By Shelby Peck | Copy Editor
To get away from the crazed frenzy of a college campus preparing for Thanksgiving break, students from the Wilderness Spirituality Chapel traveled to Meridian State Park over the weekend for a time of rest, renewal, exploration and fellowship with one another and God.
“The purpose of the Chapel is to find ways to connect with God with your spiritual life while in nature and outdoors,” Gabriel GarMelo, instructor for the Wilderness Spirituality Chapel, said. “And so throughout the semester, we go through different spiritual practices that are facilitated more by being outdoors.”
Some practices taught through the class — which meets once a week at Armstrong Browning Library’s Garden of Contentment — include prayer and moments of silence while immersed in the outdoors. The end of the semester features a weekendlong retreat where students participate in different reflection activities, including six hours of silence.
GarMelo said students begin preparation for the extended observation of silence with five-minute practices during each class. He said silence is helpful because it clears the mind to better listen for what God is doing and how he is moving in students’ hearts and minds.
“It’s, you know, asking the question, ‘What is God doing in your life? How does your spiritual life interact with your body with your everyday life? And going forward, what are things that you want from your spiritual life for the things that God wants from you?’” GarMelo said.
After six hours of silence, GarMelo said all the thoughts that enter one’s mind during the prayer eventually run out, clearing all distractions.
“We also want to embody the rest portion of it, so silence is for us to better listen but also to help us rest, right?” GarMelo said. “Because if we’re always consuming, producing, then we’re never resting. So six hours is to help kind of reset our bodies to flow at their natural speed and, you know, listen to nature around us, flow with the time and be in the moment versus always trying to do something or make something.”
While there is structure to the retreat, GarMelo said there is also a lot of freedom, which makes it similar to a “choose your own adventure.” The class stays at the same campsite and has parameters for where they can explore. Besides the five sessions students participate in together, they are able to choose to hike, lay in a hammock, sit by the lake and much more.
“It’s not like we’re going to the middle of the wilderness, you know,” GarMelo said. “We’ll have park rangers there. It’s about an hour away from Baylor, so it’s not too far, and we’ll have restrooms, running water and all that sort of thing.”
Lancaster, Calif., sophomore Alayna Boyd said she selected the Wilderness Spirituality Chapel because her family spends a lot of time camping. She said the class resonated with her desire to experience God in his creation.
“We got to use the practices that we’ve learned throughout the course on the camping trip,” Boyd said. “We did a lot of prayer walking during class where we walked around campus — and kind of just taking the nature and really just absorbing what we were seeing — and that was a big part of the trip because we had a long period of silence where we were exploring the state park and we really just got to look at all of God’s beauty in nature.”
Next semester, the class’ enrollment is shifting from a maximum of 15 students to 20 students. Boyd said anyone who is intrigued by the wilderness or wants to go on a camping trip should take the class because it provides them with an opportunity to have fellowship with other students and practice spirituality in nature.
“I’m really loving my time here, and I’m soaking in all the different experiences that I can, and Wilderness Spirituality was one of them,” Boyd said.
Westport, Conn., freshman Spencer Yim said he selected the Wilderness Spirituality Chapel because of the connection he’s built with the outdoors while growing up attending Deerfoot Lodge summer camp in upstate New York. He said he appreciated experiencing God’s creativity through nature.
“I see the order and design that really point to his love and his intentionality as he created this entire Earth,” Yim said. “The real reason I chose [Wilderness Spirituality] was to get some more exposure to that type of spiritual practice.”
While Yim said he has learned discipline and practice through the class, he said he recommends it to any student wanting to explore a different or more “unorthodox” type of worship.
“You’re going to be outside for every single class period doing something that you probably have never done before when it comes to a spiritual discipline or exposing yourself to the environment and to be outdoors,” Yim said. “It’s a great chance to see … what God has done and is doing in our world.”
GarMelo attended Baylor as an undergraduate, studying religion and psychology before returning to receive his master’s in public health and a certificate for spiritual direction. He said throughout his time with Campus Recreation and Outdoor Adventure, he wanted to implement more spiritual practices into the program. GarMelo said the Wilderness Spirituality Chapel was formed through his love for the outdoors and his passion for spiritual direction among college students.
“We’re really big on our spiritual practices, so every day, I will either introduce you to a new spiritual practice, or if it’s something you already know, we’ll be practicing that hopefully in a new way outdoors,” GarMelo said. “For the outdoor part, this is meant to be a very entry-level experience. … You’re going to have to camp because part of it is being outside of your normal comfort zones of your bed, a heater. All of that helps you to be in a place where [you] are more vulnerable when you’re camping.”
Combining their love for the outdoors and ministry, GarMelo and his wife, Meagan, founded a Waco nonprofit called GTG Outdoors. GarMelo said its purpose is to provide outdoor experiences to people in Waco, especially those who may find barriers to going on such experiences, such as families of low socioeconomic status, people of color and female leadership.
“I finally found spiritual direction within ministry, and I completely fell in love with the idea of it and the practices of it — and that, I realized, fell in line a lot with what I could be doing in the outdoors,” GarMelo said. “I realized there’s a lot of parallels between hiking on a trail for multiple days and how it feels to trek through our spiritual life and the challenges it brings, the unknown it brings, but yet there’s this path forward that we’re always pursuing.”
