Finding a Way in the Desert
Finding a Way in the Desert
Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 4, 2020
Cummings’ words below are hard to accept. Western Christians, including contemplatives, are more often than not shaped more by culture and prevailing norms than we are by scripture and our mystical/contemplative Christian tradition.
Even my labeling, this week in these blog posts, of the current COVID-19 crisis as a “desert experience” to some extent adopts a cultural understanding of the situation. After all, we are fond of naming things, and most every name for something, someone, or some experience carries with it some inherent judgements. And the words “desert experience” suggest something harsh or to be avoided, at least for most of us.
This is not to deny that the threat around us currently is real, nor am I suggesting that we not approach it with sobriety. Most certainly we should treat these days seriously.
But I sense that much of our anxiety and desert feelings stem not only from the dangerous pandemic and from the loss of work we may have experienced, but also from our anxiety over our altered life-rhythms, over our inability to come and go as we please, over our inability to control what is truly beyond our control.
Our cultural, Western illusion of individuality and independence is being challenged. Even religious leaders, who insist on holding in-person services despite warnings, advisories, and mandates, insist that “no one can tell us what we can and cannot do!”
I wish this pandemic on no one. But it is here, among all of us, and none of us can change that.
So what are the invitations from God? What are the opportunities we may have missed in our anxiety over the loss of our individualism?
We have an opportunity to learn something about intimacy with God and others.
We have an opportunity, as we do in all challenging circumstances, to let go some of our tightly held notions about God, ourselves, others, and the world. (Our tradition calls this purification.)
And we have the opportunity to accept . . . to accept ourselves, as we are, in this moment in time . . . to accept others, as they are, in this moment in time . . . to accept the situation that has been thrust upon us as reality for now, not escaping or scapegoating, but finding life in the midst of this present difficulty.
And now, one last reading for the week from Charles Cummings . . . fittingly, about Jesus’ stance toward his own situation as he approached the cross.
We know how the loving trust of the dying Jesus was gloriously vindicated in his resurrection from the dead. Death and resurrection were two sides of the same event in Jesus’ life, an event that John’s gospel calls “exaltation” [Jn. 3:14; 8:28; 12:32]. The answer that Jesus cried out for on the cross was given to him at the moment of his exaltation, when he died into risen life. Jesus’ hour of desertion was transformed into his hour of victory. When he arrived at the outermost limit of desertedness and emptiness, Jesus found the glory of God and was taken up into that glory. When he let himself go and dropped into the abyss of death, his Father’s loving arms welcomed him to everlasting, beatific life. In the dying Jesus we marvel at a sublime act of loving trust by which he entrusted the totality of himself to a mysterious, hidden, silent, incomprehensible Other who waited somewhere over the horizon of death.
Because of Jesus’ trusting acceptance of God in his hour of death, there is no desert experience so abandoned and empty that it cannot be accepted by a Christian in an act of loving confidence that will transform the very meaning of the desert. Just as Jesus discovered his Father’s presence at the moment of most total absence, so the Christian may discover that his desert experience was a time of special nearness to God. Here we again come upon the paradox that desert experience can be a time of intimacy with God as well as a time of purification; the purification is ordered to the intimacy. In the act of acceptance, the desert is transformed into a promised land, and death is transformed into life. By acceptance of my desert experience I enter into the mystery of Jesus’ victory over death and the desert on the cross. In my act of acceptance, he who went into the desert with me now triumphs victoriously in me.
[Charles Cummings, Spirituality and the Desert Experience (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1978).]
For reflection:
o I consider where I am right now in this desert. What thoughts consume me? What worries or fears? What hope do I find? What is the source of that hope? (Newsfeeds? Encouragement from others? Or something deeper and more real?)
o Ponder the three opportunities mentioned above . . . intimacy, purification, and acceptance. Spend a moment writing a paragraph about each of them. Where are you with each of them? Where does each touch you?
o I think about how desert experiences have shaped me. I may think about two or three especially difficult stretches of life. How am I different now because of them? How was my image of God shaped through these experiences?
Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 4, 2020
Cummings’ words below are hard to accept. Western Christians, including contemplatives, are more often than not shaped more by culture and prevailing norms than we are by scripture and our mystical/contemplative Christian tradition.
Even my labeling, this week in these blog posts, of the current COVID-19 crisis as a “desert experience” to some extent adopts a cultural understanding of the situation. After all, we are fond of naming things, and most every name for something, someone, or some experience carries with it some inherent judgements. And the words “desert experience” suggest something harsh or to be avoided, at least for most of us.
This is not to deny that the threat around us currently is real, nor am I suggesting that we not approach it with sobriety. Most certainly we should treat these days seriously.
But I sense that much of our anxiety and desert feelings stem not only from the dangerous pandemic and from the loss of work we may have experienced, but also from our anxiety over our altered life-rhythms, over our inability to come and go as we please, over our inability to control what is truly beyond our control.
Our cultural, Western illusion of individuality and independence is being challenged. Even religious leaders, who insist on holding in-person services despite warnings, advisories, and mandates, insist that “no one can tell us what we can and cannot do!”
I wish this pandemic on no one. But it is here, among all of us, and none of us can change that.
So what are the invitations from God? What are the opportunities we may have missed in our anxiety over the loss of our individualism?
We have an opportunity to learn something about intimacy with God and others.
We have an opportunity, as we do in all challenging circumstances, to let go some of our tightly held notions about God, ourselves, others, and the world. (Our tradition calls this purification.)
And we have the opportunity to accept . . . to accept ourselves, as we are, in this moment in time . . . to accept others, as they are, in this moment in time . . . to accept the situation that has been thrust upon us as reality for now, not escaping or scapegoating, but finding life in the midst of this present difficulty.
And now, one last reading for the week from Charles Cummings . . . fittingly, about Jesus’ stance toward his own situation as he approached the cross.
We know how the loving trust of the dying Jesus was gloriously vindicated in his resurrection from the dead. Death and resurrection were two sides of the same event in Jesus’ life, an event that John’s gospel calls “exaltation” [Jn. 3:14; 8:28; 12:32]. The answer that Jesus cried out for on the cross was given to him at the moment of his exaltation, when he died into risen life. Jesus’ hour of desertion was transformed into his hour of victory. When he arrived at the outermost limit of desertedness and emptiness, Jesus found the glory of God and was taken up into that glory. When he let himself go and dropped into the abyss of death, his Father’s loving arms welcomed him to everlasting, beatific life. In the dying Jesus we marvel at a sublime act of loving trust by which he entrusted the totality of himself to a mysterious, hidden, silent, incomprehensible Other who waited somewhere over the horizon of death.
Because of Jesus’ trusting acceptance of God in his hour of death, there is no desert experience so abandoned and empty that it cannot be accepted by a Christian in an act of loving confidence that will transform the very meaning of the desert. Just as Jesus discovered his Father’s presence at the moment of most total absence, so the Christian may discover that his desert experience was a time of special nearness to God. Here we again come upon the paradox that desert experience can be a time of intimacy with God as well as a time of purification; the purification is ordered to the intimacy. In the act of acceptance, the desert is transformed into a promised land, and death is transformed into life. By acceptance of my desert experience I enter into the mystery of Jesus’ victory over death and the desert on the cross. In my act of acceptance, he who went into the desert with me now triumphs victoriously in me.
[Charles Cummings, Spirituality and the Desert Experience (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1978).]
For reflection:
o I consider where I am right now in this desert. What thoughts consume me? What worries or fears? What hope do I find? What is the source of that hope? (Newsfeeds? Encouragement from others? Or something deeper and more real?)
o Ponder the three opportunities mentioned above . . . intimacy, purification, and acceptance. Spend a moment writing a paragraph about each of them. Where are you with each of them? Where does each touch you?
o I think about how desert experiences have shaped me. I may think about two or three especially difficult stretches of life. How am I different now because of them? How was my image of God shaped through these experiences?
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