The Wilderness

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz

In the wild there is no distinction between life and death. There are no enemies in the soil beneath a forest. All is One, giving and receiving. The world is unendingly patient. Nothing lives forever, so that All may live forever. 

Where man attempts to tame the wilderness, death grows like a shadow. His steps are rabid, hurried. When will time steal all that I have gained? What will they say of me when my body is in the ground? My flesh will not rot in this sterile grave; surely I will never die. There are footsteps always behind him. Nightfall is always approaching too soon. 

How can a man feed his soul and the souls of his children in society, and how can he feed their stomachs in the wild? Is there anything left untouched by the gold of fools? Does any wilderness remain unowned, undefiled, on this earth? 

Oh little sapling, child of the Universe, full of doubt and wonder: trust the soil from which you were born. A man can never truly own a piece of earth, any more than a son can own his own Mother. Do you not know that the wilderness will always prevail in the end?

An Interview with Emily Dobberstein

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz, with Emily Dobberstein

Over the years, Emily Dobberstein has become family to my wife and I. We all lived together for awhile, worked the same job as cottage parents, and if I’m counting correctly we’ve been to 7 countries together. The three of us lived in a very small van (our beloved Beep Boop) for most of our two months in New Zealand, and we’ve shared experiences in Iceland, Nepalese hospitals, and this past year I strummed a guitar as she walked her front yard to marry Peter - a man who, thank God, is worthy of our Em.

For the great majority of the time I’ve known Em, she’s been slowly and lovingly writing a book. I’ve looked forward to its completion for quite awhile, as she has become one of the most trusted voices in my life. It’s finally here, and I’m so deeply proud of my friend Emily. The Courage to Go - A Memoir of the Seven Thousand Miles that Healed Me is raw and it’s honest, and above all it’s a companion and gift for those that might feel alone - especially those healing from abusive relationships, and those finding that the religion they were handed doesn’t bring life anymore.

In Emily’s words, The Courage to Go is:

For those who need help living into the hope
that healing is possible,
For those that are questioning
the “one right way” they were handed
and feel isolated and alone,
For those who wish to feel seen
in the midst of their grief,
For those who have lost or needed to leave
something that once defined them,
For those that have been hurt
by the worldview they were handed,
And for those who don’t understand
how their worldview could ever hurt people.

[…] This book is about seeking mystery, not debating theology.
This book is about making peace with ambiguity, not resisting it.
This book is about the questions, not the answers.

I invite you to read the life-giving interview with Emily below, and to connect with her via her website (emilydobberstein.com, where you can order her book, or via Amazon), and Instagram.

Without further ado, here’s my friend Emily Dobberstein.

JL: What was the greatest fear that you had to overcome while in the writing process, and then subsequently what fears were brought to the surface in preparation for releasing the finished book?

Em: During my writing process, the fear I faced most consistently was that I wasn’t a good writer, or further, that I wasn’t a writer at all. I feared attempting to write a book and failing to complete it or to do it well would prove that. Before writing The Courage to Go, I’d written poems, blogs, and short essays, but a book? Especially a book like The Courage to Go? No way. Important people write books. People with big platforms write books. A random nobody in North Carolina does not write books. At least that’s what the negative voice in my head liked to tell me whenever I reached a hurdle in the writing process (and there were many).

Publishing The Courage to Go felt like releasing the depths of my soul from an extremely vulnerable season for the public to rip apart at its leisure. What the fear leading up to publication came down to was the fear of rejection or losing love for being myself and telling the truth—something I believe is so very human. I feared my relationships with family and friends who still identified with or practiced evangelical Christianity would be negatively impacted or that I would lose those relationships all together. 

The unfortunate thing about evangelical Christianity is that some sects of it teach people, consciously or subconsciously, to merge their beliefs with their identity. Therefore, when someone critiques the belief system within evangelical Christianity, like I do many times in The Courage to Go, some Christians can feel like their entire personhood is being threatened and attacked and have the potential to lash out in hateful, judgmental, and often scary ways. I feared letting myself be vulnerable in front of an institution which has a hard time admitting the discrepancies between its fundamental teachings and its very real history of violence and harm, much of which is rooted in white supremacy and colonialism. When white power wrapped up in religion is threatened, it can turn ugly quickly, which we have seen plenty of in the current political climate in America. I worried The Courage to Go would put me face-to-face with that ugliness, but at the same time, calling out and facing the ugliness was Work I was committed to, so leading up to publication I spent a lot of time meditating and preparing myself for the potential of negative pushback.

