"I have always loved the desert. One sits down ..., sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams..."
The Little Prince |
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Presence in the Desert |
By definition, a desert is deserted: empty, vacant, void. A thesaurus clearly leads you this direction - and leads you wrong. There is presence in the desert, as we learned last week, at the Desert House of Prayer outside Tucson, Arizona.
Julia Spicher Kasdorf* tells of a photographer she knew who sought objects with "presence" for his pictures. "In art or everyday life," she writes, "few things have presence, and yet presence is the essential ingredient" that transforms the ordinary "into something surprising and marvelous."
Maybe it is the sharp desert light, but so many things in the desert have an undeniable presence - from the ruddy rocks to the strutting quail - and none more so than the soaring Saguaro cacti, striking poses as they march up a hillside. Objects with presence, Kasdorf says, "assert ... a kind of signifying sovereignty, emanating a wholeness that invites speculation yet resists easy paraphrase or appropriation."
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Indeed. The Saguaro pictured here surely has presence, but just as surely the caption does not capture that presence fully. Another set of photos I call "Praying Hands," but all the Saguaro are praying differently. Of course, none of them are really praying - or are they? William Draper, paraphrasing Saint Francis, who, in turn, echoed the Psalms and other ancient scriptures, called on "All creatures of our God and King, [to] lift up your voice and with us sing." In the desert, it seems they do. Things with presence, in Kasdorf's words, "shimmer with metaphoric possibility;" they are "transcendent and immanent at once."
Maybe that's it. Or maybe it is even simpler. Maybe, in those vast and lonely miles, in those long and silent hours, we finally leave enough space in our lives for God to enter.
-- Bill
*Julia Spicher Kasdorf, "The Word-Soaked World: Presence," Image, Issue 75 (Fall 2012): 53-57.
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Baroque Silence
Baroque - bold, exaggerated grandeur - usually is associated with architecture, art, or music. This style, baroque, is certainly present in desert nature. The potent symbolic messages sung in harmony by the motherly green-barked Palo Verde tree who wrapped her protective arms around the magnificent saguaro during his adolescent years sound loudly into the exaggerated silence. The ground critters who chase about, the boldly streaked sky that announces day start and day complete, and fresh invigorating scents arising from newly opened cactus blooms, all reflect the grand exuberance of the desert.
Most of all, beyond the dramatic sensual promptings of presence in the desert is the profound and sacred silence in its bold and exaggerated grandeur. In the silence can be felt the Holy Presence of the divine, reflecting the desert's qualities of care, compassion, peace and harmony. Silence is not something that one keeps - silence is. Silence reveals one's own heart. "The desert will lead you to your heart and there I will speak." (cf. Hos. 2:14) Silence is perhaps, for some, the most triumphant detail of the desert experience. In the silence, everything that is has power.
Gentle reminders are posted on the grounds of the Desert House of Prayer: "No hunting except for peace" and "May Peace Prevail on Earth." Silence and peace are sisters who thrive in the desert. One simply needs to be aware, to listen, and to be. Desert presence will do the rest. ---by Jan
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