In the windows of King's College, Cambridge, the wilderness is depicted as a deep forest. Trees everywhere. At first glance it seems quite inviting by comparison to a hot, dry, sandy desert, but look a little longer, remember the menacing quality of the forest in all the Bavarian fairy tales, and the forest seems a less friendly place. Think of Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood – where were they all abandoned to their fate, never to be seen again? The forest. Deep, dark, miles from anywhere you could shout for help – for Europeans, this is what wilderness means.

The twenty first century perhaps has a new kind of wilderness: I feel more desolate and isolated in a shopping mall than I ever do in the forest. Or perhpas worse, one of those terrible pedestrianised high streets where half the shops have been given over to temporary bargain basements, and half of what remains is boarded up. Or a bleak  industrial estate – acres and acres of concrete and utility buildings with nothing beautiful or inspiring to relieve the deadness.

Wilderness doesn't have to be a place, then, but is anything that represents isolation and coming face to face with your inner demons.  Jesus' experience in the wilderness was undertaken deliberately as a time of preparation of the self for his future ministry. A Lent wilderness is more than just a walk in the woods; it's a deliberate act of self-preparation. What action do I need to take to prepare myself for the next phase of work and life? A course of therapy or a silent retreat might do it for some. Or simply taking the daily discipline to contemplate those parts of your life that are otherwise routinely kept in the corners, while we fill our lives with brighter and happier things.   Dave Perry of Dave's District Blog (not the Dave Perry that plays in the Effras) has been posting a series of photos and thoughts about wilderness, looking at the wild places in the Lake district. They're all good, and well worth a visit (start here). One in particular I've been back to quite a few times – I don't know quite how he achieved this effect, but the photo is almost Constable-esque in the way the sky seems more solid and permanent than the earth.

There’s a problem inherent in this "gospel is free" idea, though (see related thoughts on the value of things that are free on Seth Godin’s "the thing about Free").   Because while in one sense it’s true that the gospel is free, it’s also true that there is no gospel – no good news about salvation – without a high cost on either side of the spiritual encounter.

The good news of God cost Jesus everything: his safety, his family life, his reputation, and in the end his life.  And if it’s to become real in our lives, it’s going to cost us too, in commitment and in other ways too.  When we speak of the gospel as "free", are we projecting the idea that it’s easy come easy go, not something of great challenge or great value? Do we imply that it matters, but not that much really?

There’s a paradox in the free gift of God and the grand scale of cost it will involve for us to accept the free gift and receive our own freedom. It’s free, but at the same time it will cost us everything.

The word religion, it seems, stands for established traditions; it stands for doctrine and belief, rules and proscribed practices, rites and rituals, the authority and sanction of tradition and the past. Religion is weighty; this is good – weight brings gravity – but it is also bad – it pulls you down, making it harder to fly.

Spirituality is something else. It’s about experience, about feeling. It’s personal and heartfelt. It involves practice and belief to an extent, but the emphasis is on what happens and how it feels rather than on what is supposed to be performed and how that is supposed to be understood and interpreted. If the centre of religion is the church, the scripture, the doctrine, the structure, the centre of spirituality is the person, the feeling human heart. The strength of spirituality is the lightness and sensitivity of its reality – if you are open to it, it’s there for you, as real as a breeze. But its lightness is also its weakness – yes, it helps you fly, but you might just keep going. Lacking the ballast of tradition, spirituality tends to float us off high into the clouds, where we can easily lose track of ourselves. Clearly then what we are after is a combination of these two elements. We want a religion that holds us and deepens us, along with a spirituality that lifts us and feeds us the food we need.