Field Notes for the Wilderness
Practices for an Evolving Faith
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A nurturing and hopeful collection of practices to help an emerging generation of Christians reconnect to their faith, find inner healing, and build spiritual community—from Glennon Doyle’s “favorite faith writer” and the author of Jesus Feminist and editor of A Rhythm of Prayer
“This is the perfect guide for all those of who need to be reintroduced to a faith full of grace, mercy, and love.”—Kate Bowler, author of Good Enough
It’s hard to leave a faith that has raised us. Maybe it’s even harder to stay. But what can feel impossible is living in the tension. Living with a faith that evolves.
Sarah Bessey is an expert at faithfully stumbling forward. As a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Evolving Faith, the foremost community for progressive Christians, she has been trusted by thousands of people to pursue a reconstruction of faith centered on compassion, truth, and inclusion. Bessey has found a deeply underserved and underestimated remnant in the wilderness of Christianity who are still devoted to Jesus, deeply rooted in the Gospel, fascinated with Scripture, and committed to reimagining their faith.
Field Notes for the Wilderness guides us through multiple principles to live by for an evolving faith, including
• practicing wonder and curiosity as spiritual disciplines
• mothering ourselves with compassion and empathy
• making space for lament and righteous rage
• finding good spiritual teachers
• discovering what we are for in this life, and moving in that direction
In this groundbreaking and nurturing book, Bessey becomes a shepherd for our curiosity, giving us a table for our questions, tools to cultivate what we crave, and a blessing for what was—even as we leave it behind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bessey (Jesus Feminist), cofounder and leader of the online community Evolving Faith, provides down-to-earth guidance to those "deconstructing" their conservative Christian pasts. Contending that believers like her are "in the midst of a shift" away from an often-homophobic and purity culture-obsessed evangelicalism, which "has resulted in many of us" getting stuck in something of a theological no-man's land, Bessey recalls how her evangelical beliefs unraveled after she suffered a devastating miscarriage, began questioning "everything I thought I knew about God," and was alienated by parts of her church community. Yet out of her pain grew a faith rooted in God's love, "the truest thing in this universe." Writing that questions about one's religious beliefs can be productive ("The wilderness... is another altar of intimacy with God"), Bessey encourages readers to cultivate hope, grapple with grief, and repent for mistakes made in the name of faith, such as teaching patriarchal or non-LGBTQ-affirming theology they no longer agree with. For someone who by her own admission "doesn't have a lot of answers," Bessey is systematic in building a nuanced and logical case for a "gospel of love," and provides plenty of reassurance that the wilderness need not be "something... to fear: God already here, making a way." Readers will draw strength from these openhearted musings.
