The wilderness is a place to visit not live for most of us. Such a time apart from daily life lets us encounter creation in a different way, see ourselves from a new perspective. Wilderness can be a difficult place though, so it is also an image of loss and challenge.

For Moses, it was both, and much of his life was a journey from one wilderness to another.

He was born at a time when his people were persecuted by the society they lived in. Hated and feared, the Pharaoh decided to have all the infant boys killed to limit the population. Mothers and midwives fought to hide these children, but loss ran deep.

As I think about this part of the story I think of other times in European history when the Jewish people were persecuted. The Holocaust is one such time. I am reminded of the strength of the Jewish people and the need to learn to honour them and their traditions.

Moses was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter and raised in the palace, cut off from his family, his culture, and the G-d of his ancestors. He had to learn the language of the oppressor and their culture. I wonder if he was taught to look down on the people who were his birth family.

At some point, he learned that he was Egyptian by adoption not birth.

As I pondered this part of his story, it reminded me of Indian Residential Schools and the "Sixties Scoop" which adopted Indigenous children into White families. Our society forced these children to leave their community, language, and culture. Many people still live with the consequences of these mistaken acts of assimilation. Our society needs to understand why this kind of removal from culture is destructive.

While the record of Moses' story doesn't tell us how he awakened to his heritage, we've been teenagers, we've perhaps lived with teenagers, and we've seen the tension between what our family expects and who we choose to be. For Moses who had no practice with this tension, his identification with his birth people erupted into violence. Seeing an Egyptian overseer mistreating a Hebrew worker, he attacked the overseer, killing him.

He left the city. The act of identification drove him from his adopted people and alienated him from his birth people, as they did not trust his violence.

Again, he was cut off.

In this strange land, he found love, work, and acceptance. His work as a shepherd, however, took him out of the village--a cluster of huts or tents--into the wild hills to find enough green to feed the animals. Typical of his life, even acceptance sent him out to the wilderness.

This time, as he went deep into the hills, he encountered G-d. And at a bush that seemed to be burning without burning up, he was given a task by the G-d of his ancestors: he was sent back to Egypt to challenge Pharaoh to do justice and to bring his people freedom.

At first reluctant, he headed for Egypt, taking his wife and sons with him. This became a kind of wilderness experience for them, leaving the wild for the city and learning two new cultures and languages.

Convincing Pharaoh was not easy. The people of Egypt suffered deeply before the Hebrew people are released. Then, Pharaoh reconsidered the choice, chasing after them to bring them back.

At the Red Sea, trapped between the water and the approaching army, the people were terrified. G-d rescued them by driving back the water so they crossed on dry land, and the army was washed away.

Rescue sent Moses and the people into the wilderness for an extended period of time. They slowly crossed this empty, deserted land, a place in between.

But G-d was in the wilderness as a pillar of fire and smoke to guide them, as the one who provided food each day, as the one who gave water. And the pattern for life was provided, a pattern that would guide them when they returned to the promised land and in their lives beyond.

As I ponder Moses' story, I wonder. Do we need such times in the wild wilderness to gain perspective, to see the world, the divine, and ourselves?

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister, and writer living near Walters Falls.