The Spirit's work
in the life of His people
is often a wild work,
a desert work.
He knows and loves the places
that seem empty to us
as much as
He knows and loves the places
that teem with life.
He calls us to the wilderness
to work in us in ways
that could not be done well
(perhaps not done at all)
were we not drawn away ...
+ Paul Pastor
The Face of the Deep
In preparation for one of my silent retreats at the Abbey of the Genesee, I took time to digest and meditate on The Face of the Deep by Paul J. Pastor. It was not only a great companion then, but also a wonderful book to return to, particularly during Lent.
This post will include favorite pull quotes from the chapter entitled, "The Wind of the Wilderness: The Spirit of the Desert."
The Wind of the Wilderness
The Spirit of the Desert
Let all teachers hold their peace;
let all creatures be silent in Thy sight;
speak unto me Thou alone.
+ Thomas a Kempis
The Imitation of Christ
pg. 165
let all creatures be silent in Thy sight;
speak unto me Thou alone.
+ Thomas a Kempis
The Imitation of Christ
pg. 165
Be Led to Sacred Silence
in a Place Apart
When I have hiked into the true wilderness, it is the depth and quality of the silence that enters my soul and leaves me changed. When I meet people – and there are many – who say that their most profound encounters with God are in nature, it is this sense of quiet they usually want to remember. It is the sacred silence of a space, silent not because of the absence of sound, but silent because of the effect it has on the soul. A holy silence of the interior, prompted by a sacred simplicity on the exterior. A reminder that the true silence of the Holy Spirit is presence as much as it is absence. It is entering a place apart. … I began to know the rough roar of silence as the voice of the Spirit. He was leading me, mysteriously, to a place apart. + pg. 167, 169
The Spirit Whistles
in the Wilderness Wind
If the Bible were a movie and if places were characters, "the wilderness" would hold a starring role. It's a recurring setting, all the way after the expulsion of humanity from the garden in Genesis, to the "wander in tears, forty years" of Israel's desert time, to the visions of Ezekiel, to the famous temptations of Christ, and Jesus's well-known habit of wandering into desert places for prayer. The wilderness is a place of contradictions, a place portrayed in Scripture as an empty place yet full. The wilderness is cruel and bare, yet a setting for kindness and miraculous provision. The wilderness reveals things often by obscuring them. The wilderness welcomes God and the people of God by – sometimes concretely, sometimes abstractly – meeting evil. More than anything, the wilderness is the background that most clearly highlights the high, good strangeness of the Holy Spirit, who, so often in Scripture, whistles like a wind among the rocks of the desert. A cloud by day, a fire by night. Faithfully leading. Faithfully obscuring.
in the Wilderness Wind
If the Bible were a movie and if places were characters, "the wilderness" would hold a starring role. It's a recurring setting, all the way after the expulsion of humanity from the garden in Genesis, to the "wander in tears, forty years" of Israel's desert time, to the visions of Ezekiel, to the famous temptations of Christ, and Jesus's well-known habit of wandering into desert places for prayer. The wilderness is a place of contradictions, a place portrayed in Scripture as an empty place yet full. The wilderness is cruel and bare, yet a setting for kindness and miraculous provision. The wilderness reveals things often by obscuring them. The wilderness welcomes God and the people of God by – sometimes concretely, sometimes abstractly – meeting evil. More than anything, the wilderness is the background that most clearly highlights the high, good strangeness of the Holy Spirit, who, so often in Scripture, whistles like a wind among the rocks of the desert. A cloud by day, a fire by night. Faithfully leading. Faithfully obscuring.
The Wild, Affirming,
Driving Desert Work
The Spirit's work in the life of His people is often a wild work, a desert work. He knows and loves the places that seem empty to us as much as He knows and loves the places that teem with life. He calls us to the wilderness to work in us in ways that could not be done well (perhaps not done at all) were we not drawn away, brought away, thrown away, finding ourselves on a lonely trail. This was Jesus' experience. Directly after the soaring high of His baptism in the Jordan, the joy and affirmation of the Father speaking His belovedness over Him, the Dove of heaven seemed to distend and whip apart into a lionlike whirlwind, launching Christ into the first great trial of his adult life. In Mark's account, he writes: " ... And the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. ... " The Greek word translated here as "drove out" is a rough one, from which we get our word ball, and as you would expect, it means to throw, fling, send flying, hurl. It is not gentle. Like a Major League Baseball pitcher sending a fastball straight through the strike zone, the Spirit in Mark's Gospel downright hurls Jesus (the Beloved, remember) into the wilderness. + pg. 171
Danger, Scarcity, Abundance ...
