Issue 215 - Into the Wilderness
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February 2020
Earlier this month, we spent five days of silent retreat at
and directly adjacent to the Saguaro National Park.
In this issue we reflect on the stark beauty of the Sonoran Desert,
where God speaks in the silence.
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“The first cathedral of worship is found in nature.”
[1] At the Desert House of Prayer, soaring saguaro cacti form the pillars of the cathedral, bright stars and constellations trace the archwork of the vault, while choirs of coyotes chant God’s praise.
The quote above is from Mary C. Earle, commenting on the Celtic Christian tradition. The Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona is about as different from the emerald fields of Ireland or the misty coasts of Scotland as one could imagine. Still, I find that Earle’s words name my experience: the grandeur, the beauty, and the mystery of this stark landscape fill me with wonder and draw me toward praise.
Much of Western Christianity has been suspicious of nature, drawing a sharp (and often false) distinction between the material and the spiritual. The Celtic tradition will have none of that. In the ninth century, John Scotus Eriugena made the startling claim, “We should not therefore understand God and creation as two different things, but as one and the same. For creation subsists in God, and God is created in creation in a remarkable and ineffable way, manifesting Himself, and though invisible, making Himself visible, and though incomprehensible, making Himself comprehensible, and though hidden, revealing Himself, and though unknown, making Himself known.”
[2]
If that leaves your head spinning, don’t worry. Just go outside, watch the clouds float across the sky, listen to the birds sing, pause before the beauty of a flower. Spend time – silent time, unhurried time – in nature, in the first cathedral of worship. There you may find, as Psalm 65:8 puts it, that “the sunrise and sunset shout for joy.” And may you, in the words of Steven Chase, come to “see nature as sacramental wonder.”
[3]
I give thanks for the five days we spent at the Desert House of Prayer. The chapel there is fairly small, but the cathedral of worship is immense: as tall as the mountains and as wide as the sky.
-- Bill
[1]
Mary C. Earle,
Celtic Christian Spirituality: Essential Writings – Annotated and Explained
(Skylight Paths Publishing, 2011), p. 28.
[2]
Perphyseon: On the Division of Nature
, quoted in Earle, p. 23.
[3]
Steven Chase,
Nature as Spiritual Practice
(Eerdmans, 2011), p. 43.
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Sometimes it’s amazing how a scheduled change of location can bring unexpected shifts in awareness. A saguaro raises her arms in a psalm of glory to the Creator. Sometimes surprising voices seem to come from spaces above the earth.
Meditative walking in the
Saguaro National Park among the human-like cacti allows the silence to speak through nature. Venerable 200- year- old
saguaro cacti raise their arms, begging for clean air, that they might live another 100 years. At dinner, we listened to stories from fellow and sister retreatants of their journey through the desert of life, eventually to find the glory of God’s creation: the desert in bloom! (and grace in their souls!) The hours of Great Silence gave us the opportunity to hear voices in the soul which have been rendered silent by the cacophony of the world’s noise.
Following our desert retreat, a stop-over in
Alpine gave us the opportunity to listen to the voices of our ancestors preserved in the
Museum of the Big Bend
. If only the arrow points would speak. We want to hear the story of the mysterious
Livermore Cache. Who can tell us the story behind the 1,700 specimens of stone arrow points discovered in the highest peak of the Davis Mountains, reaching to the sky? Historians believe there could possibly be a religious connection. And the replica of
Quetzalcoatulus Northropi. Could this bird-like Pterosaur, with its thirty-six-foot wingspan, fly to the heavens?
Finally, on a cold, damp, windy night, a stop at the
McDonald Observatory allowed us to experience a #1 Dark Sky, the darkest rating in the Sky Chart. We saw images of constellations and galaxies, heard stories of new stardust making new stars, stars alive, stars closest to the heavens.
Sometimes it does the soul good to pry ourselves loose from noise pollution, to go explore an expansive unfamiliar territory, climb a new mountain, and reach for the heavens.
--Jan
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A video introduction to the Desert House of Prayer
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And to the plants and animals of the Saguaro National Park
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Recent Issues
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Copyright (c) 2020 Soul Windows Ministries
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Sincerely,
Bill Howden and Jan Davis
Soul Windows Ministries
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