Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Crossing the Desert

Reverend Darcey Laine
January 28, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

The Israelites are fleeing Egypt where they were slaves. They are being pursued by Pharaoh’s army. But once the red sea crashes behind them, now they are in the wilderness. After a little while they begin to ask “was that really so bad back in Egypt? Maybe slavery was better than wandering into the unknown like this.” They say to Moses their leader “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” [Ex 17:3]

For 40 years they wander, running out of water, running out of food, running out of faith, until finally they come to the promised land.

The story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt is significant for all the “people of the book” Jewish, Christian and Islam. This tells me there is something about the archetypal journey through the desert that resonates widely among people. This morning I want to explore that together.

The desert is a stripped down place — sparse. Life is scarce there, as is water, as are plants animals. In the desert there is no surplus or excess (except of blazing sun during the day and cold at night) In the desert there is no place to hide.

And yet the same extremes of the Desert that drove Israel to the brink of despair, called to the Desert Fathers who went there in the 4^th century as hermits, in groups of 3–4 or in communities to try to get closer to god. The desert is both a literal and metaphorical geography for a particular aspect of religious life.

While I was on sabbatical, I took a class with Matthew Fox in which we studied the writings of 14^th century Dominican Priest Meister Eckhart. As Eckhart preached (quoting Hosea) “Of this desert it is written: ‘I shall lead my beloved into the desert and I shall speak into her heart’ (Ho 2:16) The true Word of eternity will be spoken only in solitude, where people are made desolate and estranged from themselves and all multiplicity”. ¹

Most of us don’t go to the desert willingly. We are usually being chased by an army of some kind, or fleeing slavery. It is a transitional space where not many can live. Most of us are on our way to somewhere else. I remember driving across the Nevada desert on our way from Pennsylvania to Berkeley. It just went on and on, with only the Sierra Nevada Mountains breaking the horizon for more than a day of driving. And the Mountains never seemed to get any closer. But I went back to that same desert many times for the burning Man festival, where the unyielding sun, flat unbroken playa and often harsh winds changed my sense of what was important, what was possible, and what was real.

All my experiences of the literal, physical desert inform this archetypal image for me that describes a similar place in the psyco-spiritual self. The great thing about these deep archetypal symbols is that sometimes the many layers of the symbol inform one another.

So how do we wind up in the desert, if that was not where we were intending to go? Sometimes we get there because we are not listening to our internal compass. For example, I pushed forward on my path to becoming an opera singer past obstacle after obstacle. I was inhabiting a dry, sere place where I could find little nourishment. Finally I thought “perhaps I’m on the wrong path.” I thought “perhaps this is what it sounds like when the universe is saying ‘no.’” Leaving music was a transitional time without direction or a vision of the future, but my spirit returned, my joy in life returned, and after a couple of years I felt a deep sense of calling to the ministry that eventually led me to this very spot.

There is also a more subtle way of experiencing this spiritual desert. We experience this when we stop getting peace and insight and juice from our spiritual practices. I don’t think we should hear this as a “no” in response to our search for the religious life. I don’t believe one is ever supposed to stop seeking the spirit. I believe the spiritual path is a path for everyone that lasts a lifetime. The Israelites are not being punished with this wandering in the wilderness. They are being liberated, being saved. In this story they are God’s chosen. God says to Moses

… I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself … and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. [Ex 19:4–6]

I had kind of always thought that if you lived a good life, you would be rewarded with a smooth path. But this quote from Exodus is a challenging way of understanding what it means to be God’s chosen. It doesn’t mean you are living a life of ease and comfort, it means that you are called out from the usual, called to a special path. Now I need to back up and explain how we can come at this traditional religious language from a UU perspective. Our own Sophia Fahs, who was a virtuoso and daredevil of religious education, wrote that “The religious way is the deep way, the way of growing perspective and expanding view. … ” and you can’t go deep without taking in the whole of life as it really is. The religious life must go deeper than the surface. As Unitarian Universalism understands it, religious life is not smoke and mirrors, it’s not fantasy, it is embracing reality and entering into it fully. Sometimes having our physical needs met is not what brings spiritual growth, is not what brings us a deep experience of what it means to be alive.

Teacher and author Carolyn Myss says the time of wandering in the desert is a time of stripping away expectations. She says that this time of wandering in the wilderness (which she calls “spiritual Madness”) is not a reproach, but is in fact an inevitability for those who say they want to be closer to sprit in their life. It’s almost like the geography of our lives is built for a different level of living, for being producers and consumers, for caring and being cared for. But when we create the intention to lead a “spiritual life” the geography must change, we ourselves must change. To stretch the metaphor, we are letting go of our vision of where we will find water and what it will taste like.

