Desert Times: 21 February 2010

"(He) was led by the Spirit into the desert”

Luke 4:1

Even though I've been to an actual desert in the southwest where the landscape and plant life was amazingly quite beautiful and abundant, I still have the image of the deserts in those old movies in my mind - nothing but sand, blowing sand, everywhere; a truly desolate place where one's throat gets bone dry and thirst is abundantly present. I imagine all sorts of thoughts would run through a person's mind if he or she were in such an environment for any length of time. Things like longings and plots and plans and perhaps regrets may emerge. Being in such a barren environment, isolated from other people, can cause us feel quite helpless - quite alone.

There are very real times in life when we may feel as if we're in a desert - times when we feel dry, barren, unsettled, isolated in our inner being, our spiritual dimension, and/or life itself. The reasons for or causes of these desert times are many. Perhaps we have lost our job, experienced the death of a loved one, been rejected by someone, have seen a dream or goal we had disappear beyond our reach. Finding ourselves in a spiritual desert, as with any life "desert times", we most likely experience feeling a loss of connection with people and things that hold meaning for us in our lives. In a spiritual desert we can feel disconnected from our prayer, church, the Sacred One, even ourselves.

Finding ourselves in a desert time, however long or short the duration, can be a very lonely and scary place where we truly go alone. We can choose to experience this time as a vast wasteland, a waste of time, or a place filled with demons of regrets, temptations, guilt, and our own imperfections. Or...we can choose to enter into and experience our desert times as filled with abundant opportunity. When we willingly go into the seemingly barren and deserted place of our inner being as uncomfortable as it may be, if we quiet ourselves and minds and listen closely to our heart we can come to discover anew that we are not alone after all. It is there in the silence we encounter the presence of the Sacred who abides within each of us; it is there in the silence where we will be able to open ourselves to the Holy Whispers; it is there in the silence where we will begin to be molded and shaped anew by the Divine Fire that burns within us always - even during the driest and darkest of our desert times.

Peace on the Journey.