JL: "The Courage to Go" is profoundly vulnerable, and I think the true gift within the book is companionship to those walking through a similar journey of spiritual deconstruction. What do you feel is the power of knowing that you're not alone, specifically within something that (I know from personal experience) can feel so isolating? 

Em: There are many things I believe we are not meant to do alone in this life, and healing is one of them. In my deconstruction experience, moving forward and pursuing healing and reconciliation seemed impossible before I knew that there were other people navigating similar experiences. Something about knowing that I was not alone after months of feeling isolated and lonely gave me the glimmer of hope I needed to dig deep and do the hard work of healing from my trauma. I can imagine this would be the case in processing any adverse reality in the human experience. That is where the power of solidarity and the phrase, “me too,” shines through. Whether it be individual internal healing amidst a journey of spiritual deconstruction, or collective societal healing amidst a journey of reconciling a country’s history, faults, and systems of oppression, healing can not be accomplished in isolation and separation. 

We need each other. We need each other. We need each other. 

JL: I deeply resonated with your attempts to pray amidst your spiritual deconstruction. What does prayer look like for you now, and what spiritual practices have you found lifegiving lately?

 

Em: Prayer is still a complicated practice in my life. Even five years after deconstructing my Christian faith, I have not fully recovered prayer in any verbal sense. I constantly have to accept and embrace the possibility that clear, systematic language may never be a part of my spirituality again. Prayer (or contemplation, which is a less triggering or distracting word for me) in my life now is more of a state of being, a way of life, an orientation toward something somehow both greater than myself and inside of myself at the same time. It is a practice of drawing energy from a place of eternal stillness, unity, and love here and now opposed to asking a God with personhood to do or not do something for me in the future on Earth. 

In the Christian Bible, God explains God’s self as “I am.” That phrase is probably the most Christian concept that informs my contemplative life today. God is I am—here and now, in this moment, and this moment is all we have. I find that spending too much time contemplating the past or praying for any specific future to be unfulfilling. Prayer is a way for me to return to the present moment, to turn inward so that I may walk an outward life that brings love, peace, and justice—the Way of Christ, I believe.

The most consistent, life-giving spiritual practice in my life happens shortly after I wake up (or in these winter days of seasonal affective disorder, whenever I can drag myself out of bed and stumble to the kitchen to boil water for tea). I sleepily fill up the kettle, and while it is boiling, I unload the dishes. I never believed that unloading the dishes could be a spiritual practice until I attended a seven-day Buddhist vipassana meditation retreat on the island of Koh Samui in Thailand, which you and Danielle attended with me on our 2018 trip around the world. Each participant at the Dipabhavan Meditation Center was given a daily task to contribute to the communal work of keeping the retreat running. My task was washing, drying, and putting away dishes after our first meal. I learned there that simply by being mindful during my task, the most mundane moments of life can be sacred and holy if I took the time to notice. So, doing dishes in America? Not necessarily praised as a sacred and holy act. But something about putting away my dishes mindfully, first thing in the morning, immediately grounds me in the holiness of the mundane parts of reality. It provides me with an opportunity to start each day with a small act of rebellion—enjoying doing the dishes, and sometimes, finding God there. 

 Once the dishes are put away, I walk my cup of Earl Grey tea to a small room in our house, whose walls are lined with bookshelves and maps from all of my adventures around the world. I roll out my yoga mat, light a candle, sit down, and meditate for twenty minutes. Most days my “monkey mind” is active the whole time and I feel not one bit of transcendence. Some days, though, I break through the fog and can see clearly—whether what I see is the Christ, or the Tao, or oneness, or God I do not know for sure—but it is those moments of clarity that keep me grounded and inspired to continue the hard work of becoming love in a world that often seems dark and meaningless.

JL: In a world that craves certainty and clear boundaries (particularly within religion), I have known you to gracefully hold tensions of seeming opposition and to embrace mystery...in a (compound) word: non-duality. If this resonates with you, speak to what it means to feel at home within this space. 

