Hot Wisdom for Desert Living
Seriously, what spiritual benefit is there in moving, of all the places, to the desert? Henri Nouwen writes: “Desert spirituality is a movement toward a different type of place—the move to the desert. The desert has two aspects: wilderness and paradise. On the one hand, the desert is a dry and sterile place. It is the place of the demon. (‘When the unclean spirit goes out of a person, it wanders through waterless countries to look for a place to rest’ – Luke 11:24). And whenever God appears, the evil one is also present. . . . In the city, with its compulsions and compromises, the lines between God and the demon become blurred. Good is called evil and evil good. But in the desert the true struggle becomes clear. In the desert, where compulsions no longer rule us and we no longer can borrow an identity from the world,