mystifying, this endless painted sky dancing with desert’s expanse
Breathing in that thin, chilled air that only the high desert can produce, I move with Earth’s steady roll watching the horizon rise to meet the Sun. A feeling of desolation begins to set in my heart, a sense I have often encountered as I try to make the high desert my home.
In this desert expanse peppered with craggy, red rocks revealing Earth’s inner life, with land that stretches as far as the eye can see, and then some, where even the air spreads itself thin, it is hard to imagine the desolation felt by early desert mothers and fathers that came before us. Whether here in this red rocked land or across the world in Holy Land’s desert wilderness. They were not graced with such luxuries as a Welcome Center, Trading Post, or Dining Hall a few steps away (the image is from Ghost Ranch, in Abiquiu, NM). What did they see when they came into this land, and why did they stay?
What is it about these seemingly desolate places that draw us to them? Is it because any notion we thought we had of ourselves, life, the Source, the Mystery is apophatically wiped away when confronted with this empty expanse?
This harsh high desert landscape forces me to confront those deeper parts of myself, parts left open, raw, and exposed, gasping for air in this thinned and stretched land. All I can then do is come kneeling before the Mystery, for there is nothing in the vicinity to which I can cling or to which I can assign Its presence.
Unfathomable Mystery, i cannot know You
Unfathomable Mystery
of thin and empty places
i long to know You
but You are unknowable
i reach out to You
but You are beyond my grasp
You are presence and absence
You are lightness and darkness
and You are none of those things
wipe away my human notions of You
so i may rest in Your mystery
