Field Notes for the Wilderness: A Guided Journal: Practices for an Evolving Faith

By Sarah Bessey

Make the breakthrough you need to gently and creatively transform your faith, with this practical companion journal to Field Notes for the Wilderness, Sarah Bessey’s meditation on finding God in the mystery.

Field Notes for the Wilderness is a nurturing and hopeful collection of practices for the emerging generation of faith followers—the wounded, the curious, the lost, and the miraculously hopeful.
This guided journal companion to Sarah Bessey’s transformative spiritual guide walks you through practical activities, questions, and challenges following the principles for an evolving faith, including

• practicing wonder and curiosity as spiritual disciplines
• learning to mother yourself with empathy
• making space for lament and righteous rage
• finding good spiritual teachers

Take the groundbreaking concepts from Field Notes for the Wilderness and encounter additional shepherding and viable wisdom to apply them intentionally and impactfully to your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Convergent Books
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9780593593714

Sarah Bessey

Sarah Bessey is the author of the popular and critically acclaimed books, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith, Jesus Feminist, and Miracles and Other Reasonable Things. She is a sought-after speaker at churches, conferences, and universities all around the world. Sarah is also the cocurator and cohost of the annual Evolving Faith Conference and she serves as President of the Board for Heartline Ministries in Haiti. Sarah lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia, with her husband and their four children.

Book preview

Cover for Field Notes for the Wilderness: A Guided JournalBook Title, Field Notes for the Wilderness: A Guided Journal, Subtitle, Practices for an Evolving Faith, Author, Sarah Bessey, Imprint, Convergent Books

Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Bessey

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Convergent Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Convergent Books is a registered trademark and the Convergent colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

ISBN 9780593593707

Ebook ISBN 9780593593714

convergentbooks.com

Book design by Diane Hobbing, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Sarah Horgan

Cover image: Shutterstock

ep_prh_6.3_148355205_c0_r0

Contents

Introduction

How to Use This Guided Journal

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Wilderness

Chapter 2: An Evolving Faith Is Another Way Through

Chapter 3: Make Your Peace with This Truth: You Will Change

Chapter 4: Don’t Be Afraid, You Can’t Wander Away from God’s Love

Chapter 5: Cultivate Hope on Purpose

Chapter 6: Tell the Truth and Learn to Lament

Chapter 7: Notice Your Own Sacramental Life

Chapter 8: Go Slowly on Purpose

Chapter 9: Reclaim Repentance

Chapter 10: Learn to Love the World Again

Chapter 11: Nurture Your Own Belonging

Chapter 12: Look for Good Teachers

Chapter 13: Become a New Explorer on an Ancient Path

Chapter 14: Remember to Be For, Not Just Against

Chapter 15: Choose Peacemaking

Chapter 16: You Have Permission to Be Happy

Chapter 17: Now We’re Just Getting Started

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

INTRODUCTION

Dear Friend,

I’m so glad you’ve decided to embark on this evolving faith journey with intention, thoughtfulness, and reflection. It takes a lot of courage to fully meet ourselves and God in the wilderness. I bless you in this beginning.

Sometimes when we find ourselves in a faith shift, we long to return to who we were before. We miss the black-and-white thinking and the if-this-then-that bargains. We miss the illusion of control and certainty. So initially we look around for a guide or a teacher or someone to just tell us what to do. We want the steps, the formula, the way to resolve this discomfort and disorientation quickly in a satisfactory manner.

And yet that’s the very thing being untangled in us. All the mediators, scripts, and formulas are gone now. I’m sorry and you’re welcome.

In these pages, you are given room to explore and create your own map for the wilderness. It will look different from what I’ve discovered. I’m genuinely excited for you to begin to craft a vision for yourself, to honor your hopes for what is ahead, and to articulate that longing in cooperation with grace. It’s well and good for me to share about my own practices of an evolving faith, but they were all born out of my own experiences, study, relationships, communities, history, and life. Yours may, and likely will, differ. These pages will give you the space to recontextualize those practices for your own life.

In these pages, you’ll have the opportunity to think