3.15.2004
Never let anyone tell you the desert is barren. It is teeming with
life. Agile reptilian creatures lurked under stones, tenacious plants
clung to life in the thin, sandy topsoil, minute wildflowers, nearly
invisible unless viewed from close range, dotted the desert floor.
All of it was cradled in the vast embrace of a silence so deep it
calmed all thought and feeling. Life in the palm desert pulsed
without all the rustle and restless sounds of wind, trees, oceans, or
rivers.
My parents brought me to the desert in the wintertime, ostensibly to
absorb the sunshine, to let the dry air of the arid landscape leech
into lungs and sinuses. Lying wrapped in a light blanket on the
deserted poolside deck I did indeed receive the healing of the desert
climate. But in the process, the deep silence entered me and taught
me to listen, to see, to hear, to become attentive to the noiseless
substrata beneath all that is.
Conversion, the desert ascetics assure us, is forged in such a place,
a place of listening awareness where one becomes attentive to the
silence of God. There, in the vast stillness of desert solitude, we
are gradually converted, unmade, and remade. We become a fresh
beginning.
Wendy M. Wright, The Time Between
life. Agile reptilian creatures lurked under stones, tenacious plants
clung to life in the thin, sandy topsoil, minute wildflowers, nearly
invisible unless viewed from close range, dotted the desert floor.
All of it was cradled in the vast embrace of a silence so deep it
calmed all thought and feeling. Life in the palm desert pulsed
without all the rustle and restless sounds of wind, trees, oceans, or
rivers.
My parents brought me to the desert in the wintertime, ostensibly to
absorb the sunshine, to let the dry air of the arid landscape leech
into lungs and sinuses. Lying wrapped in a light blanket on the
deserted poolside deck I did indeed receive the healing of the desert
climate. But in the process, the deep silence entered me and taught
me to listen, to see, to hear, to become attentive to the noiseless
substrata beneath all that is.
Conversion, the desert ascetics assure us, is forged in such a place,
a place of listening awareness where one becomes attentive to the
silence of God. There, in the vast stillness of desert solitude, we
are gradually converted, unmade, and remade. We become a fresh
beginning.
Wendy M. Wright, The Time Between