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There is a physical desert, inhabited by a few exceptional men and women who are called to live there; but more importantly, there is an inner desert, into which each one of us must one day venture. It is a voice; an empty space for solitude and testing.

-Frere Ivan
The Desert and the City
quoted from The Desert, An Anthology for Lent

He [John the Baptist] is in the wilderness. Obviously because he finds these surroundings appropriate to his life- the parched solitude, the endless spaces, where no one can feel at home. Inevitably we keep discovering that we too are in the wilderness, the wilderness of a great city, the wilderness of isolation, a wilderness that seems to have no center, a wilderness we cannot feel at home in. And we are also men and women who would live in a wilderness if we have to give our outward environment the shape of that which is within us.

-Karl Rahner 1904-1984
sermon for Advent 3(B)
from The Great Church Year

                          A Way in the Wilderness by Suzanne Gutherie

O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water. -Psalm 63:1

At first, the desert appears as a place of danger; of demons, wild beasts, roaming spirits, and temptation. Then, the desert opens as a place of unspeakable beauty - the desert hosts ministering angels and offers an unhindered sphere for the encounter with God.

The Biblical desert evokes the love story of God and Israel. In the wilderness, the Hebrews came to know Yahweh after centuries of slavery in Egypt. Here, Elijah took refuge, David hid from his enemies, Jesus came to be tested.

In more prosperous times, the idea of the desert offered nostalgia. Israel forgets the bitterness of her forty year sojourn and remembers intimacy, forgets the boring diet and remembers that manna tasted like honey. God forgets the golden calf and proposes to lure Israel back for a second honeymoon. Likewise, the soul forgets the privations and terror of that first plane of disorientation and only remembers opening to the Other.

In Advent, the church invites you back into the desert with the call of John the Baptist. Do you return for wild beauty and wonder?  Perspective and unbearable intimacy? Or, is this your first journey into the desert? Are you ready, like John, to live solely upon what God provides for you? Will you feel for the first time that unbearable longing for God? Or, are you returning in order to regain that essential longing, lost somehow in the busyness of daily life and responsibility and anxiety and worry, loss of faith, or mere or laziness or acquiescence?

You are not alone in this Advent desert wilderness.

John the Baptist dwells in the desert completely dependent upon what God provides for him - locusts and wild honey, wearing camel's hair from some carcass he found. Pure and holy, John guides the way in the wilderness. To see the glory and beauty of the wilderness, you need to find your way with the advice of John: awake, repent, turn around, and take the time to deepen your capacity for attention. For then,

Those who go through the desolate valley
   will find it a place of springs,
   for the early rains have covered it
   with pools of water.
                                          - Psalm 84:5