Looking Back. Looking Ahead.
The future of Words in the Wild
Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19
We humans have an amazing capacity to orient our attention in multiple dimensions: the past, the present, and the future. Each of us, through nurture, nature, and/or trauma, tend toward one chronos orientation, even as we meander through all three in any given day of finding keys, jotting grocery lists, scheduling doctor appointments, cleaning toilets, and planning birthday parties.
For me, the time orientation has often been the past. The Enneagram has been an imperfect, but helpful framework in this regard, teasing out this feature of how my mind often travels through the world: remembering the past, learning from history, feeling sentimental, wistful, romantic, or meloncholic. It doesn’t take much effort for me to feel grief at loss of what once was. A word like saudade, in the Portuguese language, gets at this: a profound nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something.
To be clear, I like this part of me. It’s not something I am embarassed of or wish to erase. It is part of how I show up in the world, how I love people, and how I steward the faith I carry.
But something is shifting, or has shifted.
Over the past two years while writing at Words in the Wild, as I’ve been writing about the search for “the Real” in the wild in-betweens and liminal interstices of life, the background theater of my life has been a drama of disorientation. This is not the post to go into details, but many of you will be aware of what I describe.
As Walter Brueggeman suggests, in the journey of life, both in the micro and macro, we go through cycles of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Of course, these are not neat and tidy stages; there are overlaps and messy middles, but you get the point.
In this wilderness season of disorientation, amidst loss and confusion, understandably, I white nuckled my grip on the past. I want that memory to still be my tangible reality now. I want that photo on the wall to be the picture of today, tomorrow, next year. I want my dreams of the past and the future to walk hand in hand.
Like the women standing there on the hill called The Skull, souls heavy with sorrow under darkened, stormy skies as the stood before their crucified Rabbi-Messiah, I just couldn’t see any resurrection beyond the stench of death in front of me.
Don’t cling to the past, the ancient Hebrew prophet-poet Isaiah wrote. Open your eyes, God is about do something new. Streams in the wasteland. Springs in the desert.
He’s speaking poetically, of course. It’s not a mandate to erase the past. There was, and is, a wise, beautiful, and nimble way to inhabit the past, the heritage, the great Myth of the cosmos breathed out by YHWH. But, sometimes, the past can be a rigid form of self-protection, layers of stone around ourselves that blinds us to a new way opening up before us.
This new way often comes to us through circumstances not of our choosing.
Isaiah wrote his words to Israel centuries before Jesus of Nazareth would walk the earth and offer himself as Living Water, a wellspring that never runs dry, to a trauma-riddled woman from Samaria, no doubt betrayed, abused, and abandoned by the five men named in her story. In the desert of her relational despair, Jesus became the oasis of freedom. This strange, wandering healer-prophet didn’t match her imaginings of the foretold liberator.
But, something new was happening.
There was some new wine coming and that new wine needed a new wineskin.
If you are new to Words in the Wild—or have a past orientation to time!—here’s a rundown of the top ten most-read posts, starting with the most viewed.
“Clean” (February 27, 2026)
“Wayfinding with Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (October 22, 2024)
“On the Un-Separating of Church & State” (January 29, 2025)
“A Writer Cannot Not Write” (July 25, 2025)
“Unmasking the Soul of a Nation” (March 12, 2025)
“With Wide-Eyed Wonder” (February 14, 2025)
“America and the Election, Part 1” (November 2, 2024)
“Make All Things New” (November 10, 2025)
“Grief & Love” (September 10, 2025)
“And Here We Are” (December 1, 2025)
Among the streams in the wasteland over the past few years, one oasis I found was poetry. I’ve read more poetry and written more poetry over the past few years than the rest of my years combined.
I’ve shared a few of those poems here, and have written about some of the poets who’ve inspired me. Poets like Hopkins, Herbert, Oliver, Berry, and so many more.
As I enter, what I believe is a period of reorientation, where something new is happening, I am happy to share that I am working on publishing a collection of the poems I’ve written during this period.
The book, titled All Things, will be organized into three sections:
Earth & Skies
Divinity & Humanity
Love & Grief
In this collection, you will find poems rooted in the soil and growing with the trees. You will find narrative poems kindling memory of love, childhood, and family. You’ll find poems searching out spiritual and existential questions. You’ll find poems of adoration and wonder. You’ll find poems walking through the valley of grief. You’ll find haiku.
As an untrained, novice poet, publishing this collection of poems will be an act of courage and hope. If nothing else, I want to publish it as an artifact for my children.
I’d be grateful if you pick up a copy when it is released. It is my prayer that you will find poem that becomes a friend to you, a poem that even offers a stream for any wilderness or wasteland you find yourself within.
The title of the book, All Things, may sound vague or general, but it is a very intentional choice. You’ll just have to read to find out.
As always, thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing.
Shalom to you,
Jonathan