The Desert

 

My last post was about the Vatican, a very religious space. I want to talk about another religious and spiritual place--The Sahara.  It wasn't on the bucket list, but somehow we found ourselves there... The path that took us there was through Morocco - another amazing country and culture.

At first glance, the differences are obvious between the two places from a physical properties perspective, but the similarities ended up being so close it surprised me.

Of course these weren't my first thoughts, but once I acclimated to the camel's gangly strides, had soaked in enough of the astonishing vista, taken in the beauty of unending sand dunes and filled my eyes with the blue blue sky, my reflective juices started to flow...

The Beginning

It took all day to get to the Sahara....  That by itself created a heightened anticipation of what the desert would be like.  I had dreamed about the Sahara as a kid.  Some of my favorite stories were tales of the 1000 Arabian Nights.  The many hours on the road getting there gave me time to create a lot of images in my mind.  I won't lie when I say that I didn't get goose bumps when the driver finally pointed to the horizon to show the faint and far away pink dunes rising above the desert plain.  They looked like mountains but weren't the same..... yes, they were mountains, just of sand. The color wasn't quite right.  They were a desert rose color.  They seemed unreal and mystical.  My heart beat a bit faster as we got nearer. It was incredibly romantic, but not in the typical ways, rather, more like the notions that I remembered reading those stories of far away Arabian places.  I let my mind conjure of visions of high adventure and mystical caravans.                                                                          

                                                                        

                                                                        Arrival

I got out of the van, it wasn't hot, but cool.  Winter in the desert is beautiful.  It felt wonderful too. The sun was out, casting an amazing array of light and shadows across the dunes.  It was that time of day when things were settling down, the calm before sunset. There wasn't any noise.....it was so quiet and  so vast.... really peaceful.

Caravan

We met our camels quickly.  Mine was named Bob Marley, which made me laugh!  What interesting creatures they are.  Getting up on and down on one is an adventure all by itself.  After only a few minutes it became so clear that these animals were designed for the desert.  No other animal seemed to make sense being out there.  They are perfectly designed to seamlessly navigate the shifting sands of the Sahara.  (I was sore in places I hadn't been before.....)

The desert is constantly changing.  You have new perspectives every 5 minutes.  The color of the sand seemed to shift as well.   The caravan lines of the camels seemed completely right....there is no other way to travel those dunes.  The slow plodding of each camel's step made ground quickly.  Within a few minutes civilization was nowhere to be found and I had no idea of direction.  I was fascinated by the shapes of the sand, the way the sunlight played off of the landscape.  There was no wind and it was very peaceful.

It was that perfect time of day, when the sun decided to make its own movie by reflecting the picture perfect silhouettes of the caravan against the desert itself -- as if it each dune was it's own projection movie screen.....casting light and shadow whenever it wanted to telling its own story.

It wasn't difficult at all to imagine age old caravans crossing thousands of miles of desert to connect humans to other humans, carrying small samples of their respective cultures in their wares, their food, their language and beliefs.   

This quickly became a place where I didn't want to be a tourist any more....no, I wanted to be local suddenly, with the ability to speak Arabic, talk to camels and know the ways of the desert.  I wanted to shed my skin and go native, like I tried to do in every country I lived in. 

Sunset

We stopped, and walked to the top of a dune.  We sat in the cooling sand watched the sunset which was gorgeous.  The dark orange red sun blazing as it descended out of sight cast a warm glow across the sky.  The Berber camel guides lit a small dry bush on fire and it glowed like a desert lantern.

 “What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.”

Deserts almost devoid of water and life.  In the scriptures, many passages speak of literal deserts and wildernesses, but desert images are also often employed as an opportunity to reflect on our relationship to God.  Our deserts can be literal or metaphorical, but in the Bible we learn they can be the very places where God finally finds us and calls us back to life in him.

“The desert does not mean the absence of men, it means the presence of God”. 

- Carlo Carretto

I came to realize deserts are special places....places that we must travel in order to find ourselves and often, God.  We all have deserts inside of us.  I started to realize the times in my life where there had been spiritual droughts.  Times when I wasn't aligned, questioned my beliefs and even strayed from things I knew were true.  It hit me that these were my desert journeys.  Often they seem isolated and alone.  But they almost always have been temporary, at least for me.  They were like proving grounds, requiring a bit of personal desolation and sacrifice in order to find something clearer on the other side.  They have been bridges linking not knowing to knowing,... from confusion to confidence..... from hurt to healing, from sin to sanctity, and from misery to mercy.  

Haven't you been through your own desert?  

Here are a few who have....

•  "And the child continued to grow and to become strong in spirit, and he lived in the deserts until the day of his public appearance to Israel." Luke 1:80

• "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Matthew 4:1

• "Then John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." Mark 1:4

The deserts of our lives are undoubtedly troubling places of both temptation and doubt, but they can also be the occasion for deep spiritual renewal.

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I cam to love the Sahara for all of the normal reasons anyone would, amazed by it physical magnificence and majesty, which I expected.

However I left loving the Sahara for all the unconventional reasons anyone would, amazed by its spiritual magnificence and majesty, which I didn't expect.

I have experienced the other end of the wilderness...I have found that well the Little Prince talked about.  And yet, I know that I am not through with my desert sojourns.... more are coming, I know, because I am human and full of faults, but I welcome them more now as I have a deeper appreciation for why I must pass through them.

May your desert journeys be as amazing as mine....