All a Work of Love
The Spirit is not playing around. Nor is Jesus – who, in the more detailed accounts of this story elsewhere, is fasting, hungry and thirsty during this time in the desert. He is besieged with temptations in the wilderness – the temptation to work miracles on His own behalf rather than the Father's; the temptation for immediate acclamation and acceptance by the people who would eventually reject Him, screaming for his crucifixion; and the temptation for an easy path to world power rather than the death-road, the God-road to the eternal Kingdom promised to the seed of David. All His suffering and all His overcoming are kept between the lines in Mark's Gospel. I like that. All that we are given here to make sense of Christ in the wilderness is the duration (the ancient "forty" of Noah's flood, of Moses on the mountain, of the wandering years of Israel in the desert), the Devil, the beasts, and the angels. A long time. Danger scarcity, abundance. The wilderness. And this, like every work of the Holy Spirit, was love. + pg. 171
All a Work of Love
The Spirit is not playing around. Nor is Jesus – who, in the more detailed accounts of this story elsewhere, is fasting, hungry and thirsty during this time in the desert. He is besieged with temptations in the wilderness – the temptation to work miracles on His own behalf rather than the Father's; the temptation for immediate acclamation and acceptance by the people who would eventually reject Him, screaming for his crucifixion; and the temptation for an easy path to world power rather than the death-road, the God-road to the eternal Kingdom promised to the seed of David. All His suffering and all His overcoming are kept between the lines in Mark's Gospel. I like that. All that we are given here to make sense of Christ in the wilderness is the duration (the ancient "forty" of Noah's flood, of Moses on the mountain, of the wandering years of Israel in the desert), the Devil, the beasts, and the angels. A long time. Danger scarcity, abundance. The wilderness. And this, like every work of the Holy Spirit, was love. + pg. 171
Silence with Jesus
is a Very Good Place to Start
I sat with my spiritual director, Father Stephen. He asked me to describe my relationship with Jesus. I was silent for a minute, fumbling around inside my head until I came across the right words. "It's as if," I began, "Jesus and I are sitting together in a dark room. He's not saying anything. I'm not saying anything. I look at Him. He looks back at me. We're together. But silent. Quiet. Like we're each waiting for something. He was quiet for a while himself. I sat, adjusted my chair. I wondered if I should continue to talk, to fill up the room between us with words. I didn't like the silence. I wanted to speak or for him to speak or for Jesus to speak. Anyone, really. He breathed deeply. "Silent?" he asked. "Silent." "Well, that's a very good place to start." + pg. 172
Can't Understand
Without Slowing Down
In her classic Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle wrote: When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening. I will never understand the silent dying of the green pie-apple tree if I do not slow down and listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling me of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all these deaths mean in the light of the love of the Creator who brought them all into being; who brought me into being; and you. It's a beautiful truth, but a wilderness truth, a desert truth. A truth of windy silences – to somehow believe that to understand ourselves, to understand the great breath of creation, we must first walk backward, back along the trail, back through the deaths of things large and small, slowing life and heart and mind, all the while listening for the voice of God, all back, back, back, to the edge of the deep, to the starting place of being. That hazy place where the Spirit summons us up from the waters of beginning and whistles love and joy, creating and sustaining. "It's good that you are; how wonderful that you exist!" We must know the Spirit's desert road, the trail away from the roars of man and nature. ... It is time for the wilderness. Somehow, with the Spirit, we must learn to enter a place apart. For all its difficulty, it is a very good place to start. + pgs. 172-173
Without Slowing Down
In her classic Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle wrote: When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening. I will never understand the silent dying of the green pie-apple tree if I do not slow down and listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling me of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all these deaths mean in the light of the love of the Creator who brought them all into being; who brought me into being; and you. It's a beautiful truth, but a wilderness truth, a desert truth. A truth of windy silences – to somehow believe that to understand ourselves, to understand the great breath of creation, we must first walk backward, back along the trail, back through the deaths of things large and small, slowing life and heart and mind, all the while listening for the voice of God, all back, back, back, to the edge of the deep, to the starting place of being. That hazy place where the Spirit summons us up from the waters of beginning and whistles love and joy, creating and sustaining. "It's good that you are; how wonderful that you exist!" We must know the Spirit's desert road, the trail away from the roars of man and nature. ... It is time for the wilderness. Somehow, with the Spirit, we must learn to enter a place apart. For all its difficulty, it is a very good place to start. + pgs. 172-173
The Spirit Tears Us Up
with Blessings ...
