There is a place past walls. Though I have barely touched it, still it awaits me. To bathe in the love of God ... past longing, past war, alone in infinite space. A wind of light through what once I called my self, behind, suspending the self in it, rendering what I was transparent until all I am is that through which God's love unfolds, through which God's will be done.
Once I enter wilderness, I am more honest with myself. The lure is less what I can tally or photograph than what I can sense: the quiet, intangible qualities of desert, mountain and forest. Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of the wilderness have always been its spiritual values -- silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude -- able to be harvested by any traveler who visits. Prayers in the wilderness were like streams in the desert for me -- something unanticipated and unchronicled welling up, and because of that surprise, appreciated all the more. Not until I actually left the wilderness was I conscious what had been the extent of my thirst.