An Invitation to a Desert Advent Retreat

Posted on November 13, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

It was a dark and stormy night. Really. It was. Four days earlier, angry Santa Ana winds came in like a freight train, knocking down ancient trees and power lines. Single-digit humidity created anxiety about wildfires. Fire stations positioned trucks and emergency units outside of the station ready to go. Last night, a frigid cold system slid down from the Arctic, bringing welcome rain to Orange County, California, and snow in the mountains.

On the first Sunday evening of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas, Erik (age three, before the encephalitis), Katie (age ten), Janice, and I gathered around our dining room table, wearing hooded sweatshirts or jackets to fight off the sudden chill. I remember we made an Advent wreath: a metal circle holder with four sockets for candles: three purple candles and one rose candle for the Third Sunday of Advent. I had to shop early as the Lutherans tended to corner the candle market. We decorated the metal base with juniper branches and berries from our front yard. As we lit the first purple candle, we turned off all the lights in the room. Erik always tries to blow out the candles. I prayed the Collect for Advent:

“Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. Amen.[1]

The tradition of the Advent wreath originated with German Lutherans in the 16th century. Its modern usage originated in 1839 by Pastor Johann Hinrich Wichern. His ministry was to the urban poor. To guide children who were impatient about waiting for Christmas, he made a ring of wood with candles. Every morning, a small candle was lit, and a larger candle was used on Sundays.

That night in our home seemed unusually turbulent. Wind tossed our patio furniture around and, in the morning, we found a chair on the roof. Thick raindrops fell forcefully on the roof and splattered against the windows.

Katie opened the first window in the Advent calendar made of cardboard, with twenty-five perforated windows. She would stiffen up in her chair to sit up straight and with a solemn voice read the Bible passage. In those days, the calendars came from Lutheran Germany. Each window had a symbol relating to the nativity scene and a Bible passage about the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah.

Today, as a counterpoint to our family Advent rituals, Amazon.com markets different Advent calendars, set to start on December first as a secular countdown to Christmas. The varieties of calendars include:

*Lindt Chocolate Candy Calendar

*Brain-teaser Puzzles Calendar

*National Geographic Gemstone Calendar

*Organic Tee Sampler Calendar

*WWII Toy Tanks Calendar

*Fishing Lures Calendar

*Whiskey Sampler Calendar

  1.  

Our family had a palpable sense of beginning a sacred time. The world was already spinning out Christmas music and intense holiday advertising. We lived in that world too. Every night at dinner, when we opened another window in the Advent Calendar, reading the scripture passage and lighting a candle, we stepped back into the hidden reality that nurtures and sustains all things, the compassionate God of love, who invites us to enter into the silent, holy darkness to wait and contemplate God’s coming into our world.

For thirty years I have stepped away for a few days from the busy calendar of Church Advent liturgies and activities, traveling to the desert landscape of the Eastern Sierra near Mount Whitney for an Advent retreat.

The desert invites you and me to patient waiting and attentive listening in the wide, quiet vastness of wilderness, where small stirrings of hope and repentance can become luminous. With careful preparation, respectful attention to the land, and a gently structured rhythm of prayer, a retreat in the desert can deepen your Advent expectancy and open you to the nearer presence of the Christ who comes.

What could an Advent desert retreat look like for you? I will share with you some of the preparations and rhythms that have been helpful to me. What has been central is a deepening attentiveness to Christ’s coming into the world and into my heart by cultivating silence, receptivity, and contemplative waiting. A desert retreat works best for people who already have a basic spiritual practice and can tolerate extended silence; people who are seeking contemplative immersion rather than performance of tasks and spiritual exercises. We must be willing to reduce our digital contact, with the intention of setting aside a rhythm of regular times for personal prayer, simple routines, and inner honesty before God.

Advent in the desert will mean late November days and most of December, when the weather is cooler. While my experiences retreating in the Eastern Sierra and Death Valley have been blessed with mild days and cold nights, sudden rainstorms and snow are not unusual. Be prepared.

You may choose to camp at a campground or RV park in the area. In my old age, I have “camped out” at the historic Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine, California. Room 20 is where John Wayne stayed when he was making movies in the nearby Alabama Hills.

I am up at sunrise and spend the entire day outside until the sun sets behind Mount Whitney to the west, spending the day in places less than two miles from Highway 395 in case I have problems. After breakfast at the Alabama Hills Café, I drive a short distance into the Alabama Hills, west of Lone Pine. You may recognize this landscape from old western movies that were filmed here; most recently, Iron Man. Jumbled piles of immense volcanic rocks create niches and caves. I enter a cave, sit on a flat rock, and watch the morning sun coming out of Death Valley and illuminating the Sierra Nevada mountains. I pray Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. At home, I would find the app for the Prayerbook or the Roman Catholic Breviary, but since we want to step away from the digital, I go with a hard copy. Silence captivates me as I lose track of time. I go for a hike in the open desert for an hour or more. Animal tracks in the loose sand speak of a busy night for desert creatures.

Alabama Hills, photo by Bobak Ha’Eri, 2007.

 I take a bathroom break at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center at the junction of US Highway 395 and State Route 136. There are tables outside under an old willow tree for lunch. The vista is amazing, with Mount Whitney and the Sierra Nevada to the west and Death Valley to the east.

After lunch, I travel east on Highway 136 to the ghost town of Swansea. Across the highway are undulating sand dunes on the shoreline of ancient Owens Lake. Finding a deep cleft between high sand dunes, I sit in the silence, listening to the wind and the tiny sounds of sand crystals tumbling toward me. I pray Noonday Prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. The daily prayer settings share ritualized words and psalms that prepare us to enter more deeply into contemplative prayer. Phases from a psalm can stick with me all day, rising to consciousness as I am walking in the desert. I bring with me a printout of short scripture readings on prophecies of the coming of the Messiah. I choose one of them, reading it aloud slowly.[2]

Owens Lake has been revived with new waterscapes, creating mini lakes, which welcome thousands of migratory birds. Close to the sand dunes is a road, leading out into the lakebed and a maze of trails. I park the car and begin a prayer walk toward the Plover Wing Plaza, a metallic land art project.

I begin a walking meditation on the trail. I am aware of the pressure and tension on my feet and legs, my hands hanging down, and the weight of my shoulders, back and pelvis. I slowly shift my body weight from left to right and notice how this affects my sense of balance. I shift body weight to my left side, sensing how the right side feels lighter. I shift weight to my right side and allow my awareness to move through muscle to bone, noticing what is hard and soft, tough, and flexible. I walk with bare awareness, not evaluating the experience. I am not looking around, only a few feet ahead. Thoughts come and go. When I first tried this, there was resistance, and Busy Mind tried to take control. I learned to let this voice pass through.[3]

Author at meditation walk, Owens Lake, 2018.

And now I have arrived at the Plover Wing Plaza, finding rest on a metallic bench bearing cutouts of images of the snowy plover, a protected bird that has nests at the lake. I gaze at the snow-covered mountains and the slow-motion movement of birds as they land on a mini lake. I see a clear reflection of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the pond near me. Grateful that there is no wind today.

My retreats are three days long. By the second day, the Slowing has quieted the critical voices that haunt me about unfinished tasks at church or home, anxiety about Erik’s health, and recollection of people in the past whom I have hurt or disappointed. I am being absorbed into this landscape as God’s loving presence awakens a holy longing for communion with the Lord.

The sun sets behind Mount Whitney around 4:30 pm. For a few minutes, the Sierra to the west and the Inyo Mountains behind me become rose-colored, turning purple, then black. In the twilight the pitch-black mountains look like cutouts in the star-filled night sky.

I return to Lone Pine for a simple meal of soup and bread at the Grill Restaurant as a curtain of chilly night air descends over the village. In the morning, it will be 32 degrees. After dinner, I return to my room to pray Evening Prayer and write in a journal. Gratitude flows for this day and being in the desert place.

 If it is not too cold, I put on a heavy jacket and walk around the perimeter of the village of Lone Pine. This has been a good time to pray the Examen of Conscience, composed by Ignatius Loyola: For what am I grateful? When did I experience the presence of God? When did I distance myself from the Lord? Where is the Lord leading me tomorrow? I walk toward Lone Pine High School and turn toward the Inyo Mountains. The Lone Pine Paiute Reservation appears on my right. At the end of the road are the barns, shelters and pastures for the Future Farmers of America, an award-winning agricultural program managed by my friend Brenda Lacy. As I walk by the fence, curious goats press against the wire fence, bleating. I pass by open rangeland and imagine the wild creatures out there hunting for prey in the dark. I stop to look up into the night sky. Slowly, my eyes adjust and focus on the stars. As the minutes pass, I can see more detail. The Milky Way. Silence.

If you are now considering a desert retreat this Advent, I will share with you some advice about preparation and self-care. When I decide on the days I will take for the retreat, I black them off my calendar. Events and demands will creep up, trying to erode this plan. Be strong and hold firm to these precious days.

*Prep your car for the journey. Leave an itinerary with a responsible contact and set check-in times.

*Have a basic first aid kit and knowledge of the nearest emergency services.

*Have at least two liters of water per day for yourself and emergency food in your car. *Wear sturdy walking shoes.

*When I park in an off-road location, I usually leave a note on my car describing where I am hiking and when I plan to return.

*You will want layered garments for the wide temperature swings in the desert, a hat, and sun protection. *Safety items can include personal medications, a flashlight, and a whistle.

*You may want to bring prayer aids such as a pocket Bible, printed Advent scriptures, small icons or stones, and a rosary or prayer beads.

An Advent desert retreat embraces the holiday season’s paradox: patient waiting held within a landscape of stark clarity. As you and I are grounded in liturgical rhythms, a desert Advent retreat can reset longings, sharpen hope, and release invitations to live with renewed attention for the ways God is coming into our hearts and souls. Deus nobiscum sit.

[1] Book of Common Prayer, 159.

[2] Suggested Advent scriptures and texts: Isaiah 40, Isaiah 9, Psalm 25 and 63, Luke 1-2.

[3] Karelius, Brad. Desert Spirituality for Men, 21.

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Ancient Paiute Waterways

Posted on November 7, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

“The whole valley was our garden.”[1]

Harry Williams, Bishop Paiute Tribe

I am driving south on Highway 395 in the eastern Sierra. The fiery heat of August assaults my car. 105 degrees: hot windows, wheezing AC system, imaginary hot pokers torturing my sinuses in the extremely dry air. After driving for four hours, I have to get out somewhere and walk the numbness out of my legs. South of Olancha, moving through an ancient volcanic field, I find shade within a cleft of granite and basalt boulders. I park the car on a sandy turnoff. With a cold bottle of Crystal Geyser water, I walk slowly into the desert heat. Corse sand and brittle, seared brush crunch with each footstep. Heading toward a withered willow, I study the blow-torched landscape. Over there is a dark red lava rock. Perfect for our garden. I reach down to touch, almost burning my hands. This land is on fire! A few minutes later, I return to my car with a hot bottle of Crystal Geyser water.