This Too Is Love,
If We Can Accept It
The sacred silence of our interior becomes the void, the good and empty place into which the Spirit can speak. ... He leads us into desert places ... He pounces, tumbles us in the sand and grit either roughly or gently. Away from the noise He carries or flings us, from the dullness of full belly and full brain. ... He tears us with blessings, tears us open sometimes till the red blood flows out so thick and abundant that we fear our life is leaving, that our bones will be left behind us when we wander on. And for all this, He makes no promises other than His love. If we can believe it, even the bitterest wrestling with the Spirit out in the desert is for our good, the good of His beloved. We must sometimes suffer wounds before we can be bound again, better made and wiser than before, bearing the scars of wilderness as witnesses to the nearness of God. This too is love, if we can accept it. + pg. 174
It Is the Wind of the Spirit
That Seeks to Polish Us
with the Sand of the Wilderness
It is the wind of the wilderness, dry and cutting if necessary, that blows our own thoughts out of us and the Spirit's knowing into us. It is that wind that will eventually allow us to see though our eyes be closed and hear though our ears be deafened. It is the Holy Spirit, the wind of the wilderness, that flings us into the desert like rag dolls, cradles us out there like children, feeds us like the ravens above Elijah's creek. It is the wind that seeks to polish us with sand, to let the erosion of the grit reveal our truest contours. To see what we take with us out of nothing. What we leave with the nothing. But for all this, who wishes for the wilderness? For some it has a romance before and after we are there and its own glass-like beauty that shimmers when we're in it, but for any beauty we may find, we still quail and quiver. The wilderness is where the Spirit takes our masks away, where our own hearts are flayed, where the faces of devils and angels, once obscured by rocks and birds and lust and thirst, stare at us, challenging us to blink before they do. + pgs. 174-175
That Seeks to Polish Us
with the Sand of the Wilderness
It is the wind of the wilderness, dry and cutting if necessary, that blows our own thoughts out of us and the Spirit's knowing into us. It is that wind that will eventually allow us to see though our eyes be closed and hear though our ears be deafened. It is the Holy Spirit, the wind of the wilderness, that flings us into the desert like rag dolls, cradles us out there like children, feeds us like the ravens above Elijah's creek. It is the wind that seeks to polish us with sand, to let the erosion of the grit reveal our truest contours. To see what we take with us out of nothing. What we leave with the nothing. But for all this, who wishes for the wilderness? For some it has a romance before and after we are there and its own glass-like beauty that shimmers when we're in it, but for any beauty we may find, we still quail and quiver. The wilderness is where the Spirit takes our masks away, where our own hearts are flayed, where the faces of devils and angels, once obscured by rocks and birds and lust and thirst, stare at us, challenging us to blink before they do. + pgs. 174-175
If We Can Not Say
Thank You to the Desert Yet,
Then It Is Likely
We Are Still in It
What are we to make of a Spirit – the Spirit of the same Jesus who knew the pain of wilderness so well – who not only accompanies us into the desert but throws us into it? If it is true that He is the wind at our back, blowing us into places abandoned by men, places hard to live in and dry, places of thorn and curse and cruelty, places of the sun by day and the catamount or wild dogs by night, then what are we to say to Him for such treatment? "Thank you"? I mean no presumption, and I speak this in faith. If we cannot say thank you for the desert yet, then it is likely because we are still in it. The wind of the wilderness, ever seeking your good, does not expect your gratitude when you have not eaten for forty days. "What are you doing here?" The ancient question hangs, as it did for Elijah, over the mountain, over the hot bedrock of the desert. But we might as well ask it of the Asker. And who knows if we will receive an answer that human ears can understand? He only promises love. No answers. Not ease. Only love. + pg. 176
A Favorite Story of Abundance
