Brief insights from the desert

Reading the desert Abbas and Ammas I've learned something profound, that the desolation of our deserts illicit from within anything that which God needs to purify. Here many battled demons. They ate little. They owned nothing. They lived alone.

These people would seek the empty places searching for wisdom and union with God. They as saints would find it, not easily. Through prioritizing, renunciation of the world and its values, obedience to God and their spiritual guides they became revered. They had purity in heart, simplicity, and a true centrality of a life devoted in prayer.

I don't suggest we transform into ascetics, but giving heed to what the desert can call out of us will change us into something much better. It may refine us quite well into single-minded, unencumbered devotees of the Savior. It seems being stripped down to only us and God draws out our dependency to God in ways we cannot know otherwise; in ways where we cannot so easily hide, among our things and habits and self-aggrandizing obligations.

Perhaps this is why -silent retreats and prayer retreats- are gaining in popularity and priority, and perhaps we'd do well to make way for one, at least a mini one.