Returning to the eastern Sierra in March, hiking a trail west of the village of Independence, winter rains soaked the ground. A vintage year of wildflowers is popping out of Mother Earth.

I imagine Mother Earth in this sacred land of the Owen Valley Paiute tribes. For over a century, Los Angeles Water and Power has siphoned off the abundant water from rivers and snowmelt toward southern California cities, like an industrial vampire. Expanding geothermal plants mined groundwater resources. Over time, the only potential for a living landscape appears in months of brief rain, birthing fragile wildflowers.

There was a time, two hundred years ago, when Mother Earth vibrantly blessed the land and the people with gushing streams and rivers that flowed all year, channeled into a sophisticated system of irrigation dikes.

For the Paiute people (Nüümü), the Owens Valley is a “place of flowing waters” (Payahüünadü). They are custodians of this land.

What was life like for the Owens Valley Paiute?

This was not an arid wasteland before the Euro-Americans. The Paiutes managed a water-rich landscape, directing snowmelt over broad floodplain gardens. These ditches and seepage networks infused local groundwater, multiplied edible plants, and structured seasonal lifeways, as “to bloom as the rose,” according to local Paiute Harry Williams.[2]

These were extensive and sophisticated irrigation networks, which focused on recharging groundwater rather than rapid flows. Raising the water table sustained marshy gardens used to cultivate wild seed plants and tubers. This attention to the sustainability of groundwater supported riparian habitats for fish and waterfowl.

Location and extent of irrigation on Baker Creek, near Big Pine, CA, as indicated by Steward map 1933, redrawn by Lawton et. al. 1974.

The Paiute method of water management created short dams, graded channels and alternating northern and southern plots. Only one area was irrigated in a season. An elected tribal leader, Tuvaiju, used an irrigating tool known as a pavado to direct the flow of water. Productivity was enhanced by encouraging shallow, widespread wetting of soil.

Remains of Paiute Waterworks, PBS SoCal, Clarissa Wei

In her academic paper, Recovering Cultural Memory: Irrigation Systems of the Owens Valley Paiute Indians, Jenna Cavelle writes:

“The tuvaiju was an elected position carried out each spring, and the commencement of irrigation was declared by the ‘district headman’ and approved by the tribe members. The story follows that about twenty-five men assisted the tuvaiju in constructing a dam consisting of boulders, sticks, and mud. Once the water was released into the ditch, the tuvaiju watered the plot using small ditches and dams consisting of mud, sod, and brush. Steward’s mention of an irrigating tool known as a pavado, or a pole 8 feet in length by 4 inches in diameter, suggests that the tuvaiju utilized this instrument in some way to direct the water into the ditch network.”[3]

Not only was this water management practical. It was social and ceremonial. There was no private ownership. The land was communal, requiring kinship obligations.

With the arrival of Euro-American miners, ranchers and settlers in the mid-19th century, land tenure and water access were altered dramatically. Settlers seized Paiute ditches. Conflict and forced removal of the Paiutes took away their control of these irrigation systems. With the exportation of Owens River water by Los Angeles Water and Power via the aqueduct, surface flows were diverted. The wondrous and effective system of indigenous irrigation networks and gardens became an archaeological remnant.

However, there is now a collaborative movement by the Owens Valley Paiute tribes for mapping projects, ethnographic interviews, and an intensive review of 19th-century surveys. Using GPS and GIS, tribal elders have traced ancient ditches, confirming the physical extent of these networks.

In the 1930s, anthropologist Julian H. Steward did extensive research on the Owens Valley Paiute. In Steward’s 1933 book, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, he provided important information about Paiute irrigation practices. He found a rock art symbol that could represent the system of water irrigation created by the Paiute people:

Rock art etching of Paiute waterworks network

Paiute tribal member Harry Williams shared in an interview on PBS:

“I always thought (the symbol) signified the ditches. I grew up playing in a bunch of them, but I didn’t know what they were. They say it over at Standing Rock, and it’s true: water is life. It creates life. Our ancient ditches made the groundwater rise. They were so flat that the water seeped in easily and raised the groundwater levels.”[4]

Harry Williams spent his childhood days exploring the network of channels, which could extend sixty square miles in the valley. As he grew older, mapping and protecting these sacred waterworks of his people became an obsession. Diverting the waters for the purpose of irrigation long before the Euro-Americans came should be proof that the Nüümü were the rightful owners of the water.

After Harry died, his son Noah carried on the fight for water rights against the LADWP. A research paper in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, using radiocarbon dating, contended that the Nüümü had been irrigating the Owens Valley for more than 400 years.

Taking a prophetic social stance, Jenna Cavelle writes

“…it has been demonstrated that Paiute ditch networks were an integral part of their culture and survival. Restoration of these networks would return a stolen water source to the Paiute and also commemorate a part of Native American history that has been largely forgotten. I recommend that the remnant ditch networks be mapped using geographical information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) technologies to provide current, defensible evidence of the networks in the landscape. I further recommend an extensive investigation into Paiute Indian water rights to determine if these networks would provide them with ‘first user’ rights.”[5]

Using Steward’s map of the old irrigation networks, I walked into the landscape near Birch Creek. Here, it seems that the fragile skin of Mother Earth continues to be revived within the remains of these indigenous waterworks. These so-called archeological remnants, hidden within lush vegetation, are silently working, reviving hopes for the recovery of Paiute custodial care of the water.

Resources

Chalfant, W. A. The Story of Inyo. Rev. ed. Bishop, CA: Chalfant Press, 1933

Reisner, M. Cadillac Desert. New York, NY: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1986.

Steward, J. 1933, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute. Berkeley: University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Volumn 33, No. 3, 233-350.

Walton, J. Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and Rebellion in California. London, England: University of California Press, 1992.

Varner, Gary R. The Owens Valley Paiute: A Cultural History. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press, 2009.

[1] How the Owens Valley Paiute Made The Desert Bloom | Tending the Wild | Desert Escapes | PBS SoCal

[2] Ibid.

[3] Cavelle, Jenna. Recovering Cultural Memory: Irrigation Systems of the Owens Valley Paiute Indians. Berkeley: University of California. College Writing Programs 150AC, Fall 2011.

[4] Wei, Clarissa. How the Owens Valley Paiute Made the Desert Bloom”. PBS, December 15, 2016.

[5] Cavelle, Ibid, 13

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Seeking the North Star

Posted on August 6, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice…saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”[1]

Book of Isaiah


November 1960. I stand on top of a desert mountain gazing at the remains of the old silver mining town Calico, five-hundred feet below. Next to me stands Don, the advisor to our Explorer-Boy Scout troop. Our group camp is behind us, sheltered within a cluster of granite boulders. Smoke from a sagebrush and mesquite campfire drifts towards us. The black night sky, devoid of big city lights, reveals thousands of stars. It is difficult to identify the constellations because there are so many stars. A strange sight appears on the northern horizon: undulating waves of pale green, pink, vivid red, purple, and blue lights. What is happening?


“The Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis,” reveals Don. “This is a rare treat. Don’t see them this far south. What’s happening is that charged particles from the Sun are colliding with gases in the upper atmosphere of Earth. The agitated atoms are glowing. Notice how they pulsate and streak across the sky. “Where is the North Star? (Don is always testing us).

EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska — The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake here Jan. 18. The lights are the result of solar particles colliding with gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Early Eskimos and Indians believed different legends about the Northern Lights, such as they were the souls of animals dancing in the sky or the souls of fallen enemies trying to rise again. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang)

Hard to see through all those other stars. (I point. ) There it is.

OK. Now get out your pocket compass and see if you were correct.

I hold the weathered official Boy Scout compass in my hand, open the cover. The directional arrow vacillates andquivers. I was correct.

Why does the arrow go back and forth?

It is pointing to magnetic North which is not True North. There’s a magnetized needle inside the facing. Probably made of steel, iron, or cobalt. It aligns with the earth’s magnetic field. It is mounted on a pivot so that it can rotate freely. It’s effected by unseen forces and geography. It’s not wrong, but it is not constant.

What is True North?

I would say it is fixed and celestial, anchored in the geographic axis of the earth. It can be complicated to find, so you need a map or calculator.

Our dialogue stops abruptly as the wonders of this dark night illuminated by pulsating northern lights captivate our total attention.


This desert camping memory popped into consciousness as I read about the northern lights returning again as far south as Utah and northern Arizona this year, 2024. I found my old official Boy Scout compass hidden in my sock drawer this afternoon. Magnetic north. True North.

I am a spiritual seeker holding this pocket compass, watching the quivering needle until it settles. In this world of many voices who speak shifting truths and the magnetic pull of social movements this way and that way, I seek something fixed, something deeper than my natural instincts and the influences of culture. I yearn for true North.


As the Earth’s magnetic field bends and sways, so can my faith and convictions. I want to walk faithfully toward the loving presence I have come to know, Jesus, the North Star.


Every winter and spring for several years I camped in the Mojave Desert with the Boy Scouts-Explorers. Only one hour and a half drive from our home in Pasadena, the desert became a welcoming and enchanting place. Secret caves, old gold mines, and desert creatures like jumping spiders, scorpions, kangaroo rats, and bats, indigenous pictographs and ruins, and old pioneer rock cabins reminded me this was not an empty wilderness.


Decades later, as I progressed through a period of depression and struggled for faith during the health crises of our son Erik, the desert became a healing refuge.


1990. After several years of psychotherapy with Dr. Bob Phillips, he sent me across the street from his office in Orange, California, to the Center for Spiritual Direction of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange. My psychiatrist gave me a medical prescription for spiritual direction, leading me to Sister Jeanne Fallon CSJ.

I began spiritual direction with Sister Jeanne at a small cottage next to the Mother House of the convent. The house was surrounded by a garden of roses and fruit trees. The sisters had a gift for creating welcoming environments, both to guests and to the Holy Spirit. Our first session began in a small room, where we sat on straight-backed chairs facing each other. She was enthusiastic about beginning her new ministry of spiritual direction after ten long years as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. I remember feelings of resistance as I encountered a five-hundred-year-old Ignatian curriculum. However, in my resistance I sensed the presence of my psychiatrist Dr. Bob, imagining him sitting in the corner saying to me, “Brad, as soon as you stop trying to run the Universe and you let God do God’s work in you, the better your life will be.”

 Sister Jeanne led me through a year-long experience with the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola. I meditated for forty-five minutes each day on different Bible passages which focused on the prophesies of the coming of a Messiah and the life, ministry, Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Sister Jean encouraged me to use my imagination and enter into the Biblical scenes, asking God to open my heart to what these words were saying to me personally.


At this point, I had already been a priest for twenty years. Preaching and teaching the Christian faith with my parishioners was similar to my college teaching of philosophy. Exegesis of the scripture readings for a Sunday, the context and meaning of the passage at the time of Jesus and application to our own world today. I was missing engagement with the deepest part of myself. I had no spiritual compass.


It was a terrible time for our family in those days. Erik’s life hung by a thread as we lived our lives at hospitals and emergency rooms. Sister Jeanne had compassionate patience with me as she encouraged me to trust in the process of what the Spiritual Exercises could offer me.


