Traveling through the Holy Land on the clergy pilgrimage with our Bishop, the thing that struck me most, and has stayed with me these last few weeks, is the desert. When I think of desert, I remember the backgrounds of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons, with sand and rocks, but also cactuses, or the Simpson Desert in Australia, with its endless red dunes stubbled with canegrass and spinifex. I didn’t expect to find desert with huge rocky cliffs, stone strewn slopes, and almost no visible vegetation.
Deserts are usually harsh places, and the Judean desert harsher than most. But what I remember is not just the dry, rocky terrain, but the incredible spaciousness. The endless sky seemed full of possibility; the stony ground demanded closer inspection; the cliffs invited me to go deeper. I saw an orange wing-tipped black grackle, a nut-brown field mouse, and a diligent trail of ants.
But the spaciousness was not only physical. As I stood in the desert, I felt as if my soul were opening wide in that space, opening up to God. And I began to understand why it was that immediately after his baptism, Jesus went into the desert - possibly that same Judean desert - for forty days. During Lent, we remember those forty days that Jesus spent in the desert. For him, it was a time of preparation for his ministry. But I also suspect it was a time when, in the spaciousness of that place, the three-personed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was able to commune.
We often wish that we could have an intense and visceral experience of God. Saint Augustine talks about our hearts being restless until they find their rest in God. My heart and soul are often restless because there is so much stuff in my life. It’s no wonder that Jesus told one man that as well as following the commandments, he had to sell what he had and give the money to the poor. Not because there was anything intrinsically wrong with possessions - after all, Jesus didn’t give the same command to all the wealthier people he met - but because, I suspect, Jesus knew that all that stuff was crowding out God. There was simply no room left in that man’s life.
Deserts offer that space for God. But the problem with deserts is that they are lonely places. There are usually not very many people there. And while some are called to a life of solitude and contemplation, the vast majority of us are called to live in this world as the light of Christ, so that others might be drawn to him. That mission is really hard to accomplish if we are in the desert and everyone else is elsewhere. We need to be where people are, to share with them the love of God.
But we also need to know God. So perhaps we need to carry the desert with us, creating desert-like spaces within our lives, where there is room to commune with God.
This year, my Lenten discipline this year has been to make space for God. I have cleaned house, sorting through the food in my cupboards and the clothes in my closet, and giving things away. I have given up some of the TV programs I used to need to watch, and removed some games from my iPhone. I have spent time in meditation and prayer. And I have met God, often unexpectedly.
The desert still calls, but underneath I know that what - or who - is really calling, is my Savior. If only I will save the space.
