Treasure in the Wilderness: Desert Spirituality for Uncertain Times

By Andrew D. Mayes

This exciting resource on desert spirituality is quite unlike any other: at once a physical journey to outstanding deserts of the planet and an odyssey of the soul. A journey of discovery takes us across five continents as we venture to places few pilgrims reach: the Gazan desert, the Sahara, the Australian outback, the Athos wilderness and the Ordos Desert of China, and the Syrian desert, among others.

Evocative descriptions by early travelers and by the author immerse us into a diversity of wilderness landscapes, stimulating the senses and the imagination. Physicality leads to spirituality as we listen to compelling voices that speak to us poignantly across space and time--including spiritual writers long-forgotten or not well-known. These unearth for us the treasure we seek: we uncover the distinctive charism of each desert, offering us different and challenging ways of looking at the world and at the spiritual life. We discover the unpredictable desert to contain unexpected, priceless treasures of transformative wisdom that speak uncannily into our own contemporary spiritual search. We see how these gems can energize and inspire our discipleship or spiritual practice. As we embark on this spiritual quest, we may never be the same again!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666775235

Andrew D. Mayes

Andrew D. Mayes, an episcopal priest and a Franciscan, served as spirituality adviser to the Diocese of Chichester and to the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf. He lived several years in Jerusalem, firstly as a theological researcher and later as director of courses of St George’s College. He is the author of sixteen spirituality books, including the award-winning Learning the Language of the Soul; Beyond the Edge: Spiritual Transitions for Adventurous Souls; and, from Wipf and Stock, Gateways to the Divine: Transformative Pathways of Prayer from the Holy City of Jerusalem; Voices from the Mountains: Forgotten Wisdom for a Hurting World; Climate of the Soul: Ecological Spirituality; and Treasure in the Wilderness: Desert Spirituality for Uncertain Times.

Book preview

Introduction

This new resource on desert spirituality is quite unlike any other.

This is at once a physical journey to outstanding deserts of the planet, and an odyssey of the soul. Firstly, we find ourselves on a journey of discovery that takes us across five continents of the globe. Our itinerary includes deserts rarely featured in books on desert spirituality. We will venture to places on earth that few pilgrims seem to reach: the Gazan desert, the Sahara, the Australian outback, the Athos wilderness and the Ordos Desert of China, the Syrian desert, among others.

We will first encounter these deserts through the testimonies of intrepid explorers who pioneered a track through the wilderness. The first westerners to research such deserts composed diaries and published extraordinarily vivid, evocative and descriptive accounts as they sought to convey, with barely-concealed excitement (or exhaustion), their discoveries amidst the sands and rocks, to those who had never visited before. With immediacy, these plunge and immerse the pilgrim-reader into a diversity of wilderness landscapes, stimulating the senses and the imagination. These accounts are supplemented by the author’s own first-hand impressions, so we gain a real sense of the physicality of each desert, a sense of place.

But this is no tour or holiday trip but an adventure of the soul, indeed, a kind of treasure hunt. So, secondly, we go on a search for the singular treasure of each desert, gems often hidden beneath the sands or concealed between the rocks. We seek to uncover the particular, distinctive charism or gift of each desert, and must be prepared, as it were, for some digging—trawling through layers of history and sifting through manuscripts and parchments until we find a compelling voice that speaks to us significantly, poignantly across space and time—a spiritual writer perhaps long-forgotten or not well-known. They offer us new reserves of courage and fresh insights, a different, alternative and often challenging way of looking at the world and at the spiritual life. As we stumble on these sometimes ancient sources, we find that they speak to our situation in an extraordinary way. We will discover the unpredictable desert to contain unexpected and priceless treasures. We will encounter transformative wisdom that speaks uncannily into our own contemporary spiritual search and hearten and encourage us, while posing to us fresh questions.

So, thirdly, we will discover how these treasures can enrich our own lives, and speak to the inner desert of prayer. We are invited to experience for ourselves and make our own the gems we unearth and see how they can energize and inspire our discipleship or spiritual practice. As we embark on this spiritual quest, we sense that we might never be the same again!

People often shy away from the desert, fearing that it is a God-forsaken land. In fact, it turns out to be a God-revealing land, its emptiness paradoxically brimming with the presence of the Divine. We will see how God works in deserts physical and spiritual, the One who draws us saying: I will lead you into the wilderness and there I will speak to your heart (Hos 2:14, DRA). We will experience how the desert can be a transformative time and place as we move through these uncertain times.

Who is this for?

The book is designed to be used by both individuals and groups. Questions at the end of each chapter are provided to stimulate personal reflection and group discussion. Three readerships are in mind.

First, it is for those longing for discovery and adventure in their spiritual lives. It is for those needing something more in their spiritual experience, with a desire to go deeper and further in their spiritual quest.

Second, it is for those who support others on their spiritual journey: those who serve as spiritual directors, soul-friends or accompaniers. The desert is an important theme in the training of spiritual directors and this can serve as a handbook or textbook for such a course.

