A child of God. Loved and loving. How about you and I? Based on a sermon exploring Genesis 3, Matthew 4:1-11, and the search for identity