Ours is an uneasy age. Pandemic confusion and isolation, Facebook tribalism, rancorous political divisions and a general distrust of authority are stripping the rivets which have long held our civic life together. Institutions across all sectors are reeling, including organized religion, which has ceded its once unquestioned primacy in mediating community norms. In this current state of destabilization, we might do well to recall the words of John F. Kennedy, who once pointed out that the Chinese word for crisis, wēijī, is composed of two distinct characters, which mean “danger” and “opportunity.” A more precise translation renders wēi as “alarming precariousness,” and jī as “a crucial point when something new begins.”

What if our current disorientation is not a cataclysmic unraveling but rather, the commencement of a new gilded age of human exploration? Increasingly, large numbers of people are seeking truth and meaning not just within the great world religions but beyond the walls of churches, mosques and temples. These unconventional questers from all walks of life are embarking on profound adventures of the heart, filled with purpose and joyful curiosity. The poet Adrienne Rich captures this sense of journeying through new terrain:

The rules break like a thermometer,
quicksilver spills across the charted systems,
we’re out in a country that has no language
no laws, we’re chasing the raven and the wren
through gorges unexplored since dawn
whatever we do together is pure invention
the maps they gave us were out of date by years…
we’re driving through the desert
wondering if the water will hold out
the hallucinations turn to simple villages
the music on the radio comes clear—
neither Rosenkavalier nor Götterdämmerung
but a woman’s voice singing old songs
with new words…

–Adrienne Rich, “Poem XIII,” from The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977, 1978

As the poet reminds us, our present moment is not Götterdämmerung … an utter collapse of society … but rather, a foray into the fertile unknown, which is a favorite haunt of Creator energy. Imaginative words give us a lantern to navigate uncertainty, which is why ideas matter most during revolution. Wildhouse Publications was founded for precisely this time because out on pilgrimage roads, we need to understand each other’s stories, and be changed by them. Where are we each seeing the Divine in the wild? Where are we glimpsing the glimmerings of sacred impulse and presence, both in familiar and unexpected contexts?