We Are in the Desert
We Are in the Desert
Sunday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 29, 2020
The entire contemporary world has been thrown into an experience of desert. All our usual norms and routines have been upended by a highly infectious virus. We are in uncharted territory, as “experts” remind us day by day, trying to stay true to best practices, and yet on ground that is unfamiliar – and highly uncomfortable – for most all of us.
That we are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic during Lent is its own irony – or the mark of God’s mysterious provision! Someone texted me yesterday to say, “This is the lentiest Lent I’ve ever lented.”
The season of Lent actually parallels the 40 days spent by Jesus in the desert (Mt. 4:1 – 11) after his baptism in the Jordan River. The days of fasting and facing the temptations of the adversary prepared him for the onset of his ministry and confirmed the word he heard at his baptism: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,” (Mt. 3:17).
As a spiritual symbol, desert and wilderness have common associations with barrenness and aridity. In the desert are few resources. To go into the desert one must leave the city – where there are plenty of resources, including food, lodging, and in ancient times, a surrounding wall to protect inhabitants – and travel into a barren place where life is uncertain. The desert or wilderness was full of danger from extreme temperatures, sparse water supplies, and wild animals and robbers.
You can see, then, why there are natural connections between the symbols of desert/wilderness and the current coronavirus pandemic. Nearly all aspects of desert as a spiritual symbol speak to our lives in this current moment.
Going into the desert is what I would call an “edge experience.” It could kill you, but it can also help you to see what is most valuable about life. I often think that when we get to a place like the wilderness where we don’t have many physical resources at our disposal, we are forced to find resources within ourselves that we didn’t know were there.
In the Old Testament, the prototypical desert experience is the movement of the Hebrews out of Egypt, who are led by God to cross the Red Sea and then wander through the wilderness for 40 years. God faithfully promised to sustain them. Every day God provided a miraculous supply of manna and quail for food. At first they received the daily bread gratefully, but before long they complained and balked at the boring fare. The Israelites were forced to depend on God for their needs every day all over again – which was entirely the point of the whole journey – but they resisted God’s provision.
This week, the Fifth Week of Lent, we will explore the desert as a spiritual symbol . . . appropriate both for Lent and for our stance in the midst of the coronavirus. We will take our cues from Charles Cummings, a Trappist monk, whose book Spirituality and the Desert Experience has been helpful to me through the years.
In today’s excerpt, Cummings writes about the rebellious Israelites who complained and grumbled as they wandered in the desert.
The stiff-necked and hard-hearted Israelites are not altogether unlike me as a Christian. I can almost sympathize with them in their plight, knowing that I might have acted in a similar way. I see myself in their hopeless feeling that they were never going to get out of the desert. I see myself in their incurable nostalgia for Egypt, for the good old days of the past when things were so much better. I can even see myself in their constant complaining and murmuring and protesting.
“Complaining” is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of the Israelites’ resistance to their desert experience. Why did they continually complain and grumble against God? Like them, whenever I find myself in an unpleasant situation my first reaction is to change the matter somehow; failing that, I try to get away from the situation or get out of it somehow. The Israelites could neither change the desert nor leave it. They found themselves thrown into an impossible situation which they could do nothing about. They could not help themselves. There was no possibility of living off the land. They did not know the way out of the desert. They were frustrated on all sides. The whole experience was a meaningless waste. And so they complained. Grumbling is the response of those who are unable to do anything else. Grumbling is a response made in utter frustration.
The Israelites complained chiefly about food and water, the things they needed most and could not procure for themselves in the desert. But these complaints about primary needs were symbolic of their dissatisfaction with the entire experience of being in the desert at all. The desert was God’s way of bringing them to a state of total dependence on him, and trust in him. The longer they complained and refused to surrender to God, the longer the desert experience lasted.
[Charles Cummings, Spirituality and the Desert Experience (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1978).]
For reflection:
o On a sheet of paper or in your journal, jot down a few ways your everyday experience right now could be likened to a “desert experience.”
o What does it mean for you to be in the desert right now? How does it feel? You can be honest with God.
o Many of us are accustomed to praying for situations to be changed . . . a disease to be healed, a job to be found, an addiction to be overcome. It is a legitimate prayer, praying that our circumstances be changed.
o Sometimes we are also invited to accept a situation as it is. It may take an act of greater faith to live with “what is” than it takes to pray that the situation be changed to our liking.
o God, give me the grace to know when to pray for a situation to be changed as I would like it to be . . . and when to submit myself to You by offering my life to the reality of “what is.”