Third, it is for seekers, for those wanting to discover for themselves the astonishing riches of classic spiritual writers. The book will open the user to a wide variety of spiritual resources that will inspire the spiritual journey.

In house-groups it can be used as a Lent/Eastertide course or at any time of year in an adult education program. It is recommended that both individuals and course participants keep a journal or note book, in which to note and reflect on the transitions taking place in themselves as they undertake this life-changing journey.

The Spiritual Quest

The theme of searching runs through the Scriptures and surfaces clearly in the Gospels and the Pauline writings. The Wisdom literature calls us to a dedicated quest:

If you indeed cry out for insight,

and raise your voice for understanding;

if you seek it like silver,

and search for it as for hidden treasures—

then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God. (Prov

2

,

3–5

)

Job speaks of the excitement and determination required in the quest for treasure:

Surely there is a mine for silver,

and a place for gold to be refined.

Iron is taken out of the earth,

and copper is smelted from ore.

Miners put an end to darkness,

and search out to the farthest bound

the ore in gloom and deep darkness.

They open shafts in a valley away from human habitation;

they are forgotten by travelers,

they sway suspended, remote from people.

As for the earth, out of it comes bread;

but underneath it is turned up as by fire.

Its stones are the place of sapphires,

and its dust contains gold. . .

Where then does wisdom come from?

And where is the place of understanding?

It is hidden from the eyes of all living,

and concealed from the birds of the air. . .

God understands the way to it,

and he knows its place. (Job

28

:

2–6

,

12

,

20–23

)

The ecstasy of uncovering a hidden treasure is a deep, archetypal experience: we are invited here to discover something precious, of great value, perhaps long forgotten. Indeed, some of the treasures we will now take a look at have been long- buried in the depths of the Christian tradition.

Matthew’s gospel gives us the parable of the hidden treasure:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matt

13

:

44

)

Matthew introduces the theme of searching and hiddenness in the nativity narratives with the search of the wise men venturing across the eastern deserts, archetypal figures representing every man and every woman in their dedicated odyssey and quest for the redeemer. Jesus, the revealer of the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven (13:11), quotes the psalmist’s words: I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world (13:35, see Ps 78:2). He invites us to become persistent searchers in prayer: search, and you will find. . .everyone who searches finds. . . (Luke 11: 9,10). Jesus delights too in the theme of treasure:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt

6

:

19–21

)

The Pauline writings cherish this theme of riches waiting to be discovered. The Letter to the Colossians prays: I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:2–3). Colossians marvels at the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints (1:26). Paul is very clear: we stand on the brink of astonishing discoveries:

We speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. . .as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him— these very things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. (

1

Cor

2

:

7–10

)

In this book such a theme of spiritual searching and discovery lies very much before us. We are stepping out on the quest of a lifetime, ready to unearth the treasures of the desert!

Discovering Sources of Renewal for an Age of Uncertainty

Outline of the Book

We live in an age of uncertainty. Long-cherished paradigms are fracturing and crashing, old certainties crumbling, and everything seems in a state of flux, unpredictable, unreliable. But the deserts abide. They do not seem to change very much. They persist in their deafening silence and untapped wisdom. They are always there, it seems—waiting to be discovered, waiting to reveal their treasures.

The journey of this book begins, not with the first deserts of the Bible but with Australia’s primal desert—because it represents humanity’s earliest search for the Divine in the wilderness and raises important questions for us: deep listening, making connections. We meet Aboriginal writers who equip us with essential themes for our journey from their primordial desert. They encourage us to overcome a sense of disconnection from the natural world, and convert us from an exploitative approach to the earth to one of reverence and wonder. They especially nudge us into the art of reading the landscape and learning from the land beneath our feet.

In chapter two we walk in the footsteps of the Moses and the Exodus, as they lead us deep into the Sinai desert. We learn about the key skill of watchfulness from Philotheos of Sinai and Hesychios the Priest, living at the monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in the seventh century. This re-awakens in us new alertness to the Divine, and shakes us from the risk of sleep-waking into the future.

The Judean and Galilean deserts draw us, magnetically, to ponder afresh the theme of resourcing lives of compassion. We are heartened by the transformative effect of retreat into the desert that Jesus himself experienced. The gospels reveal to us how significant the eremos and desert experience were for the shaping and empowering of Jesus’ ministry. We also remember how Jesus was sustained by finding a desert in the city.

Next we allow the early Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th and 5th centuries to plunge us into the prayer of the Egyptian deserts. Ancient words of wisdom shed extraordinary light on the contemporary issue of self-image which these days is either overblown in celebrity culture or diminished as people experience post-pandemic vulnerability and a terrifying sense of their own mortality. In the Egyptian desert sands we discover something about the True Self and our amazing potentiality for the Divine.

In chapter five, treading the dunes of Gaza we encounter a desert area that suffers great pain today, yet had been a significant center of prayer in earlier centuries. We find tears in the sand, learning from Hilarion (291–372), Isaiah of Scetis (d. 491), Barsanuphius (d. 545) and his contemporary John the Prophet, and Dorotheos (510–620) about the how the gift of tears leads from grief to hope.

