A Desert Reflection

After spending a little more than ten days in the wilderness, surrounded by muted Monks, you would think God was able to drive at least one spiritual truth into this stubborn heart of mine. Good News! He did.

About three days into my fasting from sensory overload, I realized that I could sit in the solitude of the brown adobe church and my mind didn't flit and skitter from one trivial thought to another. For some - and this was me before I went to the desert - thinking about being utterly bare before yourself was a bit threatening. Self knowledge, that is, touching the "real" in your own heart and mind AND naming it for exactly what it is, can be a disconcerting process. Yet, three days into the adventure for self, there I was. I had at last journeyed to the outer limits (I should probably say, "Inner Reaches") of frenzied experience. I crossed over into the newly found niche of sensory depletion. It was a place far from the tentacled chaos of modern life. What I now realize is, far from being threatening, that new place isn't a Picasso nightmare. Instead, it is an arena of mental calm and quiet. It is not just the acknowledgment that I can find a place where my surroundings are quite for a few moments. It is a placid opening in my spirit, laid bare before the "I Am." It isn't an external stilling as much as an internal reality.

The most poignant moment occurred just before a time of prayer. As the red New Mexico sun lagged over the canyon cliffs, I entered the silence of the sanctuary and sat before a shadow strewn image of a Crucified Christ. I removed my bent eye-glasses, settled onto the wooden seat, took a deep "cleansing" breath, and closed my sand-scratched eyes. I wasn't trying to be Jack Handy and think "deep thoughts" (forgive the SNL reference), or gain spiritual enlightenment. I just wanted the Creator of the Universe to somehow fill me up. I was there to gently ask Him, to beseech Him, to plead with Him, to let me know He was with me...even there in the silent wilderness.

A few minutes passed. My surroundings slowly muted, like when your head is underwater in a swimming pool. Against the muffled stillness, the soundtrack of my mind distantly played the beginning part of a song we sometimes sing in church service. The first line of the song is taken from Ps 46 and commands God's people to "Be still and know...."

Be Still and Know. How often I'd sung those words and not comprehended the importance of what they meant. Sure, on the surface the words are simple English. Small words. "Be still and know." Just four words. I get the dictionary definition of those words. What I hadn't incorporated into my spiritual life was the transforming order of those two verbs. "Be still and know..."

The idea that flashed through me filled me with sorrow. For more than 25 years I'd sought to know God. I searched for Him in church services, I searched for Him in the academy, I searched for Him in my word-smithed sermons, I even searched for Him in the pages of Scripture, believing that if I knew enough Bible I'd know enough Jesus. (Please don't misread this - I'm just quoting Christ here [cf. John 5:39-40].) There is nothing inherently negative about church, academics, sermons, or Bible study. As a matter of fact all those things are wonderful at supplementing a spiritual life. They aren't, however, a substitute for intimate knowledge of God. "Be still and know..." There is a profound truth here. What brought me to my spiritual knees there in the desert church was how far from the truth I'd been. I thought I could know God through what I did. I thought I could gain God-knowledge through my own efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Be still and know..."

The thing God desires is for me to be a willing, open vessel before Him. He does all the revealing. My job is to be completely submissive. My task is to bring my broken, twisted, unhealthy, fragile, self before Him, and allow Him to do with me what He will. (Here is where faith comes in - trusting whatever He is going to do.) That fear of knowing myself as I truly am is all dispelled in light of who the Father is. Self knowledge, then, is recognizing who I am before the Creator and that only happens when I am still before Him. "Be still and know that I am God!"

My heart constantly longs to return to that inner place of peace. That still place where I know - with all that is within me - that He is God.