QUIET SPACES

Traditionally, the Catholic Lenten message to us about Christ’s forty day desert sojourn has been: Take time out of your busy lives to do the same. Immerse yourself in a severe and sere inner landscape, as harsh and unforgiving as the desert, and examine what tempts you away from God. Spend enough time in deprivation, prayer, and contemplation that you emerge repentant, cleansed, and ready for transformation.  

I did see the point, but I just could not get there. Something in the interpretation just seemed off.

Then I visited the real Judean desert.

It was austere, yes, but not bleak; arid, certainly, but not merciless. It was instead infinitely complex and amazingly beautiful. True, the colors were mostly variations of tans and beiges and browns and grays and blacks, but they were ever-changing in richness and depth, sharpening in sunlight, softening in shadow, disappearing into black recesses while emerging from others. There were also myriad variations of textures and patterns, so much change and so much permanence in one panoramic view, I could not stop taking it in. Every day we traveled there, I never saw the kind of barrenness that would have led me to close my eyes and go inward, to become more contemplative, let alone repentant. I felt too embraced and enraptured and enthralled.

But then, I was there for two weeks, not forty days.

Nevertheless, in light of what there actually is in the desert, including people who mostly live a hard life but who also cozy up in often quite comfortable kitted out caves or within lively communal tents, I wondered if we might see Christ’s sojourn there differently. Perhaps it was a retreat, not away from the world, but toward a different world in which he was surrounded by marvels and majesty, tended by, and tending to, both men and women in a community that highly prized hospitality. Maybe his revelations about “bread” as more than food, of “power” as more than domination, of  “trust” as more than only that which has been tested and proven came both from time alone and time with others. Maybe he was seeing participation in active and demanding lives yielding as rich or even richer gifts and possibilities than isolated private discernment.

Or maybe, while resisting authoritarian prescriptions of what to think about Scripture and what to do as a result, I was just seeing the scripture message through my own biases (well, I reasoned, at least they are mine, not someone else’s). Notice, for example, I neatly turned the description of time spent in retreat, meditation, contemplation, not to mention rest, into action and interaction instead. I fervently want Christ, and therefore us, doing not being. I want us to model the Christ who teaches, offers new perspectives, energizes, awakens, tends to others, sets an example. The world then and now was and is too broken for us to take time out…or off.

And so I made what I wanted happen. I imposed that message on the reading.

Doing so did seem in keeping with the vision we champion: women and other- gendered voices more universally proclaiming the Word, interpreting it in fresh ways, and celebrated for doing so. In that light, I simply proposed a small adjustment in the interpretation of the desert experience. Yet, at the same time, I was haunted by the feeling I’d possibly, or even probably, gotten it wrong. And you know what, so what? Someone will correct me or challenge me or enlighten me further, and that’s where the true power of inclusiveness comes in. What I really want is for all of us, all genders, to converse about – well, everything – to ferret out the misperceptions, gender-based or biased or not, offer some alternatives, enlighten, inspire, refresh. My problem with the forty-days-alone-in-the-desert metaphor is I personally would not be able to process the kind of insights I long for alone or in isolation from everyday life and everyday struggles.

Fortunately, (and to help prove my point, I hope) everyday life and everyday struggle did actually bring a fresh perspective on the Lenten desert teaching and acted as a wise rejoinder to my own bias. A friend (who happened to be female!) sent me an excerpt of this Psalm and this poem, and I saw the forty days once again differently (because I am quoting directly, I did not alter the originals to make the language gender neutral):

Psalm 127:1-2
Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
To sit up late,
To eat the bread of sorrows;
For so He gives His beloved sleep.

The Sleep – Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

Of all the thoughts of God that are  
Borne inward unto souls afar,  
Along the Psalmist’s music deep,  
Now tell me if that any is,  
For gift or grace, surpassing this— 
He giveth His belovèd sleep’?  

What would we give to our beloved?  
The hero’s heart to be unmoved,  
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep,  
The patriot’s voice, to teach and rouse,
The monarch’s crown, to light the brows?  
He giveth His belovèd, sleep.    

What do we give to our beloved?  
A little faith all undisproved,  
A little dust to overweep,  
And bitter memories to make  
The whole earth blasted for our sake.  
He giveth His belovèd, sleep.    

‘Sleep soft, beloved!’ we sometimes say,  
But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eye-lids creep.  
But never doleful dream again  
Shall break the happy slumber when  
He giveth His belovèd, sleep.    

O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!  
O delvèd gold, the wailers heap!  
O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!  
God strikes a silence through you all,  
He giveth His belovèd, sleep.

…

How sad it would have been if I had missed such a blessing.