In the wilderness where nothing looks familiar

In the wilderness where nothing looks familiar

Have you ever been lost in a forest, especially after dark, and search as you may find yourself wandering in circles?  It can be frightening when the wooded area is not a place where one doesn’t  know if left or right is up or down like pilots flying at night without instruments and some crash never realizing where they were.  

A very spiritual type of being in the wilderness is symptomatic of what Merton stated when he said; “We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to nothing to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.”

“The truest solitude is not something outside of you, not an absence of people or of sound around you; it's an abyss opening in the center of your own souls.  And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.  The only way to find solitude is by hunger and thirst, sorrow and poverty, and desire.  When one discovers solitude, they are empty, as in being emptied by death.”   The preceding is from Thomas Merton.

If you find yourself in a wilderness of life’s confusion do not run to find the opening of the truth that all the while it  has been calling and tugging at your very soul for recognition.  As we sit and ponder the why or what of our dilemma seek the very elements that this time will allow us to find the deep thoughts of what we are doing here.

I wrote an antidote to explain what entering into the wilderness will do for us in a moment of complete loss and find the reason to see the opening for people who need this place that resides within.

Emptiness:   emptying unnecessary baggage from within our souls and allowing God an opportunity to enter in and work within the very creation  which is us.

Loneliness:  the one attribute we don’t want but when no one else is there to fill that emptiness God becomes the total reality that never leaves our side.

Dryness:  How often we can sense the need to satisfy our dry mouths and find the soothing balm from God’s silent touch reaching deep into our soul and leaving a feeling of refreshment like no other.  

We must accept these entities by dumping the excess luggage we carry, become sensitive to the mercy others look for, and always allow the hunger for God’s soothing touch of grace.

Ralph B. Hathaway