As I meditated on the scriptures and met with Sister Jeanne for reflection each week, I noticed a shift from head to heart. As I asked Jesus to open the meaning of these scriptures and to reveal himself to me more deeply, the readings no longer invited analysis. The words appeared as if revealed for the first time to speak to me about my life with God. Jesus was not a historical memory but a living presence inviting me into a deeper relationship. Sister Jean replaced my old, weathered Boy Scout compass with a spiritual compass, recalibrating my life’s orientation toward the North Star, Jesus Christ.


A resource revealed by Ignatius Loyola and guided by Sister Jeanne is the Examen of Consciousness. It provides a daily review of my life, stabilizing that quivering compass indicator more clearly on Jesus, the North Star.

Remember the World War Two naval movies and documentaries? We see officers using plotting boards to track the ship’s movement and plan maneuvers, helping them to visualize their position and the ship’s course over time. The Examen is a memory map of marker points that look back on your life and the past day, the grace-filled crossroads, when God’s amazing grace was there for you at critical moments. Mapping those marker points reminds you that you have not been travelling alone, without a spiritual compass, without the companionship of the Lord. Jesus has been with you.

Nautical Compass, Jacek Halicki 2016


Therefore, you and I can look ahead with confident hope that God will continue to be there with us. Gratitude for the amazing grace we have already received is foundational to our hope for the future. Otherwise, without gratitude, we have only wishful thinking.


I pray this Examen Prayer each night, reviewing the day that has passed, paying attention when I sensed that God was with me and the other times when I felt separated from God. I am reminded of God’s forgiveness.

Here is a description of this five-part meditation, thanks to Father James Martin SJ.[2]


Prepare: I invited God to be with me now as I pray. In gratitude, I recall two or three good things that happened today. I look back on good news, precious moments, perhaps an encounter in nature. I focus on thanking God. A caution: do not rush through this. Savor and relish this revisiting of events for which you are grateful.

  1. Ask for the grace to know your sins. As I look back on this day, where did I turn away from my true self, the deepest part of myself? Where did some curt remark or rudeness happen? Listen to your conscience and that deep voice leading you to be more loving. Do not beat up on yourself but own your need for God’s grace.
  2. Anthony de Mello said, “Be grateful for your sins. They are carriers of grace.”[3]
  3. Review your day. This is at the heart of the prayer. I imagine a video camera playing back my day, from when I first got up. I want to pay attention to where there was joy, confusion, conflict and moments of peace and love. Again, do not rush through this.
  4. Forgiveness. Ask God for forgiveness for anything sinful done during the day. Look for the opportunity to make amends.
  5. Ask for God’s help tomorrow. Close with a prayer.

Here in the desert, after several years of teenage camping trips, the vast empty spaces open my awareness that there is an eternal, loving Presence drawing me into love, peace, joy, and hope.


A trained spiritual director like Sister Jeanne Fallon, CSJ, can help you with your spiritual compass. Coming from an ancient Christian practice of deep listening, the spiritual director provides a non-judgmental space for you to reflect on the movements of God within your life.


Thomas Merton was a long-time spiritual director at his Trappist monastery in Kentucky. He described a spiritual director as an ambassador to the Spirit of Christ instead of a person prescribing specific actions.

Thomas Merton c. 1965. Merton Center


A spiritual director can remind you how Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha found their spiritual compass and how God can continue to guide you and me today. For forty years, I have found that regular monthly sessions with my spiritual director created accountability and spiritual friendship, encouraging me to continue my spiritual practices and desert retreats, keeping my focus on Jesus, the North Star.


I wrote this book as an invitation to you to make desert retreats and to explore the inner desert of your life. May the creatures and forces of nature I have encountered and the desert fathers and mothers I share with you become your own companions as we navigate our way deeper into the heart of Jesus.







[1] Isaiah 30;21 NEB.

[2] Martin, Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, 95-100.ds

[3] De  Mello, Wellsprings, 227.

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Wild Friends

Posted on June 3, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way…As a man is, so he sees.[1]

William Blake


Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand as prayer to the Great Spirit; for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.[2]

Black Elk


The northbound turnoff leads to the ghost highway of old 395, leading to the village of Olancha. A newly divided highway diverts traffic westward toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. As I cruise the old highway, a creepy feeling pricks the back of my neck. For decades, hundreds of 18-wheeler freighters and speeding passenger cars hell-bent for skiing at Mammoth Mountain whizzed by on this road. Today I could stand in the middle of the old highway and not see another car for an hour. Silence. A cold December wind blows off Owens Lake as a scrawny, grey coyote scurries to the middle of the road. I stopped the car, and we have a staring contest.


Driving slowly, I pass a straight line of old cottonwood trees. Back in the 1870s, a rancher used cut cottonwood branches to fence his land. Because of the high-water table, the fence took root, and cottonwood trees were resurrected from the old branches in situ.


I have been enchanted with these trees for years. They are the tallest trees in the Owens Valley, providing welcoming shade in the heat of summer. I know what it is: it is the sound of the rustling leaves that captivates me. I feel a deep communion with these trees, the Freemont Cottonwood. My favorite place for a rest stop is just ahead. A grove of cottonwoods shelters the Ranch House Café from ruthless winds that have been known to blow 18-wheelers off the highway.


As I arrive at the Ranch House Café, there are more goose bumps and bristling neck hairs. The café is closed and boarded up. Huge tumble weeds block the front door. Broken cottonwood branches crushed the rose garden. Another haunting scene. Not long ago, this was a highway oasis after a long drive. In the winter, skiers heading to Mammoth Mountain lined up outside the front door. My favorite table at a corner window gave me a view of thrashing winter storms outside, or cowboys loading Angus cattle up the ramp across the street, and the smell of the barbecue smoker preparing ribs and brisket for summer visitors.

Ranch House Cafe, Olancha, CA


A grove of cottonwood trees is still there next to the café. I always stop here to pray with the trees. The oldest of the trees, Grandfather, has fallen. Burn scars hint at a recent lightning strike.

Cottonwood Tree at Olancha


The ground is covered with broken branches and twigs. I pick up a dried cottonwood branch, rub my hand over the bark, finding bud scale scars, and lumpy knuckles, where leaves had once grown. With a cracking snap, I break the branch at that point. At the center of the opened branch is a rose-shaped, five-pointed star. This was the inner pith of the plant, transporting nutrients to emerging leaf buds. There is sacred symbolism here in my hand.
[3]

Nature writer Deb Mowry shares this:

“Dakota Native Americans tell a story of a little star who wanted to hear the sounds and songs of humans and hid in the cottonwood so as not to disturb the people as they worked. Cheyenne and Arapahoe also noticed the star. In their tradition, if the Spirit-Of-The-Night-Sky needs more stars, it calls upon the Wind Spirit, who blows and causes cottonwood twigs to break, releasing their stars to heaven.”
[4]

The students in my world religions class at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, California, would have recognized this reflection as expressing “animism.” We studied together Native American and African tribal religions, once labeled as “primitive” religions by E. B. Taylor in his book Primitive Culture. Tylor contended that the beginnings of religion saw spirit presence in animals, plants, wells, rivers, and other landscape features.


Mary Frohlick, in her book, The Heart of the Heart of the World, reveals that this mindset is a problem. It looks upon indigenous spiritualities as primitive and immature. It looks upon the primal religions with eyes of Western dualism: spirit versus matter. This viewpoint focuses on belief, which is a “fixed statement of cognitive truth.”
[5]

Frohlich reports that current anthropology offers a postmodern reframing of animism as a “new animism.” This new animism is expressed in a thorough, fieldwork-based re-evaluation of indigenous spiritualities in order to understand better the vast diversity of ways in which their participants experientially engage in living.


Frohlich writes, “Indigenous communities whose survival depends on intimate daily participation in their local ecosystem develop ritualized customs of communication with the creatures and landscape features with which they are interdependent. This communication presumes a certain mutuality between human and other living and non-living beings.”[6]


Within this new animism, there is no longer a hierarchy of creatures in which humans are superior and dominant. Key words are kinship and interdependency. All creatures depend on their survival through a multitude of relationships with other creatures.

You can see that this is a shift from our mindset regarding created things as separate from us and beginning to see dynamic interconnections between us and the rest of the created world.


As a Religious Sister of the Sacred Heart (RSCL), Mary Frohlich draws us deeper into the spiritual heart of creation. She reinterprets the traditional Roman Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by seeing it as a dynamic symbol that pulses at the very center of creation. She invites us to perceive the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the essential life-force that unites all beings, a heartbeat that resonates with every element of the earth and every creature within it.




There was a time when people experienced spiritual encounters in nature. Our modern minds have been trained to objectify the world as mechanical. We look on the natural world as an entity to itself, a milieu to be studied and observed, and push the mystical to the side.


Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor writes: “Each of us has a ‘buffered self’ trapped within our own minds and subjectivity, cut off from anything divine or transcendent. We long for transcendence, something that is beyond us. Enchantment is not hard to find; it is all around us.”[7]


I have been dissecting this dead cottonwood tree. There are scientific labels that specify a place within the Linnean botanical map. “Populus fremontii (Fremont’s cottonwood) is a large tree growing 39-115 feet in height with a wide crown, with a trunk up to four feet in diameter. The bark is smooth when young; becoming deeply fissured with whitish, cracked bark on old trees. The 1.2-2.8-inch-long leaves are cordate (heart-shaped) with an elongated tip, with white veins and coarse crenate teeth along the sides, glabrous to hairy, and often stained with milky resin. Autumn colors occur from October-November, mainly a bright yellow, also orange, rarely red.”[8]



I imagine the Hasidic Jewish mystic Martin Buber sitting next to me on this “dead” cottonwood tree. His book, I and Thou (Ich und Dich) describes his mystical encounter with a tree.


“I consider a tree. I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background. I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, such of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself.”[9]


With my intense observations of the tree and the rose-shaped, five-pointed star within, this tree remains an object, an It.


Buber continues:

“It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It.”[10]


Buber contemplates this tree, fully present to him here and now. The separation between “It/that tree” and “Buber on the tree trunk” dissolves and for a brief moment they merge into One, in a place that is love—God’s place for you and me.


Buber is looking at you and me as he sits on this old tree, saying there are two ways to look at our existence: there is the I who looks creation and other persons as separate from us, and there is the I that looks at creation and other persons as Thou. This is a mystical connection without boundaries. Buber is helping us see that our life finds meaning in relationships. As we awaken to this I-and-thou connection with all creation, we are brought into deeper relationship with God.

A large crack, as the earth trembles. I fall backward off the tree. As I rise up to see what happened, a seismic break has separated the tree trunk, revealing a gaping wound, a rotting corpse, upon which thousands of brown beetles are feeding. Dust to dust, bark to bark, the giant tree slowly will turn into a pile of sawdust.


