11 minute read
Into the Deep
Into the Deep
A love of nature and theology led Jen Messing on an incredible journey
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By Christina Ries
Jen Messing was driving to a friend’s wedding in North Dakota when she popped in the cassette. She was 28, soaking up the sunny May day, enjoying an open road and an open mind.
“Naked Without Shame,” the series was titled, and it consisted of Christopher West’s original audio tapes about the theology of the body.
Her life would never be the same. “I knew immediately that this language held the core answers to all the big questions in life,” said Jen, now 49, a member of St. Charles Borromeo parish in Minneapolis.
She listened to the tapes again on the drive home, and she has never stopped digging into TOB, extracting its golden nuggets and sharing them with anyone she can. She began giving talks, enrolled in Christopher’s first “Head and Heart Immersion Course,” was mentored by living with the West family for five months, and eventually she earned a master’s in theology and a certificate from the Theology of the Body Institute.
Along the way it became clear that God was calling her to found her own ministry based on her unique approach—leading groups on camping retreats to unplug from technology and ponder life’s big questions within the framework of TOB. She would call it Into the Deep.
Credit: Dave Hrbacek
“I was freaked out about the details of running my own business,” Jen said. “But God is in control so He prompts what He wants done. I tried to get out of it so many times by tucking myself in under other people’s organizations. God kept kicking me out of the nest.”
Securing an office felt like a huge leap.
Meanwhile, a friend connected her with someone who understood how to start a non-profit.
She led her first I.D. Retreat in 2014. Special guests included Christopher West and his two oldest sons.
“For the first five years, it was an intense learning curve. Everything I touched was brand new, and I had to spend hours figuring things out. Over time, as the learning curve leveled off, I could add more trips.”
God has continued to guide her every step of the way. Growth has been slow—like slowly adding summer interns and then an employee working 10-hour weeks. Now Jen has two staff people. She recently marked the 10-year anniversary of Into the Deep. The hiking and canoeing retreats for both youth and adults have attracted 500- some participants.
Senior Editor Christina Ries asked Jen to reflect on the journey.
CR: Let’s start at the beginning. Early in life, your dad fostered a love of the outdoors.
JM: We spent a month every summer at our cabin on Crane Lake, on the edge of Minnesota and Canada. No electricity or plumbing, just propane and an outhouse. We loved it. My dad was a fireman, so we were carefully trained in how to build a fire and keep it burning well. Competitions with my siblings entailed trying to build one-match fires.
My dad was always wandering in the woods behind our cabin, creating trails. We would follow behind him, learning the landmarks of rocks, trees and beaver ponds to know where we were. Eventually we started playing with compasses, and we were always wandering and learning a sense of direction.
CR: Any memorable animal encounters?
JM: A particularly special experience was seeing five wolf pups laying under a cedar tree, right on our trail to the beaver pond. Another encounter involved coming around the corner of our cabin and being 15 feet from a black bear. We just gazed at each other. There was no fear. It stood up on its hind legs and sniffed the air, then turned around and walked back into the woods.
Credit: Dave Hrbacek
CR: Your time in nature, as a teen, helped you recognize a spiritual hunger.
JM: Something in you knows that you are in God’s neighborhood, and He is right there with you. You recognize that you could deny it and ignore him, but I had a moment of acknowledgement: “I guess I could talk to You.”
We are meant to open up our senses and receive all the beauty that God pours out through creation. To smell sweet air, taste good food, hear the laughter of friends, feel the ground beneath our feet—our eyes are meant to be lifted up to look at mountains, trees and stars. Creation is the original cathedral that gives us a tiny glimpse of God and of Heaven. I do not advocate replacing church; I simply point out the long list of intimate gifts that God pointed out to me.
CR: You’re following in JPII’s footsteps by taking groups of people on adventures in the great outdoors.
JM: I want to give people space, so instead of long talks, I lace the entire trip with commentary. Discussions happen naturally while canoeing or hiking for hours. That’s what Karol Wojtyla did: he would paddle up next to someone and chat. At a time in Poland when it was illegal, he was saying Mass on an overturned kayak and discussing the freedom of being a human person.
Credit: Dave Hrbacek
CR: Your retreats must be powerful for teens who never unplug, used to receiving snaps at 3 a.m.
