wilderness spirituality

Two weeks ago I had the wonderful experience of spending five days at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. These are my thoughts:

Silence – “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”

Experience
It is 2:00pm, Thursday, May 28, 2009 and I attempt to take my preemptive nap that I sometimes like to squeeze in before reporting to work. As I lay down, my mind yells from within about all the things I must finish in the next few days – “I have to go to work tonight.” “Should I try to pick up a shift, for extra money, tomorrow?” “Sunday’s sermon is little more than a vague outline in my head.” “I have to finish those two book responses before Tuesday, when I start my Summer 1 class.” Not to forget, “I wonder when I’ll feel like writing the response paper for the whole wilderness experience.” As these thoughts invade the silence, my phone begins to rings. Normally I am overjoyed that this little contraption reads “Kristyn” (my wife) on the display screen, but when the familiar tone begins my attempted silence is further interrupted. It was not a long conversation, and sadly I should have talked longer, but the minutes were ticking away before I would have to report to Ninfa’s, and I am still wanting just a few minutes of silence before work.
Now it is 2:20pm, less than forty minutes left before my alarm will go off. The above distractions are over, and now I am able to find that comfortable place within the folds of the couch. Ahh… silence. At the brink of sleep comes the unmistakable sound of the neighbors yard crew. Oh, they do a wonderful job; while our yard is kept up by a busy seminary student, the neighbor’s thick Saint Augustine grass is as green as a Ponderosa Pine in early spring; it is the pride of the neighborhood. Normally I welcome the sound of the professional yard crew, even hoping to learn from their years of experience, but “why now?” Silence, had just been reached, why now must it be interrupted for the sake of ascetics.
2:35pm. “Here’s the plan, I will use the hum of the weed eater to mask the anxious thoughts within my head, gaining silence through noise.” Yet, that same divine device that will awake me in twenty-five minutes, the same device that allows me to talk to my bride anytime, anywhere, is now heralding me with a number I do not recognize. My precious silence is interrupted again.
2:45pm. I give up, no nap today, now I must run off to work. Silence has failed, noise has come.
This little scenario plays out in my life more often than not. The thing that I found so easy to add to my life while at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert is the same little thing that evades my grasp in ordinary living. Silence. I loose out moments of identity and knowledge because I either do not hold on hard enough, like the out of shape climber who attempts a 5.11 move his first time on the rock in two years, or I hold on to silence as much as I can only to have it striped from me by metaphorical linebackers.
Most often my life reflects the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel:

We do not refuse to pray; we abstain from it. We ring the hollow bell of selfishness rather than absorb the stillness that surrounds the world, hovering over all that restlessness and fear of life – the secret stillness that precedes our birth and succeeds our death. Futile self-indulgence brings us out of tune with the gentle song of nature’s waiting, of mankind’s striving for salvation.
Is not listening to the pulse of wonder worth silence and abstinence from self-asserting?
Rushing through the ecstasies of ambition, we only awake when plunged into dread or grief. In darkness, then, we grope for solace, for meaning, for prayer. (Abraham Joshua Heschel. I Asked for Wonder. 21-22)

Even in my frustrated state, before I joined the noise of a busy restaurant and bar, my longing was for silence. Bill Bright asserts that silence is a mark of spiritual maturity; that, “True silence is the rest of the mind; and is to the spirit, what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.” (Bill Bright. Holy Silence. 35) True Silence, this is what I long for and so often miss in everyday life; it is what I wished to gain before running off to serve my fellow man enchiladas, margaritas, and guacamole.

Wilderness
I grew up going camping more often than watching a movie in the theater. While this experience may be a rarity for my generation, I find it soothing. The wilderness was my place of growth; it is where I learned anything from leadership to love, from team-building to self-limitations. As I got older and able to drive long distances, the mountains became my respite, my classroom. This wilderness formation found solidification with the summer of 2006 being spent within a tent in the great Yosemite Valley. There is simply no other place I feel in my element as I do when sounded by towering peaks, juniper trees, bristle cone pines, and snowmelt streams. If home is where the heart is, then the wilderness is my abode.
While all this is great and matches much of Robert Frost, the question of life and silence must be lifted to the surface. How do I live in the silence when life’s noise caries the melody of the day? How do I find wilderness in the concrete and glass of the city?
While discussing his spiritual journey from Houston to Portland, in Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller highlights Dallas in such a way that it has become a mirror into my past and present. He states:

Dallas blew in on the wing of a Gulf coast hurricane and rained glass and steel onto a field of bluebonnets. It’s an odd town, though. A big, Republican, evangelical city where you can’t drink, girls wear black dresses for dates on Wednesday, and the goal is to join the local country club like your daddy and his daddy before him. When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration. (Donald Miller. Through Painted Deserts. 21. Emphasis mine.)

