One of the mighty illusions that is constructed in the dailiness of life in our culture
is that all pain is a negation of worthiness,
that the real chosen people, the real worthy people,
are the people that are most free from pain.
bell hooks, American author and social activist
In the south of Kildare there is the small town of Castledermot, the Gaelic name of which is Diseart Diarmad. I was struck by this name as we passed it the other day, as the word diseart means “desert”. This refers to the monastery founded around 800 by the father of St. Diarmuid, after which the town takes its name. So the space where the monks lived was called a desert, even though, as you can imagine, dry deserts are somewhat hard to find in Ireland. However, in most religious traditions we find references to the desert. So what does it mean and is it relevant to us today?
The first obvious meaning of the word desert refers to a place where nothing grows and conditions are simple, even harsh. This absence of growth means that a person is removed from normal distractions and encouraged them to focus on what was really necessary. Familiar patterns and habits no longer apply. So for example in the Old Testament, the Prophet Hosea says that “The desert will lead you to your heart where I will speak”. I find it interesting that people found the need to create deserts in eight century Ireland when things were very quiet and remote compared to today. In a hectic pace of life, like todays, some creation in our schedules of a similar uncluttered space, both externally and internally, is even more necessary.
However, the desert can also be a metaphor for periods in our lives, as all of us can pass through moments when nothing seems to be moving or growing in us, when things seem barren and dry, or when familiar ways no longer seem to work. It can be said that at such times we enter our own “desert” where we are forced to re-evaluate what is important and simplify things down to what is really needed. Periods of change and difficulty – when we are faced with the removal of our usual points of reference or with no sustenance – can be somewhat frightening and confusing. We can no longer follow our old habits of fantasy, escape or distraction. When this happens it is hard to believe that our own empty and desolate moments can be in any way positive or moments of growth. And yet, one theme which we find in both eastern and western writers on meditation is that our problems become the very places where we can discover greater wisdom and depth. Sometimes we are encouraged to make “difficulties into the path”.
Not always easy. However, the word desert, and the name of the town remind me to hold difficulties in a different light. They may not be all negative. It would seem that the secret of the desert is learning to lose, to let things go, to simplify. Periods of dryness or confusion or doubt are challenges to stay with ourselves, to observe, to learn gentleness and allowing. The frequently found theme of the desert teaches us the importance of slowing down, of being patient and waiting for the meaning or the growth to appear in its own time. Difficult periods can be, as the Prophet says, a time for journeying deeper into our own heart.
Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks I am going to listen.
Thomas Merton, Rain and the Rhinoceros
The promise of being broken
and the possibility of being opened
are written into the contract of human life.
Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open
Most of life only lasts a moment. Then our life becomes a memory, a dream. We are only alive a millisecond at a time. This moment! Or as one teacher put it, holding his thumb and forefinger about a quarter-inch apart, “All of life is only just this much –just a moment in time.” When we open to this very instant in which awareness produces consciousness, we are fully alive. Completely present. Big-minded. To the degree we are present for “just this much”, this living moment, we are alive.
Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Embracing the Beloved
Each person must learn to relate to external people and situations. But it is equally important, and even more urgent, that he learn to relate to his own self. Until he learns to confront the motives, desires and unlived possibilities of his own secret heart, he can never be complete within or genuinely fulfilled. That power within, which constantly urges us to experience our unlived possibilities and values, is the most awesome force in human life. For ultimate meaning must be found within: A man must relate to the outer world from the strength of inner wholeness, not search outside for a meaning that he finds, at last, only in the solitary pathways of his own soul.
Robert Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love