 

Em: This question reminds me of a moment in Chapter 19 of The Courage to Go, and I believe this excerpt is still my best answer to what it means for me to feel at home within a non-dual space today:

In this moment, standing there at the edge of Tioga Lake, looking out at the mountains reflected upside down on the lake’s surface, I tried to hold both sides of myself in loving tension. I held the contrast in my open hands and was somehow still separate from it, looking at it from a place I cannot quite describe, but a place that somehow seemed like a deeper self—one that witnessed my beliefs, emotions, and doubts. 

For the first time I felt like I could take a step back and exist comfortably in the gray space in-between the black and white. The gray space was a place institutions and dualistic systems swore was dangerous and should be feared. For most of my life I had feared it, but I wasn’t scared standing there in the gray. I didn’t feel like I had to judge myself for the contradiction, and for the first time, I didn’t feel like I had to choose between skeptic or mystic. I was somehow both and neither. Something about it brought peace. Something about it pointed to the possibility that ambiguity might not be as scary as I thought, and it might actually be the very place the wisdom, truth, and life I sought would be found.

Maybe that is where our true selves lie, in that gray in-between place where we can hold the entirety of ourselves tenderly with love and without judgment. Maybe, it is in that place where the truest light of life shines its face on us, and we are made new.

Choosing to reside in non-dual frames of thinking, feeling, and living instead of resisting them has been one of the most freeing aspects of leaving institutional Christianity. Before I deconstructed my faith, gray, in-between spaces that held ambiguity, paradox, opposition, and mystery all at once were terrifying and anxiety-provoking to me. Now, I try to welcome those spaces and seek them out, for I believe that if that Divine light of life is to be found, it is somewhere in that in-between.

JL: Any post-Covid trips you've been scheming? What has kept the spark of adventure alive during this season?

Em: Well, I got married in June 2020, and after moving in with my partner, Peter, during a year that held more stress, anxiety, and existential dread than any year I’ve ever experienced, I didn’t have to travel much to find adventure (if learning how to live in a shared space with your partner while you both are constantly experiencing stress and are often not your best selves can be called adventure, ha!). As someone who lived an extremely transient life from 2013-2019—never living in the same house for more than a year, never working the same job for more than a year, seeming to be constantly moving, traveling, and living out of a bag—this new reality of being rooted to a place with no clear end date and committed to a long-term marriage relationship was totally new territory to me. Though both of these realities were terrifying to me a couple years ago, they have become the adventure that I need in order to grow during this season of my life. Peter and I live in Canton, North Carolina just outside of Asheville, which has turned out to be one of the greatest access points to spectacular wilderness I’ve experienced in the Southeast. Peter and I both are avid hikers, so in the midst of a pandemic where traveling has not been as much of an option, it has been a gift to spend every weekend hiking, camping, or foraging for edible mushrooms (a more recent hobby we are learning together) in the Pisgah National Forest near our home.

Regarding post-Covid trips: Though our non-traditional honeymoon, a five-day 45-mile backpacking trip on the Art Loeb Trail with average daily ascent totals of 3,000 feet (for you non-backpackers, think of walking up a stair stepper for six hours a day) was lovely, we hope to have a second honeymoon and travel to Ecuador for a few weeks when it is safe to do so again. Peter was a sustainable agriculture volunteer for the Peace Corps in Ecuador. He lived and farmed there for two years and hasn’t been back since. We hope to travel there together so that we can hike a few mountains, eat a lot of fresh ceviche, and tidy up our conversational Spanish, as well as so Peter can show me all of his favorite local spots in a country that was home to him for a while. In the U.S., pending the state of the pandemic, we have a canoe backpacking trip in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota planned in May, and then beyond that, our next trip in the States will either be backpacking in the Pacific Northwest or road tripping through the Northeast, wherever the Covid-19-free wind blows us.

Connect with Emily via her website or Instagram.

Oh Great Empire

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz

Oh great Empire,
your splendor is ending.
Your dams are crumbling
under the weight of this cancerous river
of toxic ash
and topsoil
and the bodies of the expendable.
You have hoarded the milk of our Mother,
and it is spoiling;
this precious gift freely given
has become a curse
and you can no longer hide the stench.

