"It Is No Desert"

Stephen Crane’s poem XLII (“The Black Riders”) expresses the bleakness of a suffering heart—

I walked in a desert.

And I cried,

“Ah, God take me from this place!”

A voice said, “It is no desert.”

I cried, “Well, but—

The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.

A voice said, “It is no desert.”  ^[1]  

Father Thomas Merton observes in NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION that of these three—aridity, obscurity and tranquility—we discover ourselves experiencing aridity most of the time. While such a state may be a cause for longing, it need not be the cause of distress. In aridity is found sanctity and the hidden lives of saints. The scriptures tell us, “But (Jesus) withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.”  [Lk 5:16] The person who eschews the desert never sees or knows these things.

When a person enters the desert for the first time (or rarely), he sees only a wasteland and nothing there. The man who embraces the desert, however, knows it as a sanctuary of temporal and spiritual beauty and the great wonders of God. This makes sense. Our Lord Jesus Christ spent most of his time in the wilderness, there communing with his heavenly father. It was the city and its builders, not the desert, who betrayed Jesus.

No, dear disciple, you are not off. You build on solid rock, that is to say, holiness. With the carpenter of Nazareth to help you, you are building a house of love on this foundation. You may be rebuked or condemned for being holy. Do not look to the right or the left. Keep your eyes on the Blessed Trinity and the heavenly city Jerusalem not made by human hands.

The spiritual man is the living sign of the marvelous visible works flowing from the invisible love of the most holy Trinity. It is an irony that human beings actually don’t “enter” the desert in this life; we are in the desert from the beginning. One advances far in spiritual life when he consciously embraces the desert which surrounds us always. There, like Jesus, pray to God the Father. There like Jesus, allow God’s Spirit to minister to you and defend you.

If you thirst to live a holy way of life, return to the Sacrament of Confession—the springs of life-giving water. The Spirit’s voice speaks—“It is no desert!” In this sacramental oasis you will find refreshment, regeneration and the spiritual strength to care for your brothers.

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^[1]  Stephen Crane, THE COLLECTED POEMS OF STEPHEN CRANE, "The Black Riders", XLII, ed. Wilson Follett (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) 45. 

Photo courtesy of Ookaboo.