Deserts for C21st Urbanites

What are deserts for 21st century urbanites?  A romantic, if rugged, getaway? Desert spirituality is all the more fascinating the further away from a desert I get, I note.

I was thrilled to get out into the desert during my travels in India one summer (Rajasthan, '95). Rode on a camel for a couple of days, slept under the stars, enjoyed the company of our good-natured Muslim guides (the slow, beautiful dance of their evening prayers on a nearby horizon was quietly and deeply moving). Under the stars that suddenly cold night, from out of the darkest blue, came a turbaned piper who played for us an hour or two sitting by the embers of our fire. Was not the time a memory of something simpler and more beautiful; or was it just as it was, a gift for that particular time and place?

 Jesus' desert experiences might have had these elements of beauty and nostalgia, too; but the drive of the Lenten narrative urges us toward the more challenging confrontation with the self. One has to enter the chaos in order to attain a deeper awareness of the obstacles & wounds: that is the way to liberation.

To believe one is liberated is not the same as to live as if one is.

Alessandro Pronzato, a wise man he must be, wrote in his book called "Meditations on the Sand"that

The crowded bus, the long queue, the railway platform, the traffic jam, the neighbor’s television sets, the heavy-footed people on the floor above you, the person who still keeps getting the wrong number on your phone. These are the real conditions of your desert. Do not allow yourself to be irritated. Do not try to escape. Do not postpone your prayer. Kneel down. Enter that disturbed solitude. Let your silence be spoiled by those sounds. It is the beginning of your desert.

This came to me at a time of great chaos; it was a bitter pill. It was prophetic.

Strength and courage!