Where the wild things are

In the Lenten issue of Trinity News from Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street, the Rev. Dr. Earl Kooperkamp, Rector of St. Mary's Church, NYC writes,

Wilderness is not anything I normally encounter. I live in a vest city, and the concrete keeps the wilderness at bay. Or so it seems. Even in the midst of the constant motions of people going to and fro, the wilderness can be closer than I might care to admit. The solitude and isolation of even a metropolis as great New York City can mean that wilderness might lurk around any corner, or may be found in the lives of people I meet every day.

The very cord conjures up images of that childhood classic, Where the Wild Things Are. And like Max, the child in the book who visits the wilderness and the beast every night in his room, I am both terrified and exhilarated in my terror of that wild side. Those childhood fears of the dark, scary places have a lasting power....

A sojourn in the wilderness means confronting ourselves, and perhaps at the core, confronting our fears. We go, like Max, to where the wild things that “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws” are. But we go into the wilderness in Lent as Christians knowing the most frequent command in the entire Bible is “Fear not.” Those words are spoken by God to Abraham as he starts off on the journey that leads him so far from his home. Confronting our fears, living into that commandment, “Do not be afraid” transforms us with a radical openness, a place in which God’s love can make a dwelling.

Even Max, made king of the wild things, became lonely after all the wild rumpus. As the story concludes, he “wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.” Our Lenten wilderness finally concludes on that small mount outside the city walls, at the foot of the cross, where we find a love that loves us best of all.

The full text of the Trinity News article is online here: Where the Wild Things Are.