Dear Friends,
We began this Lent with a Sunday reading about Jesus’ time in the desert. We hear this story each year and imagine Jesus’ struggle with those temptations orchestrated by Satan. We think of the bible’s Exodus stories, too. Moses walked God’s people through decades of desert. They all traveled in hope, a hope threatened by fatigue, doubt, and dissent. Where is desert for us this 2025?
Desert is certainly close to home. We each have our own desert places. Like Jesus, we are tired and hungry, hungry for peace, for direction, for God’s presence. Like the traveling believers in Exodus, we are troubled and quarreling, beset on all sides by danger and despair.
In his poem, Desert Places, Robert Frost describes this emptiness:
I am too absent spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
….
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Desert is a fearful place of isolation and longing. As believers who are traveling in good company, we ask:
- Who am I called to be in a time of violent conflict?
- How is God nourishing my heart in this lonely time?
- Who needs my care during these desert times?
Traveling in hope,
Susan Schantz SSJ