Spiritual writer Belden Lane shares a vision of the emerging future:

“Our entire culture is on the edge now of a huge leap in consciousness, leading us from a classical model of perceiving each other as strictly separate beings (subject and object, huma and tree) to a quantum model of knowing ourselves capable of being simultaneously subject and object, tree, and human. Inextricably bound in community.”[11]


As I step away from the dead cottonwood tree, this Grandfather tree, I notice several young, green cottonwood sprouts emerging from the roots of the tree. The rich humus of earth and the high water table will feed their growth. In a few years, the Ranch House Café will collapse. Scavengers will remove wood and other debris. This sacred grove of cottonwoods will continue into another century, resurrecting this place of prayer.




Resources:


Blake, William. Letters of William Blake. London, UK: Methuen and Company, 1907. P. 62.

Lane, Belden. “Trees and the Life of Prayer,” Spiritus 25 (2025):66.

Buber, Martin. I and Thou.

Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self.

Frohlich, Mary. The Heart at the Heart of the World. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2024.

Mowry, Deb. The Importance of a Cottonwood Twig. Field Notes. Montana Public Radio. Broadcast 2.23 and 2.26.2022

Black Elk, Sacred Pipe, 75

Mangus, Serena. The Cottonwood Tree. Thomaston, Maine: Tilbury House Publishers

Cain, Kathleen. The Cottonwood Tree: An American Champion. Boulder, CO, 2007: Johnson Books.


[1] Blake, William. The Letters of William Blake, 62.

[2] Black Elk, Sacred Pipe, 75.

[3] Mowry, Deb. The Importance of a Cottonwood Twig. Field Notes. Montana Public Radio. Broadcast 2.23 and 2.26.2022

[4] Mowry, Ibid.

[5] Frohlich, Mary. The Heart of the Heart of the World. 54-55.

[6] Frohlich, Ibid.

[7] Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self.

[8] Wikipedia

[9] Buber, I and Thou, 14.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Lane, Belden, “Trees and the Life of Prayer,” Spiritus 25 (2025):66,

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Another Book for Lent: Desert Spirituality for Men. 2024 Book Club Selection by Association of Catholic Publishers

Posted on February 20, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

Desert Spirituality for Women is also included, as is a Forward by Sister Eileen McNerney CSJ.

“Inspired by Richard Rohr, Ronald Rolheiser, Belden Lane and Thomas Merton, Desert Spirituality for Men reveals the transformative and healing power of the desert—for men who actively seek God. Blending a memoir of his son’s fight for life, reflections on his own desert retreats and response to the Lord’s persistent desire for relationship, Brad Karelius offers guidance to men in their holy longing for God. An Episcopal priest for fifty years, Professor of Philosophy for forty-five years, husband and father, Karelius also tells about the power of his friendship with six remarkable men, and he describes some of their well-founded prayer practices which will sustain and nurture any man in his quest. This book will encourage men of all callings and stages in life to plan their own retreats to the desert—where God lives and gives life.”

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Remembering St. Mark’s Church, Altadena, California, which burned yesterday in Eaton Canyon Fire

Posted on January 9, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

Remembering St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Altadena, CA

(which burned to the ground in the Eaton Canyon Fire yesterday, January 8, 2025)

I remember:

*January 1963. I attended St. Mark’s for first time with the Key Club of Pasadena High School. We visited a different house of worship each month. The next month we visited The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center on Altadena Drive, which also burned to the ground yesterday.

*Sitting in a front pew with our advisor John Stewart. As a Presbyterian at that time, I learned that I had no clue about standing, sitting, and kneeling in the service, but Mr. Stewart, an Episcopalian, quietly coached us.

*Meeting the Rector, Father Bob Cornelison, at St. Mark’s. He was handsome, thirty-four-years old, jet-black hair that matched his cassock. Little did I know that this man would change the course of my life and shape my ministry as a priest.

*Returning to worship at St. Mark’s with my high school girl friend. It was a way I could be with her more often. I will always be grateful for her introduction to St. Mark’s Church

*Transitioning from my Presbyterian roots to the mystery and ritual of the Eucharist, God awakened in me a deep longing for the presence of Jesus in that liturgy.

*Witnessing Father Bob’s announcement in 1965 that he was going to Selma, Alabama to march with Dr. King after the violent assaults on Bloody Sunday. I was afraid for him, but off he went. Two weeks later he returned and shared his experience of marching with Dr. King, and his own visceral feelings of fear and dread, as they marched through taunting, rock-throwing crowds. And my life changed forever; something stirred within me. I wanted to live my life like Father Bob.

*Estranged from my parents, St. Mark’s became my family. I taught two-dozen third graders in the Sunday School. There was an open window in the back of the classroom. I had to be vigilant, because the boys were always trying to escape the class out that window.

*Singing in the choir. I had a weak voice, but that experience deep within the action of the liturgy fed my love for this congregation.

*Learning about the Pepper Project, the low-income housing project sponsored by St. Mark’s in the historic Black neighborhood of northwest Pasadena. The parish transitioned from being a traditionally white congregation to being a welcoming and inviting parish to the Black Community.

*Leaving for seminary in Berkeley, CA, in 1967, encouraged by Father Bob and sponsored by St. Mark’s for ordination.

*Grieving the death of my mother, who died on Easter Day 1989, and celebrating her Requiem at St. Mark’s Church.

We are reminded that a church is more than a building; it is the people of God who worship there. At the same time, when I would visit St. Mark’s in later years, wherever I looked within the church: the pulpit, the choir stalls, the memorial windows, the Blessed Sacrament, conjured precious memories and deep gratitude for how St. Mark’s drew me into the loving arms of Jesus and sent me forth as a priest into the world.

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Desert Dust, Holy Ashes

Posted on January 3, 2025 by fatherbrad1971

I looked: I saw an immense dust storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze.[1]



The essential tremor in my left hand is acting up. I concentrate on holding a spoon and scoop finely ground black ashes into the gold scallop-shaped bowl, making a mess. Ashes fall on white linen. Holding my right hand over my left hand, I continue to fill the container. This is not the traditional way to do this. I am supposed to burn the palms from Palm Sunday a year ago and grind the ashes into a fine powder, using a small mortar and pestle. It always came out lumpy, so I confess to you I ordered the ashes for this Ash Wednesday from a church supply in San Diego. Now I have these fine, holy ashes I am spilling all over the place.


Walking to the altar in the sanctuary, I bow and place the ash upon the Holy Table. Turning around, I see that the church is full for the traditional Ash Wednesday Mass at my Episcopal parish in Santa Ana, California. Miercoles de Ceniza: more of my Latino parishioners will attend this service than on Easter or Christmas. We are in a densely populated city with the highest percentage of native Spanish speakers in America and the first major California city in the USA to which Latino immigrants come.

Ash Wednesday, 2012 Jennifer Balaska


A long line of the faithful approach the altar and kneel at the communion rail. I rub ashes between my thumb and index finger, marking each forehead with the sign of the cross and saying,


Recuerda que tu eres polvo y al polvo volverás.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.


Five-year-old Maria Vasquez, with downcast eyes and solemn face, pushes her black hair to the side of her forehead. I kneel on the ground facing her, blessing her with holy ashes. Her father, Alberto, lifts up his six-month-old son, so that I can bless him with ashes, using my pinky finger.
Why are these holy ashes so popular? They are primal and archetypal, speaking to our soul.


Spiritual writer Father Ron Rolheiser writes, “Something inside of us knows exactly why we take the ashes. No doctor of any kind needs to explain this. Ashes are dust, soil, humus; humanity and humility come from these. Ashes have always been a major symbol of all religions. To put on ashes, to sit in ashes, is to say publicly and to yourself that you are in a penitential mode, that this is not ‘ordinary time’ for you. Smudging oneself with ashes says that this is not a season of celebration for you, that some important work is going on inside you, and that you are, metaphorically and really, in the cinders of a dead fire, waiting for something fuller in your life.”[2]


In the Hindu tradition, Vibhuti is a sacred ash made of burnt cow dung used by devotees of Shiva, who applies three horizontal lines across their forehead.


In Judaism, liturgical use of ashes has its origin in the Tanakh, the Jewish scriptures. They symbolize mourning, mortality, and penance.


In Buddhism, ashes are a symbol of impermanence. Life is transient. Eventually, everything returns to dust. The dead are cremated, and the ashes may be collected and placed in a sacred monument called a stupa or in an urn. Some Buddhists create colorful sand paintings called mandalas. Ashes are mixed with colored sand. At the end of the project, the mandala is dismantled as another reminder of impermanence.


Native Americans who lived in communal long houses made fires for cooking and warmth in the center of the building. Sometimes a man or woman would withdraw from the daily tribal routines, become quiet, sit in the ashes on the side of the fire, eat a little, and stay inside. The silent sitting within these ashes had a healing effect on that person.


Father Rolheiser continues, “Lent is a season for each of us to sit in the ashes, to spend our time working and sitting among the ashes, grieving some of the things we’ve done wrong, refusing to do business as usual, but rather waiting in patience as some silent growth takes places within us. Lent is a time to be still so that the ashes can do their work.”[3]


I carry the imprint of the holy ashes with me as I begin a Lenten desert retreat in the Eastern Sierra of California, where I make a home base in the village of Lone Pine, at the foot of Mount Whitney. The stress of multi-tasking parish work slowly fades as I drive north on Highway 395. I pass through Adelanto and a Buddhist temple. The desert landscape opens up with a view of a sagebrush ocean. No fences. The road climbs toward a notch between two volcanic reefs into Owens Valley. I am greeted by an overflowing blue-green lake, Little Lake. Remnants of ancient volcanic activity fill the landscape. Finely ground red volcanic ash covers the ground.


For forty years I have retreated to this desert space every Lent, where my soul feels like a dusty, worn bedsheet, exposed to the dry desert air scented with sagebrush and juniper.


South of Lone Pine, I have the first sight of Owens Lake.


The dying lake has a grand history. The lake basin may be one million years old. Twelve-thousand years ago, it contained two-hundred square miles of water two hundred feet deep. Water from melting glaciers of the waning Ice Age overflowed the lake southward into Rose Valley and China Lake. In the last 110 years, it was a 108 square mile lake, 25-50 feet deep. The water began to disappear when the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1913, diverting Owens River water away from the lake. The once vibrant ecosystem that sustained birds and plants has dried up into an alkali encrusted sump of a lakebed.[4]

Dust on Owens Lake, Richard Ellis, 2008


Years ago, windstorms blew dried lake dust high into the area, creating the most polluted air in America.


