Five Questions With: AUTHOR, Sarah Bessey
In her new book, "Field Notes for the Wilderness," Sarah Bessey provides readers a companion for a faith constantly in motion, growth, and evolution.
Welcome to my series, “Five Questions With,” where I introduce you to people from various industries and walks of life by asking them five questions about their work. This series is free for all readers.
The month of April will be, Five Questions With: AUTHORS.
I hope you enjoy getting to know these incredible authors, and please consider supporting them by checking out their books.
“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.”
So starts the description for Sarah Bessey’s latest book, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith.
Anyone who’s been around the conversation or experience of leaving your evangelical roots knows the name and work of Sarah Bessey.
She has been, truly, one of the leading voices helping thousands of us find our way to something… else. A faith more open, more kind, more equitable and charitable—as can be seen by the incredible community and conferences she helps to lead, run, and shepherd called Evolving Faith.
I have massive respect and admiration for Sarah. While we’ve never met (though the mutual friends list is extensive), through her writing (both here on Substack; and through her many incredible books such as Jesus Feminist and A Rhythm of Prayer) I feel like I semi kinda know her.
And she’s awesome.
Okay, enough buttering of bread… that’s not why you’re here.
Once again I present to you, FIVE QUESTIONS With…
Sarah Bessey.
Enjoy.
1. If someone reads Field Notes, how might they be different as a result?
I suppose I've been writing and leading in this lane of "evolving faith" for a long time, at least in "Internet time." A lot has changed for so many of us and in our communal landscapes. For this book, I wanted to write down all of the practices and postures and even prayers that have served me well during my own seasons of a faith shift.
I envisioned you all sitting down with me at our metaphorical table in the wilderness, bringing your stories and your experiences, your hurts and your hopes with you: what would I want to say to you?
I wanted to create something nourishing and helpful that you could tuck into your own back pocket for the rest of the journey. I hoped it would be an eventually-dog-eared and marked-up book that you could carefully pass to your friends who are embarking on the wilderness now. (Maybe I even wanted this to be the companion in the wilderness that I wished I would have had.)
And so this work was born, not out of a sense of "expertise" on the subject (because God knows that would be hilarious in an attempt) but rather to be resolutely alongside of you and anyone else who finds themselves at that scary threshold to the wilderness, wondering "What NOW?!"
Basically, I gathered up everything I've learned the hard way in these pages.
I take your trust very seriously and it's my genuine hope that this book brings freedom, clarity, companionship, goodness, and even a bit of hope to you at this moment in time.
Field Notes for the Wilderness guides you 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 rather than settling for simply being “against” things
and so much more.
2. How do (some? all?) of the practices in this book differ from the kinds of spiritual practices you engaged in prior to the kind of faith evolution you’ve experienced over the past decade or so?
That’s a great question. I actually really love the word “practices” - in lieu of spiritual disciplines. I think I burned out on ‘spiritual disciplines’ when I was a very earnest charismatic young person. The phrase felt like it transformed into one of shame at worst, a to-do list at best.
But the word “practices” implies that it’s something we haven’t mastered, we’re still learning, and we’re rehearsing it over and over. It makes room for improvisation and mistakes, evolution and adaption to me.
So in my old life, I would have maybe talked about things like ‘quiet time’ or Bible reading plans. Now, with these practices, I wanted them to be able to serve anyone, no matter where they are at or where they may go after we spend time together in these pages.
Having practices like cultivating hope or loving things in particular, or even just looking for good teachers are things that I hope serve us, no matter how we enter the book or leave it.
I also wanted to be really clear that these are my own practices that I developed over the years. Some of them will work for you, others might not. I think that’s one of the reasons why I really loved being able to create a guided journal alongside of the book because it allows folks to recontextualize my practices for their own lives, sure, but also to develop and bless their own that may emerge in the wilderness, too.
3. What’s one of the most often misunderstood aspects of those of us experiencing the kind of evolving faith you write about?
Woof, how long do we have, eh?
