This last March I participated in the St. George’s College course, “Ways in the Wilderness,” traveling with a splendid international group of pilgrims throughout the deserts of Egypt, Jordan and Israel/Palestine, visiting Coptic and Orthodox monasteries, studying the spirituality of the desert and of these monastic traditions that have employed the Prayer of the Heart over vast expanses of time. I came home ruminating over how the Prayer of the Lamb has flowed seamlessly out of this tradition, but has also been tremendously relevant and contemporary for the spiritual issues of this time and place and cultural setting. The desert gets us to the core spiritual issues common to all human situations. The following are a very few insights and reflections on the lessons of the desert and the monastic life of the desert.
#1. St. Gregory of Nyssa called prayer a heart to heart talk, always active on God's part, and always slow on our part. Engaging in the discipline of prayer and meditation for me has been a process of paying attention, of listening, ever more carefully to what God is saying to me. It's the listening that has been slow. My talking in this conversation has often gotten in the way of the real communication going on, and has slowed me down. So now there is much less talk on my part, much more listening. As a result the heart to heart talk of prayer is less slow on my part, I would presume to say. The amazing thing is that God seeks so earnestly to talk with us. One Coptic monk calls this the humility of God. Prayer, this heart to heart communication, comes to us at the core of our self-consciousness. To be conscious, awake and aware is to come into contact with prayer at its heart. Thus it would seem to me that as conscious beings we are created to be in conversation with God, to be in prayer.
#2. Out in the Sinai Desert and in the Judean Desert on the sides of mountains I encountered fear. I was afraid of slipping and falling, I was afraid that the earth would give way beneath me. I both doubted my own abilities and mistrusted the environment not to betray me. But if I wanted to keep up with the others in the St. George's course and make it to the top of the mountain, or over the cliff into the cave, if I wanted to squeeze through the tight place in the cave panicky about having enough air, feeling closed in, or getting light-headed and dizzy because of the drop off of space over the side of vertical rock, there was no other way than to literally walk through the fear. I looked neither left nor right. I did not look up or look ahead where I was going. I only looked at my feet and the place where the next step was. I had to trust either the hand extended to me, or when there was no hand that the place where I was about to put my foot would hold me. There was no time to wait for emotions to pass, no luxury of whining or complaining, no time to think. Just do it. It was taking action in the face of contradicting emotions and thoughts. Was this sheer will? No, I don’t think so, since it is not my nature to be left behind in a challenge. I was preconditioned to respond to the situation in this way. This would have been my response regardless. This to me is a lesson of trust and obedience, of what is required of a disciple.
It seems to me that in the day to day living out of our lives God is not absorbed in our fears or considerations or reluctance about following in obedience like we are. I have noticed that if I don’t get a lesson of life when it is presented to me, but let the fears or considerations or reluctance help me avoid or slide by the spiritual lesson provided me, I can be assured that the same lesson will present itself again, reconfigured but recognizable. This happens over and over until I quit resisting and face into the situation. A good for instance for me is in relationships apologizing for what I had done, or not done. All the fears and considerations come up about being unmasked in my sin and shortcomings, but despite the risk there is the strong urging of the Spirit to confess, own up to the mess and make restitution. Then I usually discover that the risk was primarily to ego self-preservation, the very thing that indeed needed to be dealt a healing blow.
#3. Out in the desert we couldn’t have made it on our own. We needed each other and we needed our guides. The environment does not care about your intentions or your status or presumed importance. A bishop can die in the desert as quickly as those making desperate runs across the border in hopes of finding a job. Community is a given; no one is separate. The environment, indeed all of creation, will teach us that if we look.
Blessings in the Lamb,
Beverly
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