There is no doubt that the desert is a wilderness. It is a place of scarcity and seclusion and struggle. I get that. But the desert is also a paradise. And that, I don’t get. Henri Nouwen writes: “There is another side to the desert. The desert is also a paradise. The monk does not just withdraw from the world, but is en route to paradise.  “The best way to think of paradise is to think about it as a life in Christ. By being in the desert, the fathers sought their own true selves in Christ. The proximate end of all their striving was ‘purity of heart,’ a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs and an intuitive grasp of one’s own inner reality as anchored in God through Christ. A pure heart is a heart that is not attached to anything, or anyone, except God. “We