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LECTIONARY

LECTIONARY
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Friday, September 29, 2006

What is it about the desert experience?

Deserts are inherently "stressful" environments - alien to most people.

This applies most particularly to "city folk". But this sense of the alien desert is also reflected in the Bible, and the early Church writers, too. It is tempting to see the desert experience about which people write, as being a response to that environmental stress - the heat, the lack of water, or whatever. Perhaps most obviously, it is the lack of "greenery", which lack we sense as "alien".

To many people, the dryness, the aridity amounts to an "emptiness". But there is a paradox. For me, as an amateur naturalist, the desert is far from empty, or sterile, or lifeless. The life which is there has simply "adapted" to its conditions - of heat and dryness. But life is there, none-the-less. One just needs to know how, where and when to look for it.

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However, there is a totally different aspect of the desert experience which I personally find stressful - solitude. When I travelled to the Nine Mile recently, it was with a group, so I was not really "alone". However, there were times available to us all, to seek out solitude if we wished to.

For some people the desert appears to offer a welcome solitude. That is a different "spin" on what the desert can mean to most of us. In my opinion, that requires a great deal of personal resilience, for we humans are in reality almost herd animals, or pack animals. We form societies, and within those, communities. At the personal level, our societies are called "families". We form these social structures to avoid solitude. Solitude is alien to the human condition.

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Whether solitude is a threat, or a solace, depends upon the individual.

I can honestly say I was never alone until the age of twenty six years. So, I really notice solitude, and I am not necessarily good at it. Even now, I fill my ears with sound - radio, television, or conversation most of the time. Alternatively, I communicate via the internet and email. My own, or others words are always filling my head. I am seldom without my Mobile Phone. So, take a person like me, completely adjusted to permanent inter-connectedness with other people, and throw me into the desert, and I really notice the change.

For me, the desert experience approaches the social equivalent of "sensory deprivation". So I see the desert experience as essentially the experience of solitude.

For some people, solitude can be a threatening experience. Some people welcome it.

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Since moving to Robertson, 4 years ago, I have been living alone. My adult daughter, Zoe, is now living with me. However, over those last 4 years I have been practicing solitude, to a limited extent. I do have the radio. TV is almost irrelevant to me, now. However, I find that I need one human contact per day - however brief, or mundane that might be - such as a brief visit to the village to go to the local shop.

However, when we have a power blackout and a wet fog, or steady drenching rain, either of which might last 3 days, I quickly reach my limit of solitude. 36 hours is my limit, I reckon. After that I start to climb the walls. So, I am not suited to the life of a Taoist monk, in a cave on the hill. This much I know about myself.

I live in a lush green environment. This appears to be the antithesis of a desert experience, but to me it is not. At least, not if you follow my theory that it is solitude, not aridity, which is key to the desert experience.
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I write this after an afternoon spent in Wollongong, at a shopping mall, on the last day before a School Holiday break. Imagine the traffic, the excitement in the air. Families everywhere. Noise. Chaos. Hubbub. Flashing signs about "double demerit points". I spent the minimum amount of time there, except for reading "The Daily Telegraph", in a coffee shop (where I escaped, because it was quiet). Reading that paper was a big mistake. Headlines screamed of murders, violence, terrorism. Terrible stories - one shocking story carries the headline "let him starve". It is about a suspect of the Lakemba drive-by shootings. Whatever happened to the "presumption of innocence"?

After an hour in Wollongong, I could barely wait to "escape" back to my mountain-top. Solitude suddenly appeared very welcome indeed.
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But to people inured to this kind of hectic life pace, solitude would be totally threatening.

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality 

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