Lately
I’ve been reading, thinking, and chewing-over the journeys of the “desert
fathers and mothers.”
Interesting
stuff . . .
The
desert has long been part and context of Judeo-Christian experience, encounter,
and spiritual formation. It’s a place of significance in the Christian imagination,
and its role within Christian spirituality complex.
- In biblical and early Christian experience it’s an actual geographical locale within which crucial experiences of encounter with God occur.
- It is also a mythical place, a place of dreams and fears that has come to occupy a central place within the religious imaginations of Christians.
As
I mull over foundational desert encounters in Jewish and Christian experience
such as; Moses and the burning bush, John living in the desert, Jesus and the
forty days in the wilderness, Paul in Arabia, the early Christian monastics (I.e.
Anthony, Gregory, Cassian, Benedict, Syncletica, et.al.,) in the deserts of Egypt
and Judea, I begin to appreciate that the desert is both an actual place and a
rich ambiguous metaphor.
These people did not merely wander-off into the
desert, their journey was intentional; a focused encounter with God and their inner
selves.
As
they grew in resolution with their innermost selves, they “blossomed” in their
serving and knowing the God of their encounter. Actual encounter in a desert landscape
stands at the heart of one’s experience, but the religious imagination makes the
desert into something that can continue to feed the soul long after the desert
itself is a distant memory.
Methinks
one does not escape-to-a-desert; you choose to enter into, pass and grow
through desert journey experiences.
How
come I’m thinking this stuff?
Well,
in sixty years of my Christian pilgrimage I’ve listened to a lot of preachers mention
how, “people ran of into the desert and
became irrelevant to life” implying; “choosing a desert sojourn was a waste
of time.” But these last few years in reading for myself the life of the “runaways”
- not just listening to “abbreviated-history” through preacher rhetoric, I get
a different emerging story; I find that from Moses on, significant leaders and
Christ-servants bought the memory of the desert back into the marketplaces of
their time.
They went to the desert in
order to come back to town. In the desert through serving God they learnt how to
serve others.
Thot: To experience God in the desert
I intentionally go there with Him, not looking for Him.
PS: Not every desert has sand or
looks sandy . . . Selah!
