Issue 216 - The Desert this Lent
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March 2020
The corona virus forces us to change our lives by taking unbeaten paths and invites us to make choices we might not have considered before. Here we reflect on opportunities while sheltering in place.
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Poustinia and Other Discoveries
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When we think about Jesus’ experience in the wilderness, it’s hard to imagine his encounter with the tempter in the desert, at the pinnacle of the temple, and on the high mountain – pleasure, possessions, and power – the “three temptations” (Mt 4: 1-11). Some theologians say that his time in the desert was actually a period of testing, discovery, and self-awareness. Some other scripture passages have Jesus going to a solitary place usually for a time of prayer (Mk 6: 31; Lk 6:12; Lk 9: 18). One thing all the references have in common is they all offer Jesus time away to discern a call to “choose life” (Deut 30:19).
The desert is not only a place of arid wasteland but also where rare specimens of plant life and an abundance of wildlife flourish: free, alive, and undisturbed. During recent walks in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona we were regaled by fiercely beautiful cacti and unidentifiable nocturnal animal sounds: all fascinating discoveries and a place to meet God.
Catherine Doherty, in her book
Poustinia, describes a sacred place to meet God in “Silence, Solitude, and Prayer” [
poustinia: a Russian word for desert.] I first read
Poustinia in the mid-‘80’s and felt like Doherty was able to name the place I was yearning for at that time: “Catherine emphasizes '
poustinia of the heart, an interiorized
poustinia, a silent chamber carried always and everywhere in which to contemplate God within.” I found when I retreated from the noise of everyday clamor, I was able to more easily visit that sacred place, where God gave me grace to choose life.
The
desert is a place each one of us can go to every day. Now that the coronavirus forces us to shelter in place, how do we spend our time and our energy? Do we go away to a solitary place of self-testing and self-awareness? Or of prayer? Do we take to the outdoors or even sites like
discovery.com,
natgeo.com, or YouTube nature videos to discover the beauties of God’s creation? Do we open our own
poustinia of the heart and enter our silent chamber to there encounter God?
Let us be aware that our sheltered place is also a
poustinia where God dwells: “Jesus answered him, 'Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.'"
*NRSV bible references
--by Jan
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Barbara Brown Taylor writes about walking through the fields in north Georgia where she lives. Usually, she says, she follows the same well-worn path, so familiar she hardly has to think about where she’s going. But, Taylor says, there are benefits to sometimes leaving the familiar path behind: “You can no longer afford to stay unconscious. You can no longer count on the beat-down red dirt path making all your choices for you. Leaving it, you agree to make your own choices for a spell. You agree to become aware of each step you take, tuning all your senses to exactly where you are and exactly what you are doing.”
[1]
Jesus was led by the Spirit of God off the beaten path, out into the wilderness, where he fasted forty days. He left the familiar places, the habitual patterns of life behind. He went off where he was forced to make fresh choices, to focus on exactly what he was about.
Welcome to Lent. Observing Lent should make us mindful of the choices we make. While there is certainly value in specific Lenten disciplines, whether it be some form of fasting or additional time spent in prayer, the greatest value of such Lenten practices may be simply that they take us off the beaten path. Observing Lent helps us suspend the autopilot of our daily routines so that we pay attention to each step that we take.
If you are wondering about the picture above, it is a picture I took last month at the
Desert House of Prayer. Trying to get good photos, I stepped off the beaten path, but did not tune all my senses to exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing. What you see is my sleeve, after getting too close to a jumping cholla cactus. When you step off the beaten path, you gotta pay attention!
Step off the beaten path this Lent. (With the coronavirus pandemic, you may have little choice.) Become more aware of the steps you take, more conscious of the choices that you take. May this season of Lent be for you, as Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness were for him, a time for prayer and reflection, a time for thinking clearly about who you are, and what you are about.
-- Bill
[1]
An Altar in the World
, Harper, 2009, 70-71.
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A Day in the Desert
An abundance of life,
even in desert places.
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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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