Advent Day Nine

I subscribe to a couple of blogs–including My Soul in Silence Waits. I rarely go to the website, instead reading the feed as it comes into my mail box. A recent one included quotes about the desert–and often I feel the winter landscape substitutes for the stark and desolate nature of the desert, although today’s collage incorporates traditional desert colors. I’m off now to spend some time in those quiet, snow-filled woods now. Hopefully you will have time to restore and find your own ‘desert’ during this busy holiday time. Maybe even schedule it as a very important appointment on your calendar this week.

Perhaps contrary to that, but also very important, relates to the text of today’s collage–frequently see friends. I spent much of the weekend with friends and visiting artist friends out in the world at studio sales and craft fairs. I wish you that kind of time this holiday season as well.

If you cannot go into the desert, you must nonetheless ‘make some desert’ in your life, every now and then leaving men/women and looking for solitude to restore, in prolonged silence and prayer, the stuff of your soul. This is the meaning of ‘desert’ in your spiritual life. One has to be courageous not to let oneself be carried along by the world’s march; one needs faith and willpower…to stop, to be silent, to worship.                 — Carlo Carretto from Letters from the Desert