This week I am in the Sonoran Desert. When I hike through the trails in the nearby hills, I pay attention to the plants and scurrying ground creatures and, of course, the side of the path which could or could not be a precipice down which I might fall if I do not pay enough attention.
"Oh, my God," you might say, "Pastor Lillie has trouble negotiating the UNMC Chancel steps sometimes!" Which is true, but I give the credit to my robes--and then I wonder why I don't have them shortened.
Getting back to the Sonoran.
It is a landscape that demands one transitions from the burdens of the mundane and moves to an openness to the sacred and serene. For if anything is sacred, it is the unadulterated beauty of a place that nourishes the spirit and soul.
Exiting the car and placing my feet on the path which leads to a rocky, seemingly barren hill transforms the trip into a spiritual journey. It is no matter what your God's Self looks like--or does not look like--in any desert, the Creator becomes real.
The connection to the sacred happens swiftly, before I even know it, and within a few dozen steps I am breathing slowly and intentionally, slowing my heartbeat to a calm which I only experience in meditation and prayer.
Describing the Sonoran has been a gift of many a writer before me, and Discovery Channel is wonderful at introducing landscapes to which we could travel for a spiritual awakening. I will say that all the plants, creatures, and geologic formations are foreign to me, but they have a primal familiarity that awakens in me a joy and gladness.
We do not have to go to the Sonoran or Sahara or Sinai to experience profound spiritual nourishment. We can find it through prayer and contemplation anywhere. Yet, when we need, or have an opportunity to go to, a landscape that takes us to a sacred experience, the time there is as ineffable as a mystical experience and as nourishing as any sonata ever written.
See you in Church!