Even the rocks are crying out:
we will no longer do your bidding,
we will hold back the tide no longer.

Let the river of justice flow.
Let the decay sweep through the streets
and overturn your monuments of glory.
May explorers in an age
find your gold at the bottom of the sea.

This empire will be a layer in the history
of the crust of time -
a mist,
a vapor.

Let its death fertilize rebirth.
And let the springs of mercy rise up
again once more.

Oh masters, no longer shall you be.
The first shall be last.
Oh slaves, no longer shall you be.
The last shall be first.
The first to see, to touch,
to breathe, to move,
Anew.

The first to cry to the depths
of those behind:
Son of Adam,
Daughter of Eve,
surrender to the eternal flow
from which you came.

//

Oh God,
First and Last,
spit into your merciful hands.
Dig deep into the soil -
into the blood and bones
of the prophets who have gone before,
into the expanse of time.

With the mud of humanity
and everything that has Being,
wash our sight clean.
Let us see the Oneness
of all things,
in all things.

//

Oh Creator of all,
Oh Great Mother:
what have we become?
How far have we strayed from the garden,
from your womb?
Is it too late to crawl back inside
to the safety
and innocence
we once knew?
Who can bear this weight of all that is Good
and all that is Evil?

//

Oh my child,
Come.
Join the dance of the universe.

Be With Me

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz

Oh God,
be with me when I wake.
Be with me when I carry my son down the stairs
with the light of morning.
Look us each in the eye and smile.
Be with us as we stretch and yawn.
Laugh with us.
Play with us.
Be with me as I make coffee for my wife:
2 scoops, grind for 15 seconds.
Pour boiling water, press slowly after 5 minutes.
Let us sit together for awhile,
without needing to say much.

Be with me as I make breakfast.
Stay and eat with us.
Be with me as I do the dishes
and sweep the floor.
Be with me as I sit at the piano.
Lay your head on my shoulder and sing.
Teach me a new melody:
Hold the C#, wait, to the 4, then resolve.
That’s it. I love that.

Be with me,
Be with me,
Be with us.
Be with me when I turn off the lights throughout the house,
when the moon has taken its place,
before I climb back up the stairs.
Be with me when I clean this day from my body.
Come lie down and share the blankets with us.
I know that you do not sleep,
but sometimes
I think I hear you breathing awful heavy beside me,
drawing me in to dream.

Oh God,
Somehow I know you’re in the wind,
and the trees,
and in the stars,
and that sometimes you’re an honored guest in our home.
But I also think that, somehow,
you’re closer still;
even when I forget to invite you.
Maybe I also carry you down the stairs with the light of morning,
within the body of my son.
Maybe I make coffee for you,
within the body of my wife.
And maybe...
Oh God,
sometimes I think I catch your eye for a moment in the mirror.

My Son

Author: John Lucas Kovasckitz

When Danielle first told me she was pregnant, the world had a new glow. Everything was brighter, more full of possibility. Being a father was the thing that I wanted to be most in the world. I started writing poetry daily to our child, and I felt a love that I had never known before.

When Danielle started to realize that we were losing our baby, the world stopped spinning. I tried to remember how to breathe as I sped towards Wal-Mart after midnight to get supplies for my bleeding wife. I remember thinking of course. Of course. God takes away what you desire the most. 

God said [to Abraham], "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

And I asked God why in the car that night, but I didn’t get an answer. I still don’t have one. But I know that God was with me. I know that God was with us when Danielle and I held each other and wept that night. 

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

When Danielle told me that she was pregnant again, the glow did not return. The poetry did not return. I did not feel much besides the fear to love again - a great Numbness. Even as Danielle’s belly slowly grew, and I could feel my boy kicking, I did not truly feel him. I could press my ear to Danielle’s womb and hear my son’s heartbeat, but it would not register emotionally to the extent it once did...when we had no visible or audible clues of the life inside.

I don’t know why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, only to step in at the last moment. I know a lot of easy answers why it could be...answers I learned growing up, but that don’t quite hold true these days. I especially don’t know why God doesn’t step in at the last moment. I don’t know why my friend Amanda lost her sister this past year. I don’t know why so many horrible things happen on this earth - things that are in our collective control as human beings and things that are completely outside of it. 

