“The desert is in the heart of your brother…” – so wrote T.S. Eliot.
Nearly two thousand years ago, people started to leave what they saw as the corruption of city life and move out into the desert.
They were monks!
We can admit that many cities today are full of things that demean the human spirit – poverty, violence, destitution…
And the desert – even if it is a withdrawing rather than a moving into a physical desert – can be a formative time.
Sometimes we have to leave places where we have felt secure – perhaps a place of work, or a home, a voluntary organisation, a church, a community – for good reasons. We may face a time “in the desert” whilst we grieve for what we have lost, and puzzle over what the future holds.
Sometimes walking through the desert is an integral part of our spiritual journey.
Have you lived through a “desert”?
What supported your spiritual journey?
Flowering Poverello 