Desert
A few weeks ago I wrote about a barefoot pilgrimage I made in Walsingham. I crossed a ford in the moonlight on my way to the church of Holy Transfiguration. Here’s the thing. I find myself back at that Walsingham ford over and over. Something is beckoning on the other side of that shimmering water.
It’s odd how moments lodge in our imagination, they become totemic, little universes. I would urge you to take yours seriously. So here I am, and always am, at Walsingham ford. The water is swift, glitter-grey and freezing. I’m not sure what century I’m in.
There’s nothing much rational to say about this, other than it’s important to me. It seems to be showing me there’s something extraordinary on the other bank, but I’m not there yet. I’ve left the safety of the other side, have the bracing waters running over my legs, but I need to keep going. Commit.
If I’m lucky I am in the middle of my life, and it’s been interesting so far. Bit mad. But in many cultures worthy of the name, things may change around now. Kids are often raised, achievements may or may not have occurred in the outer world. It’s time for deeper work.
The poet Gary Snyder warns us: never be a slave to your lesser talents, and I think in middle-age and onwards this is an especially acute message. We could maybe change the clothes we wear, our hairstyle, maybe take our shoes off. Some disappear off into the Chinese mountains and become hermits, or wild ladies of the forest. Some get a food bank going in Canning Town and practice some of that radical hospitality Christ taught.
Most conversations I hear, I really don’t have much to contribute. Every year my kayak scuds further and further away from polite society. Lots of things I just don’t have opinions on, and if I pipe up out of obligation I feel weakened by the fiction. My punditry is mostly on silent-mode. But there are issues that I am on fire with, that I may have something to contribute. And when I need to get in contact with what I think about such things, I take myself out into the desert.
Today I’m going to be thinking about the Christian need for desert knowledge. For much of this I’m going to lean into Andrew Louth’s The Wilderness of God. This is a book I vainly wish I’d written, but I’m also grateful he has been such a scholarly and poetic bridge builder (not-at-all-easy to weave the two). I’d recommend anything he’s written, especially on Orthodoxy.
Ok, so here on in, Father Andrew is with us. He looks wonderful, everything you’d hope for in a Gandalfian guide.
“The wilderness is seen as a kind of trysting-place…a secret place, away from any distractions, where God can woo his beloved, Israel.”
Louth says the desert is a place where we can do nothing and God can do everything. Desert is hot and uncomfortable, but also a place which can blossom like a crocus, with parched earth becoming lush springs of cooling water. It’s an alchemical zone from a Biblical perspective, where God achieves great experiments on humans. It’s a place of change. “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she will answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.” (Hosea. 2:14-16) I would hope God would speak most fervently to his beloved Israel right now.
Louth reminds us that the desert, being of no real use for human purposes, is absolutely open for the purposes of God. When the New Covenant starts to arise, it comes with the herald of the wild man John the Baptist, someone that Father Louth claims is not just from the desert but of the desert. I’ve made the distinction of from to of for many years – see Scatterlings – and here John has sucked all the night-sounds of the bush, all scorched and ruddy earth, all sand-birds pecking on all whitened skulls, every bit of it, crammed it into the compressed and whittled message of his teachings.
John points towards the God who will undeceive us.