JM: If your space is filled with screens and noise all the time, you can’t make intimate contact with your own heart or with God. Last summer I sat for two hours with a group of middle-school girls, watching the moonrise on Lake Superior. One girl commented that she had never spent that much time looking at the stars.
CR: Responding to cellphone addiction has informed your work.
JM: I saw the influx of cellphones at the same time as I brainstormed the mission of Into the Deep. Now smartphones have changed how we have conversations and robbed many people of their ability to just be. I was convicted in my observations: taking people camping isn’t just for fun. I have to create a space for people to remember what it’s like to be away from a phone—or, for the younger generation, to experience it for the first time.
An hour-long talk can give people a jump-start, but a week-long retreat allows for much more processing. It takes a lot of quiet to get past your own voice and the voices in your head or of others to actually hear what God is trying to speak to your heart.
CR: You’re speaking from experience. You took many long, solo road trips in the pre-cellphone days.
JM: Indeed, I drove to Alaska after college and since have crisscrossed a good chunk of the United States. On a trip to Colorado, I started pondering all the details that led to where I was at— everything from being baptized on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima to my sister suggesting I check out Bemidji State University, and a chain reaction of people that led to receiving those Christopher West tapes. The Lord brought me through a beautiful meditation on all the steps He had taken to prepare me to spread TOB.
CR: Tell me the infamous “moose story.”
JM: I had decided that I wanted to drive the perimeter of the United States and three weeks in I was in New Hampshire. It was dark and I was blinded by headlights from another car; thankfully I was able to slow down to 15 miles per hour before I hit it. The whole body of the moose flew into my windshield and shattered it.
The little motel I stayed in didn’t have a phone in the room, so I had to wait until the next morning to call my family. Feeling somewhat alone threw me into God’s arms. It was a very intimate time, letting him take care of me. Thankfully I was fine—just some surface scratches on my forehead.
JM: As I was in the midst of a huge turning point with vocational discernment, hitting the moose literally stopped me in my tracks and became a landmark time in my life. It forced me to decide if I was going to say yes to God, no matter what.
CR: It sounds like God has been looking out for you every step of the way.
JM: Yes, and I could tell story after story of how God has protected my groups from weather during retreats. It’s not random. God is the Grand Coordinator who knows how to bring about the best good for all the people who love him—as well as those who don’t. God loves each of us into existence and wants us right here, right now, at this particular time in history.
Still single
Credit: Dave Hrbacek
At 49, Jen Messing is fully embracing her baptismal vocation while waiting on the Lord to reveal His plan more fully for her life—she’s OK with that.
“I’ve learned to embrace my vocational discernment path—keep saying yes to God’s promptings and walking forward in deep trust, because God sees everything and He is leading me to the best plan,” she said. “My vocational story has a lot to do with the radical trust that God has called me to.”
At one point Jen was engaged but she realized God was not calling her to marry at that time. At another period in life, she discerned religious life but came to understand that it was not the gift that God was giving her.
“Both vocations are so beautiful. I’ve said, ‘Lord, I will do either of them!’ Both are holy, both are good.”
The peace she feels today stands in stark contrast to how she felt at 30: frustrated about not having a more specific, vowed vocation in place.
“I was very uptight about it: ‘I want to know my vocation!’ I just had to accept that that was not what God was doing with the order of events in my life. I need to love where I’m at every day. If I die tomorrow, I have still have lived out my vocation to love. I always use the example of Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died right before graduating from college. He lived the call to love every day, so his life was not a waste.”
Sometimes Jen’s lack of a formal vocation confuses people.
God loved me into existence, He made me unrepeatable, and I am meant to make a gift of myself within this epic adventure-battle-love story that swirls around me now.”
“We are meant to love the people around us every day, and when we make a gift of ourself, we think about who we are and then look around and ask: Who am I going to make a gift of myself to? I freely choose to make a total and faithful gift of myself—and then it is God’s job to bring life from that gift.”
Late-night thank-you’s
Jen receives incredible feedback from people who have attended an Into the Deep retreat.
• A text message: “Hey Jen, I just wanted to say thank you. The retreat made TOB come to life. I finally now understand how it is applicable to life—particularly my healing journey. I feel so much lighter, freer and open to God. It has made talking with him so much easier! Thank you!”
• An excerpt from a 3-page letter: “I am inspired by how you have such passion, conviction and ownership of your life. Your stories and lessons about TOB have sparked a new flame to claim my identity while living my state in life….”
