Sojourn into the Desert

During this season of the year we read about John the Baptist and his desert experience. We are told that Isaiah prophesied, a voice would cry out in the wilderness asking us to make straight the path to our God (Is. 40:9). I have always thought of the Advent desert as a time of personal preparation: clean out the excess thoughts and grudges, make ready the heart to welcome Divinity in with greater fullness.

But on my walk this morning, as I was thinking of Finals and papers, another thought came to me. I realized that we all have deserts in our lives, times when our efforts seem to produce little fruit, when life seems dry and barren, and success and happiness become nothing but a mirage. Perhaps the Baptist's call to go into the desert is a cry to care for a fellow sojourner whose life has become difficult.

We fill in the valleys and make every mountain and hill low when we help to balance that person's hope. We can help diminish some of that fear and build up some of that confidence. In short, we can give encouragement and understanding. If we do this, the sojourn in the desert may be shortened, and that person will come out a whole person, not one broken and defeated.

There are so many of us who could profit by a bit of understanding. Yes, we may act out our fears and anxiety. But if only one person sits by us, holds our hand and hears our story, we find heart and courage. In that courage we may even find healing and wholeness.

Isn't that what the Christmas story is all about? A story of hope in the midst of a very unfair world. So let us each look for that sojourner in the desert, the one who feels weighed down right now and can use a caring heart. Let us reach out not with our answers, but with a sympathetic ear that listens to their story. Who knows. That may be the one thing that they need at this time.

Spiritual Encounter

Ever consider that the empty feeling deep within yourself can be turned into a spiritual encounter? That is what George Maloney says, insisting that such emptiness is necessary if we want to experience God face to face. To quote: But he [God] can only be met in the desert of your own being, in the depths where you encounter the dread of loss. So few of us have the courage or the discipline to cut ourselves off from all the attachments by which we define ourselves, to go out into the desert and be at the mercy of the unknown. (Journey Into Mystical Prayer, 8)

According to Maloney, the journey "within" begins with surrender. It's a concept not often talked about. We tend to think of even the spiritual life in terms of what we might gain. But it is good to remember that there is also a need to let go of anything that impedes our awareness of God. It is a reminder that not having is not necessarily a disadvantage, and that a feeling of helplessness can hold riches for our spiritual life.

Maloney is telling us that we will find many things in our lives that simply don't make sense. Instead of letting such things become road blocks in our spiritual descent, we can surrender to the fact that we cannot understand them, and so continue forward. I like his term mercy of the unknown. It begs for a spirit of trust. It begs for us to believe in a Being bigger and more capable than myself. And most of all, it challenges us to surrender.

Finding God in the Desert

The desert. It in interesting that all mystics seek some type of secluded spot when they want to delve into the innermost part of their souls. Even Jesus went into the desert or on a mountain top when he wanted to pray. What does that tell us? That his disciples were a pain in the you know what? Probably. But it also hints at the importance of putting aside regular life when you want to get serious about finding God within. There is also the sense of silence, of solitude, of aloneness. Of having to find it yourself. No guide, no soul-mate. Just you and God.

When John the Baptist drew followers, Jesus asked those followers "What did you go out into the desert to see?" We might ask ourselves the same questions. What is our purpose in pursuing a greater connection with God? Are we programming our spiritual life like we do our career or our social life? Do we go out into the desert to find? Or to listen?

Perhaps the greatest gift of the desert is its silence and solitude. It makes us realize the potential for a new way of living. It offers us a new level of understanding. It demonstrates how little we really need in life to find reward.

Enter into the desert without a schedule or a plan. Let what you find lead you to where you didn't know. The desert reveals different things to different people. And you will come to realize God is better than when you first believed.

Entering the Desert Place

In his book Discovering the Hidden Reality: A Journey Into Christian Mystical Prayer, George Maloney writes: Our culture feeds us with the idea that we can do anything that we set our minds to do. In the time of St. Augustine, this concept was called "Pelagianism."

Maloney goes on to explain how such a concept keeps us always busy about "doing" things, so that silence, especially the silence needed for mystical prayer, is foreign to us. It goes so far he says, as to making even prayer an object where we are either getting something or doing something for God. And that is so not mystical prayer!

Mystical prayer is a gazing at God so as to learn his goodness. It doesn't so much ask God for gifts or plan great deeds for God. It consists more of an attention to God, an awareness of his abiding presence, of a mind set to think more in the light of his goodness than on accomplishments.

Maloney writes further: There is a subtle type of pharisaism that uses God as a static object who will flood us with consolations and a feeling of a good conscience. What we fail to see is that we have gradually lost the willingness to take the wild risks of Moses and the Israelites as they followed God for forty years in the dry and threatening desert.

Here I am reminded of the scripture verse that says, For God sends rain, and causes his sun to shine upon the just and the unjust. Such is the an attitude of one in union with God, were one doesn't use what is happening to us in the here and now to judge how much we love God or he us. It is an important part of our journey, to realize that life goes forward in a very organic way, with both rain and sunshine, and that it is our awareness of God, not his gifts, that is paramount. 

The very difficulty of such type of prayer explains why mystical prayer had fallen out of favor. But recent  interest must be accompanied by a realistic approach to this form of union with God. Otherwise, we shall give up at the desert's edge, without even entering upon the long journey.