Although my adolescent years in South Dallas / Waxahachie have long been eclipsed by my college experience in Belton, I have never strayed far from I-35 for any length of time. That stretch of interstate has come to epitomize my non-wilderness experience.
I-35 is a long highway that acts as the coronary artery to the bread basket of the United States. It runs from Laredo, TX to Duluth, MN, and while it crosses many rivers, it never dips into the ocean nor skirt any mountains. It is a concrete monstrosity that can get a person from the pains to the boundary waters within a day, but on that journey there will be little fanfare or taste. The scenery will turn from green to brown, then back to green; you may fall into a few hills but nothing that cannot be maneuvered at 75 mph.
This is how I feel in central Texas, with the only wildernesses within the populated bike trails of Cameron Park or day drives to a hand full of small state parks, whose only major attractions are man made lakes. If there is no wilderness, then there is no abode. Thus I must wrestle every day like a fish out of water looking for silence, looking for home.
Bill Bright says, “If we are never silent, then we never have to look at the truth about ourselves.” When I live outside the wilderness, I live in what I consider the “Dallas effect” – with too much time on my hands, a false focus on material stability, and little inspiration. Silence must be sought no matter how difficult. It may be a slow walk to the library taking time to notice the azalea’s or getting up early and going to the bike trails before the army of Swins take over. Through discipline I may learn how to survive or even thrive in Waco, but only as a man in a straight jacket, knowing he can do so much more.

Prayer
“May 21, 2009 – 8:30am – Monastery”
A prayer from last night:
Lord, I pray for all the cares, causes, and comforts that draw on me like bungee cords; that I may have the strength to resist leaving the silence.

While away at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert there were many cares that drew me to deeper prayer: Grandparents failing health, the upcoming expansion of our family, Kristyn’s parents, and U.S. foreign policy. Jesus says that whatever we ask for in his name will be giving to us; however, from experience we know that there are unanswered prayers. F.B. Myer wrestles with this inconsistency by saying, “The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer”, and so all the cares that pull us from self-absorption are to be interceded upon with faith.
Causes are the good things that grab our hearts out of silence; things that beckon upon us like lilies to light. The orphans in Sudan, the hungry in Zimbabwe, the oppressed in China, the poor in Haiti, the numb in Europe, the busy in Dallas, and these things draw our heart toward the merciful father who wishes for all his children to find rest within his embrace.
The comforts of life are as difficult as parsing second aorist middle indicative verbs. Sometimes they're as simple as a clean bathroom, but can be as complicated as the computer which I type upon. It is the comforts that pull the hardest; it is the comforts that draw us away from the wilderness, away from silence, away from prayer. The Christian is not called to live a life void of comforts; rather he or she is to be Christ μαρτυρες. (This comes from Jesus' command at Ascension to be “his witnesses” (Acts 1:8). The word μαρτυρος is defined as “the one who testifies in legal matters, witness”; moreover, “the one who witnesses at cost of life, martyr.”) In my experience it is the comforts of life that make it difficult to follow Christ so intently, and this is probably where my romantic vision of the mountains takes root. The mountains calls a person to simple living and in simple living silence is sought.

“May 30, 2009 – 9:20am – Waco”
A Prayer:
Oh Lord, as I now live among comforts, with cares, and for the sake of causes, help me find the silence; help me listen to the pulse of wonder.

Place
The Monastery of Christ in the Desert is a wonderful place. I enjoyed this trip more than most my adventures in the wild. To practice silence and detachment with the convenience of mountain scenery and service of humble monks is a tearful joy. Toward the beginning of the week I debated whether these men had much purpose living so far from society, but now with a week's experience and a week's reflection, I see their service to the Kingdom of Heaven is unmatched by most. Their commitment to live in community with nature and one another is a prophetic testimony for all who live outside the desert. Their devotion to prayer is moving to the spirit and the earth. It is unfathomable to ponder on all the good that come from “Lord hear our prayer” and “Amen”. If I had the prayers of the monks of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert on my behalf I would be the first to volunteer to metaphorically storm the gates of hell.
Now, as I sit on my comfortable couch, I recollect the monastery, my professor, and my fellow students and nothing but sure gratitude wells up from within.

A Prayer:
Oh Lord, as I now live among comforts, with cares, and for the sake of causes, help me find the silence; help me listen to the pulse of wonder.