Deserted

[Sorry for the blackout there for a couple days: 24 hour silent retreat followed by a full weekend o' fun and religiosity.]

The retreat I went on was called Poustinia. It’s the Russian word for “desert”, and it originated in the Eastern Rite of Catholicism, but is now a more common practice across Catholic traditions.

Basically, you spend 24 hours in a “cell” with just you, a Bible, a journal and pen, a loaf of bread, and water.

That’s it.

And it was AWESOME.

We did it in the empty rooms at the seminary, so they were single rooms that were your decent, old, bare, dorm rooms with a bed, a sink, a desk, and a window.

Nothing crazy weird or anything happened, just lots of great insights and personal peace.

After the first hour or so of just concentrating on being open, I was thinking about my post earlier about “that generation” it occured to me that I’d heard that Moses was never allowed into the Promised Land, but I’d never actually heard what he did that was so terrible. So I followed a lot of cross-referencing (side note: If you’ve never done this, I HIGHLY recommend it: It’s an experience in and of itself to see how tied together the ENTIRE Bible is!) to find out. Basically, he gave up on God’s mercy for sinners. He got short — and sort of downright mean, the way I read it — with the complaining Israelites! They were complaining for the second time of not having water in the desert, and he’s like (paraphrasing, obviously), “You Rebels!” (And I wonder if that actually had a swear-word connotation back then, as though he was saying something equivalent of “You ************s!”… food for thought…) “We’re just gonna get water out of the rock here again for you, even though you don’t deserve it, you ingrates…” And he has to strike the rock a second time because the first time doesn’t work, whether Moses was lacking in faith, or his negativity got in the way, or whatever the reason for not being able to perform a miracle is.

So God comes in and tells him that he just blew his chance at getting to enjoy the Promised Land. Now, obviously, he made it to heaven, seeing as how he appears with Jesus and Elijah at the Transfiguration, but while on earth he only gets to see the Promised Land, he does not actually get to enter.

So lesson: DO NOT, whatever you do, DO NOT think that you are any better than the next sinner, because God’s Grace is going to have to get BOTH of you through the Pearly Gates. And your sin of pride and lack of faith in God’s mercy is going just going to cause you suffering.

I also felt like I didn’t know enough about the Prophet Elijah. He’s the spritual father of the Carmelites, and beyond knowing that he was a big-time OT prophet, I didn’t really know him.

I highly recommend 1st and 2nd Kings, if you’re interested in him and his successor, Elisha. Not only did it really open my eyes as to why they were so important, but it also gave me an idea of why Jewish people kept calling Jesus just a prophet even with all the signs he was performing. Because they did a lot of the same kind of miracles! Ordering fire and water around? Bringing people back to life? Elijah did it! Multiplication of loaves and fishes? Elisha did it! So if you just heard about Jesus and His works and didn’t actually hear any of his preaching, you’d probably come to the same conclusion!

Plus, I got to the real roots of Carmel: Mount Carmel was the original place where Elijah did his greatest feat: Proving that God was the only god, and slaying all the prophets of Baal. Totally didn’t know all that.

So there’s the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness that is the insight I gained.

In other words: go into the desert — it’s pretty sweet out there