Understanding the Meaning of DESERT in our Journey....

by Bapa Eliseo "Jun" Mercado, OMI

For the three Semitic religions, the desert is a common MATRIX. It is no accident that the spiritual traditions of the three above monotheistic religions are rooted in this very harsh condition. The desert is a vast arid and inhospitable land and no amount of glamour and romanticism even from the ancient “spiritual writers” can change its cruel and harsh realities.

As a young religious, I had always wondered why our religious life had its deep roots in the desert. I tried to fathom this mystery by actually venturing into the harsh desert of Upper Egypt in 1981. With a guide I visited the caves of our ancient and venerable Desert Fathers. There I sat in one of the caves to simply get a physical and spiritual “touch” of the environment that gave birth to a spirituality tied to the beginnings of monasticism. The caves showed many crude stone carvings of crosses made by people that tried to “find” God in the desert. Being brought by a tradition of touching holy and sacred grounds, I began milling around and touching the cross carvings in the walls as I relished the memories of the holy men and women who lived in these caves.

It was there that I discovered the meaning of asceticism. There was no way to survive the desert without being ascetic. The desert’s harsh environment imposed a regimen on life that reduced needs to the barest minimum. The very environment, i.e., the desert, had become the “enemy”. In such a place, one would readily discover that the sole reliance would be on God. Discipline and ascetical practices were introduced to reduce want and needs, understood then as the “tools of the devil”. An ancient Arabic saying goes this way: “anyone who ventures into the desert and comes out becomes either a saint or a fool”.

The desert is one of the powerful symbols in Islam. The prophet Muhammad was often drawn into the cave of Hira in his search for the true God. It was in one of his journeys into this cave that the first revelation (Sura 96) was made. The experience with the “divine” was so moving that tradition celebrates the event as the “night of power” (laylat-ul qadr) during the month of Ramadhan (the 9th lunar month of the Islamic Calendar).

The first revelation is an invitation to “Read” or “Recite” (iqra) in the name of God, the Lord of creation. The strong emphasis on the invitation to “recite” shows that the initiative in the journey to God is begun by God. It is an invitation to a relationship that begins in the acknowledgement of God’s Lordship (Rabbika) thus a true worship (‘ibadat) of God necessarily must begin with being God’s “reader” or “reciter”. In time, through faithful “reading” and “recitation” of God’s word, the reader becomes “nearer” to God and this would bloom into “friendship” (Siddique). The person who is close to God becomes a friend of God.

The first revelation in the desert is an invitation to become a “reader” in the midst of that harsh and cruel environment. A reader responds to a call to life. Here we hear the echo of Psalm 95: “Today, listen to the voice of the Lord: do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness”.

The voice of God is an invitation to read and recite (iqra) that God is a mighty one and the Lord over all the gods. It is a call to listen to God and to be taught by Him. In chapter 96 (Sura) the reader proclaims that it is “thy Lord who taught by the pen and taught man that he knew not”. It is an invitation to abandon all the idols of the world and cling to the one Lord for unto Him is the Great Returning!

The desert is also a powerful symbol of detachment from the cravings of the more mundane aspects of human beings, that is, comfort and good life. Though legitimate good life is never considered “forbidden” (haram) in Islam, yet a sort of counter movement is occurring within the community through the examples of men and women who are “passionately” taken by God. These “spirituals” under one or more shayks invite people to a much simpler life style that reduces dependency on many things. In fact early ascetics in Islam were also attracted into the desert for reading and meditation of the Qur’an while waiting for the disclosure of the hidden meaning of the word of God.