Over the last twenty years, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has accomplished the largest dust control effort in the world. Today there is a grid of dolomite berms within the lake, which outlines several mini lakes. The remarkable renewal of Owens Lake resulted in unanticipated but remarkable results. It has created a rich habitat to welcome migrating birds and the elevated berms provide perfect observation sites for birdwatching.[5]


Jay Owens, writing in her new book, Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles, describes the result of twenty years of lake renovation:


“The landscape resembled an estuary or salt marsh. Within its rectilinear scaffold of roadways, a more organic land was forming swathes of pale gold saltgrass surrounding curving puddles of water and wide plains of mud. The water’s edge was viscous, black with brine fly. California gulls paddled in the shadows, trampling their feet to stir up larvae to gorge on. Further down the lake, brine areas had grown a deep evaporated crust of salt that cracked into tortoiseshell plates several meters across.”[6]


Approaching Lone Pine, I see a cluster of green trees and the Boulder Creek RV Park. I turn right just before Boulder Creek, driving north toward the Inyo Mountains. I remember that there is an entrance to the grid of roads on the lake. An information kiosk marks the entrance, guiding visitors to explore this renewed ecology. The road is wide for the LADWP trucks, who continue restoration work daily. I notice a deep pool of blue-grey water on the right. Wind creates small waves that lap against the berm. I stopped the car and walked out to the edge of the road. The rhythmic sound of crashing waves is surrealistic in this vast, dry desert landscape. I do not know how long I stood there. Time evaporated. I remember the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance, reflected in the water. It seemed that the mountains and sky had fallen into this mini lake.


I drive further on to a narrow berm, with only room for one car width to pass through, a 15-foot drop on each side into brackish water. I head east toward the Inyo Mountains. I remember that there was another entrance to the lake from a previous visit. Suddenly, a fierce wind blows, shaking my Honda Pilot. I drive cautiously forward, meeting a thick cloud of desert dust blowing off the lake. It was more like a thick, brown fog. I could not see in front of me. Was the road going to turn? If I continued, I could fall off the berm into the lake. My heart is beating like a loud drum. Stop and wait. The choking dust is hot and thick. Finally, the dust storm fades, and I can see ahead. I drive through the maze of berms, going in circles for an hour. I can’t get out of this place. Finally, I saw familiar metal pumps, which transferred water between the mini lakes. That is the road leading to where I first entered. I exit the lake as a memory of another dust storm rises in my mind.

Haboob Dust Storm, Jakeorin 2019


I walk on a dusty trail north of the lake and east of Lone Pine, with a view of the faded-yellow Southern Pacific Railroad station ahead of me. The dry, still August air changes suddenly to a strong, hot wind. I see a smudgy brown swirling cloud ahead of me. A dust devil! Driving desert roads, I have felt how these turbulent little twisters could spin across the highway and shake my car. The dust devil is heading toward me, with no shelter nearby. I kneel on the trail, pull my t-shirt over my head, covering my mouth and nose, waiting for what was to come.


Thousands of sand granules pelt naked arms. Wind buzzes in my ears. I felt as if I was being suffocated in a dirty old blanket. I can’t avoid breathing the dust. After a few terrifying minutes, it is gone on its capricious way, leaving me feeling like a horned toad covered in desert siftings.[7]


Jay Owens writes:

“Dust devils and dust storms are creatures of soil and sand lifted from the earth and raised into the air by strong winds. Sand grains are mostly quartz, silica dioxide—the dust tinted various colors by the other minerals it contains. The dust-laden winds that move north over Europe in the spring are rust-red from iron-rich sands in the Sahara, while China suffers from sandstorms of yellow dust sweeping down from the Gobi Desert.”[8]


Two months after this experience, my health changed. Intense fatigue possessed me, every day weaker and weaker, with night sweats. I could hardly lift my head up from a pillow. I felt as if someone was trying to strangle me.

Dust Devil, Desert Spirit Press 2015


My internist, Dr. James Sperber, ran all kinds of tests for brain tumor, lung cancer and leukemia. He remembered that two weeks earlier, he had treated a nurse with similar symptoms. Rechecking my blood work, Dr. Sperber believed I had valley fever, coccidioidomycosis, a fungal disease in desert climates, where microscopic spores proliferate in the dusty soil. When the wind stirs up the dust, the spores can land in the moist lung tissue. The disease is increasing in California, because of droughts and expanded home construction in the desert. Untreated, the spores can perforate lungs and possess the body with debilitating consequences and death. Was valley fever the curse of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, where several members of the archaeology team died from a mysterious disease?


Dr. Sperber prescribed Diflucan, a common antifungal medication. Within two days, I was up and active again, with a profound respect for the mysterious dust devil.


These small, dry-weather tornados can be only a few feet high and soar hundreds of feet, swirling in the atmosphere, joining millions of tones of mineral dust that constantly circulate over the earth.

The day after the encounter with the blinding dust storm on Owens Lake, I visited my friends Mike and Nancy Prather at their home in the Alabama Hills, between the village of Lone Pine and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Mike and Nancy taught school in Death Valley and at Lo-Inyo School in Lone Pine. Now retired, Mike has become the spiritual shepherd of Owens Lake. We sit on metal chairs in the middle of his garden, as we face the mountains and the sun warms our bodies. The native plant garden that surrounds us includes trees and shrubs that Mike and Nancy have nurtured from seedlings. I share my stories of the dust storm on the lake and my encounter with a dust devil years before that resulted with valley fever. Sitting in that garden with Mike has a deeply calming effect on me, a generous and welcoming presence. Later, as we walk through the garden, Mike reaches into a pocket in his Oshkosh overalls for a clipper to trim a broken branch. He describes many of the plants to me, what they are and how they grew from seeds. It was like a grandfather describing his grandchildren, the level of communion between him and each plant was that intense. He shares with me a belief in the interconnectedness of all living things.

Nancy brings two cups of coffee and some cookies, as we return to the chairs in the middle of the garden. Mike reflects on his love for Owens Lake, which he calls Patsaita, the original Paiute name for the lake. The restoration work on the lake created a renewed environment for migrating birds. Mike was instrumental in founding an annual Audubon sanctioned Bird Festival. Recent rains flooded the lake to the extent that visitors could travel slowly and quietly over the surface of the lake in canoes, in the manner of the Paiute First People. His reminiscence of these journeys on the lake evoked again his holy communion with all living things.

On a recent Facebook posting, Mike says:

Canoe on Patsaita, Mike Prather, 2024

“I miss Patsaita deeply.

When water covered half of her surface reflecting the deep blue of the sky.

A gift from the winter of 2022/2023 and tropical storm Hilary in August.

The water remembers, the birds remember.

We were called to go out and feel her presence once again.

Dreamers imagined no end, but deserts expect their share, and evaporation always prevails without continued flow.

We were blessed with her beauty and felt awe and wonder paddling across the slick surface.

Trillions of brine shrimp watching below us.”[9]



Transmigrating dust descends on the campus of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Professor of Chemistry, Michelle Franci-Donnay returns to her academic office after a six-month sabbatical at the Vatican Observatory. Dust thickly covered her desk. Where did all of that dust come from, with windows and doors securely closed? This required careful cleaning. Michelle walks to her bookcase, searching for a book of poems. Finding the book, she opens to “Dusting,” which reads.

Thank you for these tiny

particles of ocean salt,

pearl-necklace viruses.

winged protozoans

for the infinite

intricate shapes

of submicroscopic

living things.[10]


We are dust and to dust we shall return. The dust of our remains will co-mingle with minute organic and inorganic matter, dispersed, and scattered over the earth, fertile humus for the creation of new life.


An Orthodox Christian burial hymn reminds us we come from the earth and to earth we shall return:


Give rest, O Christ, to your servants with your saints,

Where sorrow and pain are no more,

Neither sighing, but life everlasting.

You are only immortal, the creator and maker of mankind.

And we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we

return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying,

‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ All of us go down

to the dust; yet even at the grave, we make our song: Alleluia,

Alleluia, alleluia.[11]


Resources:


Owens, Jay. Dust: the Modern World in a Trillion Particles. New York: Abrams Press, 2024.

Kirkham, Harold. IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Magazine, Dust Devils and Dust Fountains, December 2006 48-50.

Smith, P. D. Dust to Dust.
McCorkle, Rob, Ghostly Little Twisters, Parks and Wildlife, July 2012.

Nelson, Marilyn. Dusting. Poems.org.

Franci-Donnary, Michelle. The Spiritual Case for Dust. Ignatian Spirituality.org.

Karelius, Brad. Encounters with the World’s Religions on Highway 395. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015.










[12]

[1] Ezekiel 1:4-9

[2] Rolheiser OMI, Ron. Lenten Ashes, March 14, 2022

[3] Rolheiser, Ibid.

[4] Quoted in Desert Spirituality for Men, p.

[5] Karelius, Ibid, p.

[6] Owens, Jay. Dust. P 300.

[7] KareliusKarelius, Desert Spirit Places, 17-18.

[8] Owens, Dust, 7.

[9] Michael Prather, Facebook, December 19, 2024

[10] Dove, Rita. Dustings. Poetry Magazine, November 1981.

[11] Book of Common Prayer, 499.

[12] Karelius, Desert Spirit Places 20-21.

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Holy Longing

Posted on November 23, 2024 by fatherbrad1971

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[1]

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Snaking lines of eighteen-wheeler trucks wind up the steep grade of Cajon Pass, Interstate 15, as dense fog enshrouds my car. Driving is precarious. My father taught me that when I can’t see in a situation like this, get behind a truck that is all lit up and I would be OK. Other cars whizz by confidently into the fog, perhaps in a hurry to get to Las Vegas. At the summit, the blanketing fog retreats. Brilliant sun fills the morning light. The turnoff to Highway 395 comes quickly. You have to be watching for it.

Years ago, as I drove through the village of Adelanto, there was only one stop sign and one signal. The ancient landscape of Joshua trees, creosote and sagebrush has now been scraped away for closely packed new neighborhoods. How strange to see compactly planned homes with high walls around them, surrounded by the remnants of the desert. This is Adelanto. Some of my Santa Ana parishioners moved here to find a cheaper home and to get away from the lure and pressure of gang life that their children had to negotiate. But the gangs moved here too. I pass through Adelanto and at last an unspoiled desert landscape beckons. Soon I am back into the sagebrush ocean spilling out for miles east and west. No fences here.

That feeling begins to well up in my gut: the vastness and emptiness conjure a deep longing within me. The highway continues north, climbs a steep hill, and at a curve in the road I am caught breathless. Pulling over to a viewpoint off the highway, I stop my car, turn off the engine and contemplate a widescreen visita of the desert waking to a new day. Purple mountains become rose then golden, as the sun rises in the east. What is this feeling welling up within me? A sweet, welcome longing. What does this mean? Even now as I write about this memory, the aching feeling wells up within me.

Years later, after our son Erik returned from a week at the hospital, he lays on the sofa in our living room, legs draped over my lap. I rub his stocking feet, grateful that he is home again. I turn on the TV to the YouTube Channel, playing Elgar’s Nimrod. The soft beginning movements swell to a crescendo. Then the sound drifts off into silence. The feeling of yearning and longing returns. Where is this leading?

These feelings of longing and yearning for I know not what continued to be a mystery until I read Ron Rolheiser’s book The Holy Longing. My life has not been the same. He gave voice to these inner movements of my soul, as he wrote:

“Inside of us it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things, and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest.

We are driven persons, forever obsessing, congenitally dis-eased, living lives of quiet desperation only occasionally experiencing peace. Desire is the straw that stirs the drink.