There is something that awakens inside the soul when one realizes that in God's view of the world there is no such thing as scarcity. Let me tell you one of my favorite stories of abundance. I will try to tell it as it was told to me by my friend Randy, a Keetowah Cherokee: In the 1950s, Canada's government was consolidating rule in the Arctic by forcing the native Inuit peoples onto settlement reservations. One old man, a grandfather, resisted. He did not want to live in the white people's houses. He did not want to eat their food. He did not want to lose his culture. His family, concerned that he might do something rash in his yearning for the old freedom, took away his weapons, his tools, his precious knife – all that he needed to live off the land in the frozen, blustery tundra. Or at least they thought they took everything away. They could not take away his knowledge, his way of seeing things. And his way of seeing was the most important thing he had. One dark night, as the wind shrieked around his place, the grandfather stepped out into the blizzard. He was empty-handed, but only for a moment. He defecated into his hand, molding his own "waste" into a keen blade as it froze, spitting on it, wetting and sharpening the bloodletting side with saliva. It froze solid and sharp. He took the knife and killed a dying dog, skinning it to make coat and harness. He used its rib cage for a sled, its flesh for food. He hitched up a healthy dog, and with a flourish of his blade, the grandfather disappeared into the white desert. ... The grandfather was strong in the old ways of seeing things – that is to say, seeing the world, for all its dangers, as a place (in its own desolate way) of abundance. + pgs. 177-178
Even the Desert Places
Whisper Back the "Very Good"
of Their Maker
For all appearances to the contrary, there is no such thing as scarcity where the Spirit is concerned, even in the wilderness, even after the forty-day fast. The bare clarity of the desert may corner us, reduce us, winnow us, take us next door to death, even, but if the process is allowed to work, we will see, gradually or all of a sudden, that we have never been alone, that there has never been utter silence, that tools and food and fire and comfort and meaning and the kindness of God can be everywhere, even here, for those who can see things as the Spirit sees them. ... Abundance can look like barely enough sometimes, sometimes like scarcity itself – five loaves and two fish before a hungering multitude. ... After all, in spite of the hunger and thirst, who, among all those whom God led into the wilderness, starved there? Who died of thirst? For the wind of the wilderness, there is no such thing as scarcity, no such thing as emptiness. In spite of any curse and harshness, even the desert places whisper back the "very good" of their Maker, who rustles the sage and dances among the rattlesnakes. + pgs. 178-179
The Difference is Seeing
The difference of the desert is the difference of the seeing. If we think the Spirit is cruel to blow us into the windy and desolate places, then we have not yet understood this. We need such barrenness much more than we think. ... The wind of the wilderness blows where it wishes. The Spirit's presence can be as arid and contradictory as the desert – but always in the service of love. + pg. 179
The difference of the desert is the difference of the seeing. If we think the Spirit is cruel to blow us into the windy and desolate places, then we have not yet understood this. We need such barrenness much more than we think. ... The wind of the wilderness blows where it wishes. The Spirit's presence can be as arid and contradictory as the desert – but always in the service of love. + pg. 179
The Wilderness is Empty of Words
It Is Full of Meaning
At some point, every person's path leads into the wilderness. Into the desert, to be quiet for a time, or perhaps to rage and to curse God where only ravens and silent angels can hear. Sometimes we wander there; sometimes we walk with purpose. We look for the path. Sometimes it is clear. At other times the sands cover even our own footprints. Sometimes it is a place emptier than empty; sometimes we glimpse a silhouette under the cleft of a rock or a cloaked figure moving parallel to us down a far ravine. The wilderness is empty of words; it is full of meaning. It is silent yet howls until the head pounds. Sometimes it is an experience of such profound suffering that others wonder how you make it. Sometimes it is so simple and personal that others wonder why you don't just "get over it." In any case, being thrown into the wilderness is an act of love. There are no promises whether you will live or die. But even there, in the deepest desert, the Spirit can lead you to wells of living water. + pg. 180
The Desert, Like All Places,
Is the Dwelling of the Holy Spirit
Though He may cast you there, He will fling Himself alongside you, rough as sackcloth, gray as ashes, and good. He does that so that in the emptiness, like so many before us (like Jesus Himself), we might find fullness; in the absence, presence; in the scarcity, abundance; in fasting, a feast spread in the presence of our enemies. In the roar of the wind in both ears, the joyous shriek of the Dove of creation, that ghostly white wind of the wilderness, you might hear Him asking the ancient question: What are you doing here? He knows your answer already, but it is no matter: you have been kindly hunted, brought or carried or thrown here because it is you who must answer Him.
+ pgs. 180-181
Links to other Lenten posts:
Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan
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