By definition, almost, deserts are dry, empty and barren. But after a brief visit a few months ago with my wife Judy to the Colorado Desert in Joshua Tree National Park in California, I can tell you this is not true. The aboriginal inhabitants of this desert, the Cahuilla, knew this for certain from their lived experience. For them, the desert was not a place to be avoided or feared. Like the interpretive sign in the park says, “The desert was not only their home but also their supermarket”. All their needs could be satisfied by the plants and animals who shared the desert with them. Consider the unusual ocotillo shrub: We saw many in our four-hour trek to the Lost Palms Oasis. They looked to us like nothing more than a collection of large, spiny, dead sticks, but with rainfall the plant quickly becomes lush with small, green leaves. When the plant flowered in the spring, the Cahuilla would use the flowers to make a refreshing drink; they also dried the seeds and ground them into flour to make flat cakes.
For someone like me who is best acquainted with the vegetative luxuriance of the Carolinian forest region of southwestern Ontario, the sparseness of the desert is startling and refreshing. I say “startling” because the extremes of topography and botany are starkly portrayed; “refreshing” because the eyes have the opportunity to focus on the poetic beauty and simplicity of a single cottontop cactus sheltering under an aloe plant rather than trying to absorb the significance of a tangled mass of greenery.
Going to the desert for me is a deeply spiritual experience. I would like to spend more time there; it is the psychological and sensory equivalent of a fast from food. The desert is often described as a place of emptiness but I don’t see it that way; I see the desert as a place of discipline, a place for intentionality. The typical instructions given to visitors to the desert drive this home: take plenty of water along with you, and when the water is half gone, it is time to turn back. Bring a variety of clothes that you can layer on and off as conditions change; temperature changes of 40 degrees within 24 hours are common—and so on. One would be ill-advised to set out to spend a day “wandering in the wilderness”; you enter the desert with a destination in mind. How appropriate it is that Jesus spent forty days in the desert after his baptism and the apostle Paul spent three years in the desert after his conversion, both led there by the Spirit to prepare them for effective leadership!
The desert is often described as a place of emptiness but I don’t see it that way; I see the desert as a place of discipline, a place for intentionality.
How is it that the ocotillo is able to thrive in the desert? Through discipline and intentionality. What need is there to support green leaves twelve months of the year? Save that expenditure of psychic energy for when the rains come. Not for the ocotillo the extravagant display of a hibiscus tree that blooms for months on end. And so it is for us when passing through the desert, whether by choice or necessity: We can thrive even in that harsh environment if we pay attention to our rhythms, our self-care, and carefully read the signs that mark the pathway through the desert.
There are often oases in the desert. The destination my wife Judy and I were pursuing that afternoon in Joshua Tree was the Lost Palms Oasis, a sheltered, steep-sided ravine that hides more than 100 California fan palm trees fed by underground springs that trace an earthquake fault zone. In our deserts, we may discover a hidden fecundity that is generated from deep places, even broken places within. We voluntarily go to the desert, or as we allow the Spirit to drive us there, but IJM’s clients are involuntarily carried away to the desert by their slave masters. Out of the extreme conditions of their oppression, many an oasis has been formed— like the survivors of sex trafficking in Kolkata who now display an uncommon beauty through their dance performances.
The ability to create an oasis in a desert is a priceless gift, allowing the desert to become anything but an empty and barren place.
© 2017 Edwin Wilson