Spirituality is about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings. Augustine said, ‘You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ Spirituality is what we do with our unrest.’”[2]

When I taught my students in my world religions class at Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, California, I began to use this passage from Holy Longing. I described my desert experience contemplating the desert awakening to morning. I asked my students if they had moments when they experienced restless yearning and desire, not knowing why? The responses were quick and energized. “Yes, I had that same experience! I did not know what to do with it.” I asked the students to write down their experience if that had one and bring it to class to share next week. These reflections from the students animated the next few class sessions.

My friend and scholar on the work of spiritual writer C. S. Lewis, Dr. Jim Prothero, introduced me to Lewis’ work on Holy Longing. It is an important theme in his writing, reflecting on the German word Sehnsucht: an unfulfilled longing sweeter than any other human desire. Lewis advises that this deep desire never leaves us. We were made for another world. This haunting sense of longing stayed with Lewis his entire life, an inconsolable longing in the human heart “for which we know not what.”

Lewis describes this inconsolable longing in The Weight of Glory:

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suppressing it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of the name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that has settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought that beauty was located will betray us if we trust them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—-the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire, but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”[3]

When I have tried to describe these aching feelings of yearning and longing for I know not what to my friends and parishioners, I struggle for words in my discomfort. I cannot put my hand firmly on what is happening within me. When I have tried to share these experiences with my fellow philosophy professors, they seem to look on me as quaint and quirky, caught up in naïve mysticism. My academic work has been within an educational world suspicious of mystery, of that which cannot be concretely named and categorized.

C. S. Lewis lived and taught in that same academic world. He reflects:

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice, almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”[4]

In 2013, Pope Francis presented a homily on restlessness. Francis said, “What fundamental restlessness did Augustine have in his life? What kinds of restlessness does this great and holy man ask us to awaken and to keep alive in our own existence?”

It was the restlessness of spiritual seeking. Augustine had a brilliant career as a teacher of rhetoric, and his restless spiritual seeking for life’s deepest meaning continued. He discovered that God had been waiting for him all along.

Francis asks us: “Look into the depths of your heart, look into your own inner depths and ask yourself: do you have a heart that desires something great or a heart that has been lulled to sleep by things?”

“We all experience spiritual unease or restlessness. We are drawn toward connection to God. Each of us has a spark of the divine within us and “this spark restlessly flickers until we go to God eternally.’ Without the gift of the grace of God, humanity experiences a gravity that pulls us toward passing pleasures and transitory satisfaction.”[5]

In 1944, 13-year-old Anne Frank was a hunted Jewish girl hidden in the attic of a Dutch home. She wrote the following in her diary,

“Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze, and I am longing so longing for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone.

“And I do so long…to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know that it would get better with crying, but I can’t. I’m restless. I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, ‘can’t you satisfy my longing at last?’

I believe that it is spring within me. I feel that spring is awakening. I feel it is my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally., I feel utterly confused. I don’t know what to read, what to write, what to do, I only know that I am longing.”[6]

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, reflects:

“There is in all of us, at the very center of our lives, a tension, an aching, a burning in the heart that is insatiable, non-quietable and very deep. Sometimes, we experience this longing as focused on a person, particularly if we are in a love that is not consummated. Other times, we experience this yearning as a longing to attain something. Most often, though, it is a longing without a clear name or focus, an aching that cannot be clearly pinpointed or described. Like Anne Frank, we only know that we are restless, full of disquiet, aching at a level that we cannot seem to get at…. This hopeless aching and lack of ease is the very basis of the spiritual life.”[7]

Late spring afternoon in the Eastern Sierra, California. I have been slowly hiking through the desert landscape in the Alabama Hills, between the village of Lone Pine and the road to Mount Whitney. Delicate wildflowers burst through coarse sand: red Indian Paintbrush, yellow Western Bleeding Heart, and pink Pussypaw. I follow a faint animal trail through creosote and sagebrush, watching for the cholla cactus, the “jumping cactus” whose barbed thorns can leap onto legs and hands. The back of my shirt is soaked with sweat. A light breeze blows clouds of fine dust, forcing me to cover my eyes. This often happens near sunset, which is happening now, as the bright orange orb slowly sinks behind Mount Whitney. Moods change at this transition from daylight to dusk. I feel it. A burst of wind blows a tumbleweed past me. Bats fly low, chasing bugs.

The Alabama Hills are iconic: gnarled, strangely shaped boulders jumbled together and piled high. You recognize this place from the hundreds of Western movies made here. I retreat into a protective cleft of boulders. Time to pray Evening Prayer, one of the monastic services that take us through each day of God’s time. I find the app on my cell phone, reading out loud the opening prayers and psalms. My favorite canticle is the Phos Hilaron, O Gracious Light. The sun has set behind Mount Whitney.

Within the descending darkness I am embraced by God’s love.

“O gracious light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven, O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of life, and to be glorified through all the worlds.”[8]

Within the descending darkness I am embraced by God’s love.

[1] Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1.

[2] Rolheiser, Holy Longing, 6-7.

[3] Lewis, the Weight of Glory, p

[4] Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p

[5] Order of Augustine, 2237, Spiritual Unease.

[6] Anne Frank, Diary, p

[7] Ron Rolheiser, Longing is Our Spiritual Lot, May 2, 1987.

[8] Book of Common Prayer, 118.

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Angels in the Desert

Posted on August 28, 2024 by fatherbrad1971

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”[1]

George Eliot

She stands with hands clasped and head bowed in prayer vigil facing the bedroom window of our disabled son Erik. The life-sized alabaster statue of a winged angel appeared on our garden patio thirty years ago. I have no idea where it came from. Who placed it there? Years ago, Erik would have had horrendous seizures during the night. His bed was next to the window. My bed was a few feet away. In the darkness Erik would awaken with a gasp. The bed would shake. Erik curled up in a spasm of contorted muscles. He struggled to breathe, as his throat and lungs were seizing. I placed my body over him and held on to his flailing arms. I pulled his nostrils up to open the airway. This went on for eight minutes. If it didn’t stop, we would have to call the paramedics. The seizure slowly subsided. I looked out the bedroom window to see the angel statue illuminated by a full moon. It seemed that light emanated from within the figure. These night terrors were common for many years. Thankfully, with new medications, a vegus nerve implant, and recent brain surgery, today Erik has minimal seizures. The alabaster garden angel continues her prayer vigils. Above Erik’s bed is a Russian icon of Saint Michael the Archangel.

As children, you and I may have been told we have guardian angels to watch over us, especially when we are anxious about the night. As adults, tutored by materialist science, we should let go of such creatures of our imagination. Or should we?

In my forty-five years of college teaching on the religions of the world, my agenda was to open the minds and hearts of my students to the spiritual treasures of the world’s religions, and the stories of mystical spiritual transformations. We have a deep inner longing to connect with a transcendent Presence. Most of the world’s religions share encounters with angels.

“Angel” can refer to a physical spiritual being or a holy presence of the divine. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures affirm that angels are real. They appear in times of desperation or spiritual transition. Western art and music are filled with allusions to angels. Remember the music of Christmas. In the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, we find this affirmation: “from infancy to death human life is surrounded by their (guardian angels’) watchful care and intercession. Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.”[2]

Conservative Christians affirm the real presence of God’s angels. Progressive, liberal Christians may see angels as a special presence of God, coming as strengthening grace.

Spiritual writer Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, counsels:

“Those who believe that angels are real have a strong case. Even if we just look at the origins and dimensions of physical creation (whatever scientific version of this you subscribe to) mystery immediately dwarfs our imaginative capacities. It is all too huge to grasp! We know now that there are billions of universes (not just planets), and we know now that our planet earth, and we on this planet, are the tiniest of minute specks inside the unthinkable magnitude of God’s creation. If this is true, and it is, then this is hardly the time to be skeptical about the extent of God’s creation, believing that we, humans, are what is central and that there can be no personified realities beyond our own flesh and blood. Such thinking is narrow, both from the point of view of faith and from the perspective of science itself.”[3]

What is behind our skepticism about mystical experiences, such as encounters with angels? We now live in a rational, secular culture that is suspicious of religious experience. If religion can be defined as “that which connects all of life together,” there was a time when all aspects of daily life were connected to God. In medieval Paris, France, this was true. There was no separation between the sacred and secular. It was an enchanted, spiritually charged world.

With the philosophical movement of the Enlightenment, scientists found knowledge in the Book of Nature rather than the dogma of the Bible. Philosopher Rene Descartes sparked a seismic shift from religious orthodoxy to the primacy of individual conscience.[4]

German sociologist Max Weber revealed this process of the demystification of the modern world. Nature was no longer inviting mystical contemplation. Instead, human reason and the scientific method studied material systems. Descartes warned that this shift from an enchanted world to the world of science requires rational control, a “buffered self” against felt sentiments.

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor writes,

“The buffered self is the agent who no longer fears demons, spirits, and magic forces. More radically, these no longer impinge; they don’t exist for him; whatever threat or other meaning they proffer doesn’t ‘get it’ from him.”

“This super buffered self….is not only not ‘got at’ by demons and spirits; he is also utterly unmoved by aura of desire. In a mechanistic universe, and in a field of functionally understood passion, there is no more room for such an aura. There is nothing it could correspond to. It is just a disturbing, supercharged feeling which somehow traps us until we can come to our senses and take on our full buffered identity.”[5]

In this skeptical, rational world, you would think that a discussion about angels would be quickly dismissed. Not so.

Anglican theologian Jane Williams reveals.

“In what we think about angels, it is as though we allow ourselves access to need that normally we would deny or suppress. Angels give us a way of expressing our longing for beings who are more powerful than ourselves, and who care for us.”[6]

Peter Stanford, in his excellent book, Angels: A History, shares

“In a 2016 poll of two thousand people, one in ten Britons (have said) they have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three, like my mother, remain convinced that they have a guardian angel.”

“While belief in God is on the wane, belief in angels is flying high. One survey reports that 21 per cent of Britons who never participate as worshippers in religious services, as well as l7 per cent who describe themselves as atheists, say they believe in angels.”[7]

According to a Gallup poll, in 2004, 78% of Americans and 56% of Canadians believe in angels.[8]

Let’s step back then from our normally skeptical stance, anchored in doubt and ready to belittle the heritage of personal mystical experiences and encounters with angels and see what happens.

1990. I returned to my psychiatrist, Robert Phillips MD, in Orange, California, to help me with depression related to our son Erik’s many health crises. After several sessions, Dr. Bob concluded that my issues had a spiritual dimension. He sent me across the street to the Center for Spiritual Development of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange. Here is where I met spiritual director Sister Jeanne Fallon CSJ.

The adobe-colored cottage next to the Mother House of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange contained rooms for spiritual direction. I remember entering the first time feeling like I was carrying a medical prescription for a treatment, which was called “spiritual direction.” I anticipated something between private confession and theological interrogation. Sister Jeanne welcomed me in a formal, professional manner. She had just returned from ten years of missionary work in Papua New Guinea.