The first one that jumps to mind is that we are often told that only those of us who are ‘faithless’ or weren’t true Christians end up here in the wilderness, that if you were really a true believer you wouldn’t have found yourself here or that this is all an elaborate scheme to justify “sinful behavior.”
In my research and experience, nothing could be further from the truth.
As poet Christian Wiman writes,
“Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.”
Most of us end up in that wilderness of faith shift or deconstruction because we were the true believer kids. We were the ones who took it seriously.
In my experience, and in the experience of walking alongside many others wandering out here, I can say with some measure of authority (I hope!) that we’re usually in a very normal, very healthy stage of faith, and we’re likely exactly where we’re supposed to be right now.
I deeply believe the wilderness is an invitation from the Holy Spirit: a gorgeous, rowdy invitation to the life you never dreamed possible, a more welcoming sort of party with a few quiet corners for good conversation. It seems to me that we’re desperate for some gentleness, compassion, wide-open space, and kindness.
In the book, I share something that my dad told me when I was at the beginning stages of my own deconstruction and has become the hallmark of my work in this arena, particularly with Evolving Faith. He told me something along the lines of this: “I’m not afraid for you. If you’re honestly seeking God, I believe you will find what you’re looking for, even if it looks different than what I have found.”
I still remember the whooshing exhale my relieved soul experienced at his words, like the lifting of a burden that wasn’t mine to carry anyway. It was permission to evolve, and it was Love. It was a reminder of the truth that there are so many ways to love and know God; he was making room for me to discover the wideness in God’s mercy.
And so, all these years later, I have adopted that as my own approach to those who are on a winding path of spiritual growth and formation—be not afraid.
I’m not afraid for those who are wondering and wandering.
I’m not afraid for them or of them.
I still believe the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, convinced that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
4. How did it feel writing this book?
Pretty good? Ha!
I do feel a very strong duty of care towards the folks who read it. I know that seems a bit precious or self-serious but for better or worse, it’s true. I’m aware of how many people are pearl-clutching over those of us who deconstruct. I'm aware of the fear-mongering and the anger and panic. I’m aware of the fear that surrounds us.
There are a lot of folks who talk about us; I wanted this to be exactly for us.
I wanted to spare the people who read it a few of the ditches I’ve fallen into and maybe even help them spot the beauty I’ve learned to love or the joys along this path here in the wilderness.
Well, that’s the dream anyway.
That’s a big reason why it’s set up as letters, even. I wanted readers to feel like it was being written specifically for them, not about them.
5. You’ve been a pioneer in this space for quite some time now. How do you feel about your work now compared to ten years ago when your first book (Jesus Feminist) came out?
It’s a funny thing to move from being one of the “young new kids” on the block to being the seasoned older sister to folks, for sure!
I’m forty-five now and I’ve been writing in public for more than twenty years this year, if you can believe it (my first blog started in 2004). There has been a lot of change in this space over those years. Even in just the ten years since my first book came out, there has been tremendous change in the Church, in our respective countries and communities.
I’m proud of my work but I think it also stands as a testimony of evolution. There are a lot of things in Jesus Feminist, for instance, that I’d write differently or add or subtract. I even wrote an essay about the book’s ten year anniversary this past fall reflecting on some of those very things.
As I shared there,
“Books can bear witness to a stage of our lives, a moment in time, when we were growing, changing, creating, trying, and loving. And any gaps that exist in my work, then and now, have hopefully invited us all into conversations with other, wiser, stronger leaders who keep taking us “further up and further in” to God’s goodness. Publishing can be a humbling, risky, in-print reminder of the journey us writers are also on.”
This has been a good gut-check for me when I’m writing now: what are the things I’m writing or preaching about now that I’ll have to sheepishly re-think in the future?
I’m under no illusions. I’m still evolving. I hope I always do! If I think all of the exact same things at 65 that I do now at 45, then I’ll be missing some big invitations from the Spirit, I think. It makes publishing risky, for sure, but I’d rather keep writing from the middle of my life and staying curious within community than settle in with certainty.
I hope we all keep evolving as we keep travelling further into the goodness and grace of God.