Sunday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 29, 2020
The entire contemporary world has been thrown into an experience of desert. All our usual norms and routines have been upended by a highly infectious virus. We are in uncharted territory, as “experts” remind us day by day, trying to stay true to best practices, and yet on ground that is unfamiliar – and highly uncomfortable – for most all of us.
That we are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic during Lent is its own irony – or the mark of God’s mysterious provision! Someone texted me yesterday to say, “This is the lentiest Lent I’ve ever lented.”
The season of Lent actually parallels the 40 days spent by Jesus in the desert (Mt. 4:1 – 11) after his baptism in the Jordan River. The days of fasting and facing the temptations of the adversary prepared him for the onset of his ministry and confirmed the word he heard at his baptism: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,” (Mt. 3:17).
As a spiritual symbol, desert and wilderness have common associations with barrenness and aridity. In the desert are few resources. To go into the desert one must leave the city – where there are plenty of resources, including food, lodging, and in ancient times, a surrounding wall to protect inhabitants – and travel into a barren place where life is uncertain. The desert or wilderness was full of danger from extreme temperatures, sparse water supplies, and wild animals and robbers.
You can see, then, why there are natural connections between the symbols of desert/wilderness and the current coronavirus pandemic. Nearly all aspects of desert as a spiritual symbol speak to our lives in this current moment.
Going into the desert is what I would call an “edge experience.” It could kill you, but it can also help you to see what is most valuable about life. I often think that when we get to a place like the wilderness where we don’t have many physical resources at our disposal, we are forced to find resources within ourselves that we didn’t know were there.
In the Old Testament, the prototypical desert experience is the movement of the Hebrews out of Egypt, who are led by God to cross the Red Sea and then wander through the wilderness for 40 years. God faithfully promised to sustain them. Every day God provided a miraculous supply of manna and quail for food. At first they received the daily bread gratefully, but before long they complained and balked at the boring fare. The Israelites were forced to depend on God for their needs every day all over again – which was entirely the point of the whole journey – but they resisted God’s provision.
This week, the Fifth Week of Lent, we will explore the desert as a spiritual symbol . . . appropriate both for Lent and for our stance in the midst of the coronavirus. We will take our cues from Charles Cummings, a Trappist monk, whose book Spirituality and the Desert Experience has been helpful to me through the years.
In today’s excerpt, Cummings writes about the rebellious Israelites who complained and grumbled as they wandered in the desert.
The stiff-necked and hard-hearted Israelites are not altogether unlike me as a Christian. I can almost sympathize with them in their plight, knowing that I might have acted in a similar way. I see myself in their hopeless feeling that they were never going to get out of the desert. I see myself in their incurable nostalgia for Egypt, for the good old days of the past when things were so much better. I can even see myself in their constant complaining and murmuring and protesting.
“Complaining” is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of the Israelites’ resistance to their desert experience. Why did they continually complain and grumble against God? Like them, whenever I find myself in an unpleasant situation my first reaction is to change the matter somehow; failing that, I try to get away from the situation or get out of it somehow. The Israelites could neither change the desert nor leave it. They found themselves thrown into an impossible situation which they could do nothing about. They could not help themselves. There was no possibility of living off the land. They did not know the way out of the desert. They were frustrated on all sides. The whole experience was a meaningless waste. And so they complained. Grumbling is the response of those who are unable to do anything else. Grumbling is a response made in utter frustration.
The Israelites complained chiefly about food and water, the things they needed most and could not procure for themselves in the desert. But these complaints about primary needs were symbolic of their dissatisfaction with the entire experience of being in the desert at all. The desert was God’s way of bringing them to a state of total dependence on him, and trust in him. The longer they complained and refused to surrender to God, the longer the desert experience lasted.
[Charles Cummings, Spirituality and the Desert Experience (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1978).]
For reflection:
o On a sheet of paper or in your journal, jot down a few ways your everyday experience right now could be likened to a “desert experience.”
o What does it mean for you to be in the desert right now? How does it feel? You can be honest with God.
o Many of us are accustomed to praying for situations to be changed . . . a disease to be healed, a job to be found, an addiction to be overcome. It is a legitimate prayer, praying that our circumstances be changed.
o Sometimes we are also invited to accept a situation as it is. It may take an act of greater faith to live with “what is” than it takes to pray that the situation be changed to our liking.
o God, give me the grace to know when to pray for a situation to be changed as I would like it to be . . . and when to submit myself to You by offering my life to the reality of “what is.”
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