But I do know somehow there can be no life without death. I know that somehow God is within it all, within us all, inviting us to be born again. And again. And again.

I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot lately: being born again. Growing up within Christian culture, being born again was perceived by many to be a quick and formulaic prayer to somehow immediately enter into a relationship with God. But when I think of the stages of birth and life, being born is anything but quick and simple. Saying nothing of the metaphors of conception, it takes about nine months to knit together a human being that comes wailing and gasping for life, confused and covered in blood and water. This human being is unable to see much past its own nose, and cannot speak nor understand much besides touch and warmth and connection. 

And yet, within that baby is held the miracle of the entire universe. A reminder, an invitation, to be born again: to see again, to experience everything anew. To trade doubt for wonder. To believe in magic again.

I have started to let myself be born again. I have started to let myself enter into into the womb with my boy. I have started to allow myself to truly feel him kick and to hear his heartbeat. I have started to read him stories and to tell him jokes. To call him by name. I have allowed myself to weep with the joy and weight of a father for his son. I have started to allow myself to love my yet unborn son deeply, though I have known the fragility of loss. 

Tonight Danielle read me a short story about a boy who asked his mom to try and have another child after a miscarriage, because that baby has become a ‘spirit baby’ and can get back in the front of the line to be born again. He knew this to be the way it worked because he also was a spirit baby. It sounds true enough to me.

Maybe our boy, our little Noah, has been waiting at the front of the line the whole time for us. Maybe before time itself was born. It sounds true enough to me.

//

I want to be a really good father. 

And I think my desires are intertwined with those of the ultimate Father, for all of us. I think my heart for my boy is somehow a reflection of His heart for all of us. A lot of my theology and metaphors have changed over the years, and answers don’t come as easy as they used to. But the picture of a good Father still holds true for me; a father that hikes up his robes and runs to embrace his child he thought was lost. 

Something that I wanted to do for my boy before I met him face-to-face was to write him vows...a way to, in faith, hike up my robes and run to embrace a child that already holds my heart.

I ask you, my friends, to hold me to these vows to my son. I ask you, my friends, to come alongside of Danielle and I as we are born again together with the life of our son. Our little Noah. Our little mighty wizard. 

The rest is for him. 

Noah Albus - 

My boy,

My son. 

I have waited to be your dad for a long time. 

Before I have seen you I have loved you.

Before I have held you, I have accepted every future perceived flaw and everything that might one day try to shame you. Soon you will come into the world naked and bloody and perfect in every way. 

You have been One with your Mother for awhile now. I have felt you kick, and I have pressed my ear to your Mother’s belly to hear your heartbeat.

But soon I too will hold you. I will hold your fragile body in my fragile arms, and our two fragile bodies will become One...as strong as an oak planted beside still waters. 

Nothing can tear you away from me. 

Nothing that you do or do not do.

Nothing that you do or do not say.

You cannot lose my love. 

Although, my love is imperfect. Sometimes I will lose my patience with you. I will disappoint you many times. I am new at being a father. 

Even if I become an old hat at being a dad, I will fail again and again. I will do many things wrong. 

But I promise to keep trying. I promise to do my best. I promise to never give up on being a better dad for you. I promise to be teachable. I promise to listen to you. 

You and I will always be One, but I promise to let you become your own person. I promise to let you make mistakes, and I promise to also do my best to point the way forward by example. I promise to do my best to teach you about God and life and death and this world and our place within it, but I suspect that you will teach me much more than I could ever teach you. 

I cannot promise that you will not endure great pain in this world. My Noah, I wish it were not so. I wish I could shield it from you. I cannot promise that I will even share the majority of your life with you, or even tomorrow...but you and I will always be One. I do not know how to describe this, or to begin to prove this, but I know it to be true. 

For what life I have with you on this earth, I promise to cherish every minute of it. I promise to lean into wonder instead of doubt and fear. You have already made me a better man.

Noah, I give you my love. 

Everything in this life that I give up for you, I do it gladly. May you surpass me in every way. May your kindness stretch far beyond my reach. May your life be a seed that grows a forest. May you love deeply. May you dream in boldness, and walk in the riches of faith.

I am proud to be your father. You are my great treasure.

-Your dad