In chapter six we see how the mystics of the Syrian desert have much to teach us about spiritual freedom. The ground-breaking practices of the Syrian mystics of the 4th—6th centuries reveal an astonishing range of spiritual exercises and challenge us to be ourselves in Christ. In an age when we find ourselves pushed into molds of other people’s making and have certain expectations forced on us, we draw from the Syrian mystics the courage to be our own person and celebrate our own unique individuality.

As we ascend the sacred monastic Mount Athos, paradoxically we learn about entering the very depths. Staretz Silouan (1866–1938) and his disciple Sophrony lead us into a transformative spirituality of descent. We quit the shallows and superficiality of modern living and allow ourselves to be transformed by the depths.

The wilds of the Sahara desert, in chapter eight lead us to the theme of presence and compassion. Charles de Foucauld from the last century teaches us about the power of a silent presence of prayer, while his follower Carlo Carretto leads us to find the deserts in the city and on the streets. They help us to integrate doing and being, and suggest ways we can become a healing presence in a hurting world.

Expansive horizons open before us in chapter nine as we venture into the little-explored Chinese deserts of Ordos and Gobi. With Teilhard de Chardin, we gain an extraordinary vastness of vision. We quit narrow thinking and even revered inherited concepts of God and self and allow ourselves to be awed by cosmic perspectives.

Finally, in the rocky Chama Canyon of New Mexico, we visit Christ in the Desert Monastery to discover a living, sustainable spirituality and ecology from the Benedictine community that speaks powerfully to our lifestyle today. This prompts us to take another look at how we live and how we sustain a life-giving relationship with God, the earth and ourselves.

Becoming an Eremophile: My Experience

I first set eyes on a desert in 1979, when at the age of 22 I began a three month course at St George’s College Jerusalem. When I first saw the Judean desert I was deeply awed by its majesty and mystery. I was to return to this desert many times as teacher and as a retreatant at Mar Saba. It has been my privilege to make four retreats there—after gaining the permission of His Beatitude, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. Once, on arrival, I was asked by the Guest Brother: What do you seek? It is a good question to be asked at the start of any retreat or entering the desert! Later, one of the monks led me across the torrent of the Kidron to the other side of the gorge, where I could enter the cave first occupied by St Saba in 478.

I have trekked to several of the monasteries of the Judean desert abandoned after the Arab conquest, guided by Hirschfield’s archeological survey The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period.¹ This awesome landscape has been a magnet to me over forty years and accounts for the reason I am an eremophile! When living in Jerusalem my son Adam, then 16, would often ask me to take him on a drive through this desert. It was a short journey—using the tunnel under the Mount of Olives—to reach the desert landscapes and the steeply descending road going down towards the Dead Sea, many feet below sea level. We loved the Wadi Qelt, where Elijah had first lingered. Often we also took the road to Nabi Musa, a traditional site of the burial of Moses and an important Islamic shrine. But this road was often lonely—we never passed a car and on one occasion found our vehicle surrounded by 40 camels without a herder who decided to take to the road rather than stay on rough ground. In 2012 I sojourned for a while in a Bedouin village called Al-Jiftlik near Jericho and Tubas and opposite St Gerasimos.² My son and I were put in sole charge of a solidarity project making mud bricks for the rebuilding of local Palestinian schools, regularly demolished by Israeli bulldozers. Unusually, it was raining in the desert (it was January) and it is very hard to make mudbricks in the rain! In addition, the two camels entrusted to our care managed to escape and we had to enlist the help of local Bedouin to retrieve them! The ships of the desert can be very independently-minded!

When director of Continuing Ministerial Education for the Diocese of Chichester I led newly ordained deacons and priests into the desert as part of their formation journey. On one occasion, a small group of us decided to leave the Kfar Hanokdim camp where we were staying near Masada—because there was also a rowdy youth group there—and sleep out in the open desert way beyond the perimeter of the camp in the pitch blackness. The ground was very stony but at last we found a strip of ground that seemed smoother, so we laid out our bedding there, and slept a bit, except for the visit of the desert fox sniffing around our strange smell. But in the morning we were rudely awakened—by a jeep! We had slept in the middle of a road!

Even in the desert, silence is sometimes hard to find. On another occasion I was taking a group of twenty new priests into the desert of Wadi Rum in the Jordan. We stopped and I invited them to walk out in ones across the sands to experience the deep stillness of the desert. As they paused to stand still and expectant in the landscape, facing the rugged mountains beloved of T. E. Lawrence, the only noise being the wind across the plain—a JCB digger, engine roaring, emerged from behind a big rock! The desert can be an unpredictable place, and silence is precious indeed.

When Director of Courses at St George’s Jerusalem (2009–11) I led students on a program entitled Ways in the Wilderness, crossing the Negev desert to reach the border with Egypt, before visiting the stunning ancient monasteries of Wadi Natrun, and later the desert landscapes of Jordan’s Wadi Rum. Where possible we slept beneath the stars or in tents. I