Sister Jeanne invited me to talk about my life with God. I unpacked the circuitous journey. After twenty years as a parish priest, you would think that I could have been more expressive and articulate. Whatever I said came out of my head rather than my heart. She invited me to work with her on the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th century Spanish mystic and founder of the Jesuits. It would involve following Ignatius’ curriculum of meditating on a different scripture passage every day and meeting with Sister Jeanne once a week for reflection. We would do this for a year. It sounded like an organized spiritual work-out and since I had been doing my physical exercise routines for twenty years at the YMCA, I responded well to structured programs.

When one begins meditation for the first time or after a long absence, it starts out quiet and sedate. After a few minutes all that inner chatter begins to heat up. “Don’t forget to send a birthday card to your brother; the parish newsletter is due tomorrow; you need to call for a prescription refill.” Meditating on scripture was a new thing for me.

In seminary at Berkeley in the late 1960s, scripture studies were dominated by the rational, critical, scrutinizing mindset of the Enlightenment. I had a New Testament professor who was an atheist. The school said this was OK as he fostered critical thinking. Seminary fed the head with facts and a sense of doubt and skepticism about orthodox Christian doctrine. My life changed forever as I entered into these daily scripture mediations, which led me through the prophesies of Messiah and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Meditating for forty-five minutes each day became a welcome habit. Rather than analyzing the scripture from my seminary training, I asked the Lord to reveal to me what he wanted me to hear. Ignatius directed me to open my imagination to each Bible scene, to enter and to participate in what was going on. After each meditation, I did something mindless like washing the dinner dishes or mowing the lawn. Then I wrote down in a journal a reflection on the meditation, which I shared each week with Sister Jeanne.

The change I experienced was moving from head to heart and to be able to sense that Jesus was right there with me as a daily companion. I went to seminary to study Jesus. Now I was meeting Jesus again for the first time. No longer analyzing the scripture passage, I could commune with these words as if they were written across the centuries for me to hear today. Whenever I proclaim the Easter Gospel readings, this passage reminds me:

“…these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”[9]

During this year of immersion in scripture meditation on the life of Jesus, our family life continued. Erik was in and out of crises. Things could dramatically change in an instant. One minute we would be having dinner; the next minute we would be in the ER. Sister Jeanne recommended that I go on a retreat somewhere in the wilderness to be alone in silence and solitude and listen for the Lord’s presence.

Thus, I began thirty years of desert retreats every Advent and Lent in the Eastern Sierra of California. I calendared the retreats well ahead of time. My parish and Janice were supportive.

“Only after we have let the desert do its full work in us will angels finally come and minister to us.”[10]

Trevor Herriot, The Economy of Sparrows.

I arrived in Lone Pine, a desert village at the foot of Mount Whitney, settling into a room at the Dow Villa Motel. Every morning, I went to an open space outside of town to spend the day walking in contemplation. That damn busy mind interrupted contemplation as if some dark spirit was trying to throw me off track: faces of people I had disappointed or hurt in the past. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry” was my mantra, over and over. The Critic: “what are you doing out here? Erik needs you at home. Something horrible could be happening right now.” Looming deadlines of church work.

After about two days of this, I am hiking on a cattle trail or old Indian path west of the village of Olancha, heading slowly up hill toward the Sierra Nevada. Walking along bone dry Olancha Creek, the blurry, buzzed mind opened up in awareness of my surroundings. Black and white images changed to vivid Technicolor. A bent over ash tree shimmers with golden autumn leaves, as a jackrabbit leaps across the creek. A cluster of huge granite boulders reveals a rock shelter. Black obsidian chips scattered on the ground mark a place where Paiute Indians made arrowheads long ago. I crawl within the rock shelter, the ceiling blackened by ancient fires. My eyes close as I let go of fatigue. Desert wind carries the scent of wet sagebrush and juniper. Creation opens up like a ripening flower.  I hear a sound: bubbling water! Sierra snowmelt gushes over rocks within the creek, until it disappears into the gravely landscape. Within the cool shade of the rock shelter, I sip from a bottle of Crystal Geyser, produced from the creek that flows near me. Deep sigh. I feel the embrace of a Presence. Joy, peace, love, hope. All will be well. Goose bumps. Deep emotions of gratitude well up within me. Tears. Thank you, Lord. You are in this place. Thank you for bringing me here. You are always with me, even when I turn away from you.

Hiking toward Sierra Nevada and Olancha Peak

I am remembering desert people from Biblical times.

“Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: it is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”[11]

Elijah and Angel, Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1672

The Prophet Elijah fled into the wilderness to escape from Queen Jezebel, who wanted his head. He wants to give up his life to find relief from despair. A rescuing angel appears to feed his body and energize his spirit.

The prophet Jacob is on the run, frightened and thirsty, his faith in God’s promises fading. Exhaustion draws him into deep sleep, giving him a dream of a golden staircase leading to God’s holy presence. Angels busily ascend and descend from their earthly missions of grace to God’s people. As Jacob awakens, his heart sings this declaration:

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”[12]

Hagar is an Egyptian slave and servant to Abram’s wife Sarai, who has not been able to have children. Hagar becomes pregnant as surrogate to Sarai and gives birth to Ishmael. When Sarai miraculously gives birth to Isaac, she orders Abram to get rid of Hagar. In a heartless decision, Abram sends Hagar out into the desert with her son. A certain death sentence.

“She went her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, ‘I cannot watch the boy die.’ And as she sat there, she began to sob. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for God will him a great nation.’ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So, she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.”[13] Ishmael was the ancestor of Mohammed the Prophet of God.

The gospel narratives reveal that the life of Jesus was filled with angelic visitations. From the annunciation to Mary, a visit to Joseph in a dream, a glorious appearance to the shepherds at Jesus’ birth, and warnings to Mary and Joseph to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod, the angels are holy messengers and protectors.

After his baptism, Jesus is propelled by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, facing the Satan’s temptations. After Jesus has resisted Satan, angels come to “look after him.”

In the Garden of Gethsemane, facing torture and crucifixion, Jesus prays to the Father for strength. The Angels come to spiritually fortify him for what is to come. On the day of Jesus’ resurrection, the gospels present various scenarios: angels appear after the empty tomb, angels come as messengers to announce what has happened, or there is no angel but only a young man in a white robe.

Throughout the gospel life of Jesus, angels come as messengers, and givers of strength and sustenance.

Desert is a place and also a metaphor of where we are in a time of personal challenge and discernment. You may have lived the desert during grief, loneliness, addiction, or mental illness. You may have lived the desert when you have experienced betrayal or alienation from someone or disconnection from God. Those desert times come at us when we least expect them, disrupting the foundations of our life.

Father Ron Rolheiser counsels, “(The desert) is the place where angels can come and minister to us and it’s a place that readies us for spiritual battle. When our own strength gives out, when the pain of duty seems too much, when we lie prostrate in weakness and cringe before what truth, justice and God seem to be asking of us and we can no longer face it alone, we’re finally at that place where angels can minister to us and we’ve finally worked up the spiritual lather that has readied our souls and bodies for the Good Fridays that await for all of us.”[14]

The feeling of being enfolded within God’s love and peace stayed with me through that desert retreat. Mystical encounters like this have several characteristics: they are ineffable; words cannot fully describe the experience. They can be a direct encounter with God that is passive and fades away. These can be life-changing. As I share this with you, I am reminding myself that remembrance is the key. As I remember with gratitude that experience of God’s grace in the rock shelter by Olancha Creek, it brings my imagination back there and awakens my awareness that the Lord has never left me. I am the one who must invite the Lord’s presence.

Sister Joan Chittister OSB, Benedictine nun, has written about angels as symbols of God’s presence and support in our lives. Angels give us the sense that God is with us, providing comfort and support. We are not alone. Sister Joan helps us see angels in the kindness of strangers and the unexpected help we receive in difficult times. She encourages people to look for the divine in everyday interactions. Angels can help us to navigate our spiritual journeys, giving us insight and encouragement when we need it most.

Another popular spiritual writer, Madeleine L’Engle has angels at the center of her Newberry Award winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time. This novel is about performing a “tesseract,” that is a transition from one part of space/time to another without a wormhole or physical motion. Physics actually coined this word. It is a concept. The three mentors in the book, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, are actually angels. Elsewhere L’Engle discusses the Seraphim as presented in Isaiah 6 as fierce beings with multiple wings, and that cherubim are derived from the “Kerubim” of Babylonian/Assyrian art, who are fierce warrior beings with wings. European art made angels soft and friendly. The Old Testament is a very different view.[15]

Years ago, Erik was in ICU at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. A friend contacted Rabbi Harold Kusher; author of the book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. His own son had died ten years before. Rabbi Kushner called me. We talked about what it feels like being a religious professional, and how God can seem far away when we are in crisis ourselves and our loved ones are suffering. Then Rabbi Kushner quoted from his recent book:

“One of my favorite aphorisms comes from a nineteenth-century Hasidic rabbi who once said, ‘Human beings are God’s language. When we call out to God in our distress, God answers us by sending us people.’”[16]

When we wonder where God is in the desert times of our lives, look around you. Notice the people who are there with you. People are God’s language (God’s angels).

Resources

Stanford, Peter. Angels: A History. London: Hodder and Stroughton, 2019.

Eliot, George. Scenes of a Clerical Life. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1975.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York: Double Day, 2003.

Kushner, Harold S. Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. New York: Knopf, 2009.

Rolheiser, Ronald. The Agony in the Garden. March 14, 2004.

Rolheiser, Ronald. Do We Have Guardian Angels? October, 4, 2021.

Williams, Jane. Angels. Ada, Michigan: Baker Books, 2007.

Taylor, Charles. Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Karelius, Brad. Desert Spirituality for Men. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2022.

[1] Eliot, Scenes of a Clerical Life, 220.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 87.

[3] Rolheiser OMI, Ron. “Do We Have Guardian Angels? October 4, 2021.

[4]Karelius, Brad. Desert Spirituality for Men, p 119.

[5] Taylor, Secular Age, 135.

[6] Williams, Jane. Angels, 6.

[7] Stanford, Angels, 6.

[8] Religion Facts, The wayback Machine.

[9][9] John 20: 31 NRSV

[10] Herriot, The Economy of Sparrows.

[11] 1 Kings 19:4-8

[12] Genesis 28:16-17

[13] Genisis 21:14-20.

[14] Rolheiser, The Agony in the Garden, March 14, 2004.

[15] Prothero, James. Personal conversation notes.

[16] Kushner, Conquering Fear, 172

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Desert Petroglyphs: Ikons to the Ancient Ones

Posted on September 1, 2023 by fatherbrad1971

November 2022. Dense, frigid air seeps into the car as I drive east on Highway 136 toward Death Valley. The road ahead will be blocked because of torrential monsoonal rains in August that wiped out most of the highways within Death Valley National Park. A winter storm hit the Eastern Sierra with snow, rain, and strong winds yesterday. A brilliant orange sun rising out of Death Valley rests on the highway directly in front of me, making for difficult driving.

