St. Lawrence Parish

• SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
  December 6, 2009

  “STUMBLING AROUND IN THE DESERT“

  By Mary C. Weisenburger

  You haven’t seen someone for awhile. So you begin a tentative conversation.  

  “What make car are you driving now?“ “How’re your kids? Grand-kids?“  

  “Where’re you working now, - if you’ve still got a job?“ Or, “Did you finally retire?“  

  “Still a Snow Bird?“ “Watch the latest game?“  

  Did you ever ask your friend “What desert are you currently stumbling around in?“

  Sure, you did. If you asked if he or she or a family member was still undergoing chemo, or going for counseling because a spouse asked for a divorce, or facing foreclosure or bankruptcy, grieving the death of a loved one, battling an addiction or depression, you really asked him or her about that unique, lonely, difficult, even dangerous, desert that he or she was stumbling around in – sometimes for years. Even if your friend didn’t look hot, dusty, exhausted, sunburned, or dehydrated, he or she was – in the soul dimension. Because we all, at one time or another, maybe even most of the time, are stumbling around in a spiritual desert. We’re lost, close to dying of the heat of stress and pressure, our prayer lives are dehydrated, our eyes blinded by the scorching sun of a God Who sometimes doesn’t seem to care enough to lead us out of the pain we’re in. Is it any wonder that like Job we rave and rant at the silent Heavens?  

  I can think of the beginnings of some of my own, and my husband’s, personal deserts. The day I was eight months pregnant with my fourth child, Peter, and my uncle told me that my father had died at the age of sixty-two on his front porch while my Mom was taking care of my three little ones and I was out shopping. Or the week I spent crying and pacing waiting for the results of a breast biopsy and the other week I spent crying and pacing waiting for the results of a thyroid biopsy. Or the day our daughter cried in our arms because her husband had left her for another woman and she and her two little boys were now on their own. Or the day our son called and said he’d lost his much-loved job. Or the numerous family members who have sobbed as they’ve told us about enduring the hell of clinical depression. What deserts of grief and fear each one of these situations has flung us into, to walk through or spiritually and emotionally perish!  

  Sand. That’s what we think of when we think of deserts. Dead sand and more sand and an occasional wind that whips the sand into our eyes and mouths and horrible thirst and a very occasional oasis. The terror of discovering the bleached-white bones of some unlucky or unwary wanderer. The fear of mountain lions hiding in the austere cliffs. The despair of endless miles of the same cruel unyielding landscape. We don’t think of life as existing in the desert, except for spiny, gnarled cacti.  

  Yet, John the Baptist deliberately chose to live in the desert. Jesus chose to make a forty day retreat in the desert. Why on earth would anyone choose to stay in a desert for any length of time? We’d just like to get out of our spiritual deserts as fast as possible, thank you very much!  

  I think John and Jesus chose the physical and emotional isolation and physical and spiritual testing of life in the desert to acknowledge and deepen their utter dependency on God. This is the supreme test of the human spirit: who is God - myself, or that utterly Mysterious Other Who has created me, called me, and keeps me in existence through a Love I cannot comprehend?  

Peace & Love in Christ,

Mary Weisenburger

St. Lawrence Parish Co-Administrator