Yielbanzie Charles Johnson preached my ordination sermon. He preached about the time my whole ritual class went on a pilgrimage to the labyrinth at Sibley volcanic preserve. At a fork in the road the planning team had posted a sign which read “I took the road less traveled by.” I saw a woman whose wisdom I trust turn down the road our classmates were not following- the road less traveled. And I turned after her. And while she found a spot in a tree and stopped to meditate there, I plunged on. So at my ordination Yielbanzie preached about getting lost, and praised my willingness to get lost.

What he didn’t know was that I didn’t get lost that day. I knew when to turn back, when to join my classmates. I have been lost since. I thought once I’d been to seminary and spent 4 years nurturing my relationship with soul, with my tradition, and with the divine, that I would never have to go to the desert again. But it turns out that this is part of the spiritual path that all people travel. You don’t have to be in the wilderness to be lost. You can be lost on the well marked highway that leads to your own neighborhood.

In preparation for my own transition from my work in this congregation, to a life of ministry outside the congregation as my family and I move to New York this summer, I picked up Barbara Brown Taylor’s recent book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. She is an Episcopalian Priest who left the parish to become a college professor. She writes

You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up laying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.

… The promise contains truth that can only be experienced, and even when it is I do not know anyone who readily volunteers for loss again. Yet loss is how we come to surrender our lives — if not to God, then at least to the Great Beyond — and even those who profess no faith in anything but the sap that makes the green blade rise may still confess that losing really has helped them find their ways again. [p. xi]

So in the eventuality that we become lost in the desert, what wisdom does the world’s religions offer?

First, be alert for water in unlikely places. Moses finds water for the people in a rock, and teaches the people to nourish themselves on Manna (an unlikely food none of the Israelites had eaten before.)

Second allow that letting go to happen, letting go of expectations is hard. Sometimes grieving is required. Let that grieving happen as well. Empty yourself of expectation and attachment, so that something new can fill that space. In the Creation Spirituality tradition, of which Matthew Fox and Meister Eckhart are a part, this emptying is part of the “Via Negativa” the negative way, which is said to be necessary before true creativity, the “Via Creativa,” is possible.

Third, be present with the confusion, with being lost. You don’t have to like what you are experiencing, but some of the discomfort comes from trying to make it into something else. It will probably take more work to regain your center of balance while you are wandering, but if you don’t want to stay in the desert forever, make the time, take the energy you need to really tune in to yourself and practice being present.

Fourth, be grateful. This is the hardest of all. How could you be grateful for a desert? But gratitude is one of the most universal and reliable spiritual practices. Medical science agrees that something happens to the physiology of one who is grateful that is health-producing. It serves as a particular type of compass to those who are lost- steering their attention towards those things which are worthy of praise. As the Poet W. H. Auden has written:

"In the Desert of the heart,
Let the healing start;
In the prison of his days,
Teach the free man to praise."

Fifth, stay connected. It’s easy to withdraw when you are on such a journey. But this wilderness is one of the reasons for spiritual communities like ours. It is right in our statement of purpose as a church “we come together to support one another in the search for spiritual meaning” We all need somewhere to turn when we have lost our familiar sources of water. We need a tradition to keep us from melting down our jewelry into a golden calf; that is to say, sometimes we need a reality check that only our religious tradition and community can provide.

Finally, remember that even when you cannot feel it you are not alone. Eckhart writes “Understand now that God cannot leave anything empty and unfilled. God and nature cannot permit anything to be unfilled or empty. Therefore, if it seems to you that you are not aware of God and that you are completely empty of God, this is not the case with God. For if something empty existed under heaven, no matter what you wish and no matter whether it be large or small, [God] would either have to carry it up to [god]self in heaven or have to come down and fill it with [god]self … Therefore, be still and do not flinch from this emptiness. For you can indeed turn away from this moment, but you will never again return to it.” ²

Isn’t that stunning, that we may even have the opportunity to turn away from the time in the desert, but if we do, we lose all it has to teach us, we lose that potential for transformation. It is even possible to understand that uncomfortable emptiness as precious, as a gift we could lose if we turn away.

The Desert arises archetypal in many cultures and traditions with a dual nature. It is desolation and abandonment, but it is also a place of contemplation, quiet and divine revelation.³ On one level or another, all of us will have times in our life where we must cross this wilderness. It is an opportunity for us to find that “The religious way is the deep way”. It is a time that challenges our faith, that shakes the foundations of our conscious and unconscious beliefs whether we believe in a traditional construct of God, or in “the sap that makes the green blade rise.” There is life even in the desert, though it looks different than in our semi-arid irrigated Bay Area backyards. May the wind, the sun, and the chill desert nights clean us of our expectations and perceptions, so we are ready for the sap that will make our green blades rise again.

 

Reflection: Immaculee Ilibagiza by Bill Landauer

 

---