Swansea Petroglyph Panel

I am searching for the Swansea Petroglyphs, named for the 1880s silver-smelting town on the northern edge of Owens Lake. I have tried to find this site during several previous visits, but no luck. Directions from research sources have been intentionally vague to protect the site from vandals.

There was some mention of an old marble quarry at the base of the Inyo Mountains. Ahead of me, on the left side of the highway, is a partially excavated ridge. Parking at a turn-out, I walk across the road for a closer look. I see huge chunks of marble rock, exposing a high, sheer cliff. Yes, these rocks have been manually chiseled and cut loose. The marble is laced with purple and black veins of mineral. Where would the petroglyphs be? I study the smooth face of the cliff for figures and geometric shapes pecked into the marble. Nothing.

Holding a photograph of a panel of ancient petroglyphs that are supposed to be at the Swansea site, I persist in this search, matching the image with landmarks on the brown, barren slopes of the Inyo Mountains. The photo was taken from a higher elevation. Maybe if I climb up behind the ridge, I can orient myself and the landscape to this photograph.

Walking around the quarry to the other side, I climb the steep slope of a prominent ridge. Ascent is difficult because of loose rocks and gravel. I catch my breath and look back at Owens Lake, which used to be filled with melting glacier water from overflowing lakes to the north and was once 600 feet deep. Since 1913, Los Angeles Water and Power (LADWP) has diverted the streams and rivers that once fed the lake into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The lake dried up into arid acres of playa and toxic dust.

View of dry Owens Lake with Sierra Nevada Mountains

As I climb higher up the ridge, clusters of highly polished gravel appear before me. This looks familiar. It reminds me of the stones pounded by waves at the Pacific Ocean beaches of Dana Point, California, near our family home. Fifteen-thousand years ago, this outcropping was on the shores of Owens Lake. Rolling waves polished these stones. Flat rocks nearby are pock-marked with erosion from the waves.

Ancient Wave Markings

Clusters of boulders appear on my left. I see faint etchings in the marble rock. A patina of mineralization over the aged “desert varnish” coats these rocks. The petroglyphs were pecked through this coating to reveal the white dolomite marble underneath. The images and designs have deeply worn grooves I can trace with my fingers. This is unusual. Owens Valley has thousands of ancient petroglyphs dispersed over the landscape. They are all pecked into volcanic basalt rock. I climb carefully over the unstable boulders, comforted knowing that the snakes who must live here are hibernating.

Ancient Beach of Lakes Owens

I walk around the corner of an immense boulder, venturing toward a precarious drop off. Surprise! The flat panel of dozens of petroglyphs appears, as in the photograph. This is what I was searching for. As I approach the marble rock precipice, I recognize two commonly seen images from anthropological papers on the Swansea site: a circle with a line through it and six bold straight lines. I have identified the first image as an atlatl, a spear-like hunting tool, predating the bow and arrow. This dates this site to 2,000 years ago, before bow and arrow use began in North America. The other image of six straight lines is said to be an Equinox sign. These markers carved into the marble allow people to predict the equinox relative to sunset within three hours even today.

Atlatl Image c. 100 AD
Equinox Marker

Archaeologist Alan Gillespie reveals the high degree of calendrical sophistication:

“The bars mimic the shape of the edge of a shadow cast by a nearby boulder. The edge sweeps across the petroglyph as the sun sets. A radiocarbon age of minus 2060 years may be a minimum age for the Equinox marker”.[1]

 At the Swansea Archaeological Site INYO 272, one can find several solar petroglyphs which function as a solar observatory:

  1. One-hundred feet NW of the six-bar petroglyph is a sun symbol facing east.
  2. Fifty feet W from the six-bar petroglyph is a bull’s eye. Close to the solstice, a wedge of light will point to the bull’s eye at sunset, accurate to four days.
  3. The six-bar petroglyph works at sunset, described in this way:

“Within three days of the Equinox, and only then, the sun setting behind the Sierra Nevada casts a shadow from the north of the rocks onto the petroglyph. The shape of the shadow coincides closely with the inner vertical bars of the petroglyph. The shadow moves south one bar per day at the vernal equinox and north at the autumnal.”[2]

Sunburst Equinox Marker

Is there a connection with this solar calendrical observatory to similar indigenous sites?  Gillespie responds:

Another Equinox Marker

The petroglyphs at INY272 are a solar calendar, with patterns marking the times of summer solstice, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days. These patterns create unique light and shadow effects at sunrise and sunset. Some of these patterns are reminiscent of those reported at Chaco Canyon and elsewhere in the American Southwest.”[3]


Archaeologist Don Laylander asks: What was the source of their knowledge? He suggests:

“It is reasonable to speculate that some of this knowledge could have diffused widely from the great astronomical centers of pre-Columbian Meso-America. Hopi and Pima/Papago oral traditions, for example, maintain that their ancestors migrated south through Mexico and then returned to New Mexico and Arizona.”[4]

Meditation

I sit on a flat slab of rock, which is hidden within an alcove of boulders, and contemplate the panel of petroglyphs to my right. I observe the landscape hundreds of feet below me, which was filled with the waters of Pleistocene Lake Owens 15,000 years ago. I see the shapes of three bighorn sheep, a stick figure of a human, a cross, a snake, and other mysterious symbols. Some suggest the sheep images are hunting magic, marking a migration path for the animals, which were a food staple for the First People. According to David Whitley, a professor at UCLA, Paiute shamans created petroglyphs as spiritual notebooks after taking hallucinogenic substances like jimson weed.

Meditation View of Ancient Lakebed


I imagine water once again flooding the empty landscape below me, filling the basin with churning, foaming water. Waves crash on rocks around me, coating my face with briny spray from the turbulent movements of a blue, green lake. Lightning flashes in the distance. The calming rhythm of the waves rolling toward me sparks a memory of Psalm 65, which I prayed today from the Breviary:

You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds,
    God our Savior,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
    and of the farthest seas,
6 who formed the mountains by your power,
    having armed yourself with strength,
7 who stilled the roaring of the seas,
    the roaring of their waves,
    and the turmoil of the nations.
8 The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;
    where morning dawns, where evening fades,
    you call forth songs of joy.[5]


Closing my eyes, I heard ancient waves crashing and receding, creating a soothing rhythm. I open my eyes, imagining the waves constantly changing, yet always the same. Each wave is unique, with its own shape, size, and speed. Each wave is part of the ancient lake, a vast and powerful force of nature. I imagine how my mind is like the movements of this ancient lake; my thoughts are like the waves; some are small and quiet. Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant. They are all part of my mind, a vast and powerful force of awareness. I observe thoughts passing through, without judging them or being attached to them. I let these thoughts flow through me like the waves of the ancient lake. When my mind wanders, I bring my attention back to the sound of the waves. I sense the connection between my mind and the ancient lake, between my thoughts and the waves. I am not these thoughts; I am the awareness behind them. I am the ancient lake, not the waves. I stay within these feelings of spaciousness and calm, as they awaken a deeper awareness that the Creator is very close, embracing me in love and consolation.



Sometimes I return to this memory of meditating within this alcove of sheltering boulders hovering over the ancient lake. It helps me to be aware of the Lord’s presence with me, here and now.


As a Christian, my experience of contemplating in nature is different from using mind-altering substances like datura.. Spiritual writer Father William Johnston SJ counsels:

“Meditation is also a human and natural way of opening the filters, welcoming the inflow of reality, and expanding the mind. It is a gradual process, a daily practice in which the filters or barriers are slowly lifted to allow and almost imperceptible inflow of grater reality into the intuitive consciousness—though this unhurried process may at time, give way to a sudden collapse of barriers that cause massive enlightenment or mystical experience. In all of this, meditation is safer than drugs because the meditator, if properly instructed and guided, can integrate the new knowledge and preserve his equilibrium.”[6]



I sense the presence of shaman spirits in this place of petroglyphs, their spiritual notebook, coming from dreams and hallucinogenic visions.

What was happening within their consciousness, in their intense inner journeys? David Whitley has explored the connection between shamanism and rock art in the Owens Valley.



What is the experience of the Paiute Shaman taking datura? During a vision quest with datura, the Shaman goes into a trance and receives supernatural power from a spirit helper such as a grizzly bear or rattlesnake.. He becomes one with that spirit helper. His power came as a vision. “In Western neuropsychological terms, the shaman’s trance was an altered state of consciousness in which he experienced aural, bodily and visual hallucinations.”[7]

Datura


“Immediately following a vision quest, the shaman would pray and concentrate on the visions he had received. When morning came, he would paint or engrave his visions on rocks at this vision quest site…The art created by a shaman preserved his visionary images for posterity; if a shaman forgot his vision, it was believed he would sicken or die. Shamans go back to where they first had their vision quest to remember it, become more powerful, and gain more spirit helpers.”[8]

Thus, the shaman and I share a numinous site, a mystical gateway to the Sacred.


Neuropsychological and Rock Art

Lewis, Williams, and Dawson studied trance states and developed a model of mental images that can help us interpret the rock art of the shamans:

For example, zig zag images are common.

Shaman’s Spiritual Notebook

“The neuropsychic model by Lewis, Williams, and Dawson explains why geometric motifs are common in art. Swansea has a mix of motifs, including geometrics, entoptic, and simple figures.The different motifs may be the art of a single shaman, depicting the visions he experiences during different stages of the same trance.”[9]

As I return to my car, I gaze up toward the cluster of boulders hiding the petroglyphs, the site of the shaman’s vision quest. We both found a numinous site, a thin place between this world and an unseen world of spiritual powers. Even now, as I write this memory to share with you, God is very close.

View of Sierra Nevada from Petroglyph Site


Resources

“Notes on Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s Neuropsychological in Prehistoric Art Analysis.”
Journal article in Humaniora, by Daud Aris Tanudirjo, Vol 16.


Heizer, Robert P. and Baumhoff, Martin A. 1962. Prehistoric Rock Art of Nevada and Eastern California. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA


Likes, R.C. 1975. From this Mountain. Chalfant Press, Bishop, CA

Steward, Julian. 1929. University of California Publications in Archaeology and Ethnology. Volume 24.


Von Werlhof, Jac C. 1986. Rock Art of the Owens Valley. Reports of the University of California. Archaeological Surgery, no. 65.


Yoder, Vincent. 1985. Equinox Site at Swansea. Dawson Collection (Unpublished Paper)

Whitley, David S. A Guide to Rock Art Sites: Southern California and Southern Nevada. Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1996.

[1] “A Precise Petroglyph Equinox Marker in Eastern California, Alan Gillespie.

[2] Gillespie, ibid.

[3] The Megalithic Portal.

[4] Laylander, Don. The Swansea Site and the Equinox Question: Issues of Plausibility and Proof.”

[5] Psa;, 65:5-8, New International Version.

[6] Johnston SJ, William. Silent Music, p. 56-57.

[7] Whitley, David S. A Guide to Rock Arts Sites: Southern California and Southern Nevada. P 8.

[8] Whitley, p. 16.

[9] Whitley, p. 10-11.

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