Dispatches from Araby, part 3: The Desert

Location: The Middle East, stretching from Yemen to the Arabian Gulf and Oman to Jordan and Iraq

Size: 1 million square miles
Type: hot subtropial
Features: world's largest expanse of unbroken sand, red dunes, rocky highlands

What makes a desert a desert? Extensive sand dunes? A lack of water? Scarcity of life?

In fact, none of these factors defines an area as a desert. Extreme aridity is the defining characteristic of a desert.

A desert is a place where more water is lost through evaporation than is gained from precipitation. Typically, most of the world’s deserts receive less than 10 inches of rain annually, because high mountains or trade winds block clouds.

Many desert dwellers have developed interesting ways to cool off and to conserve water, such as the saguaro cactus of the Sonoran Desert and the kangaroo of Australia’s deserts.

The intense aridity that makes deserts hostile to life has created a unique environment for spiritual growth and renewal. Blue skies, bright light, dry air, wide-open vistas, harsh landscapes, and isolation help to make the desert an attractive place for reflection, contemplation, meditation, and prayer. Stars, sun, moon, wind, and rocks are one’s companions in the desert.Today the desert areas of the Middle East are often associated with war. However, for most of the past 4,000 years these same deserts have provided inspiration to great Western spiritual geniuses, such as Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, St. Anthony, St. Benedict...*

The desert beckons me. I am drawn to it in the same way I am drawn to the sea. For in its inscrutable vast expanse lies buried the secrets of a million years. It undulates in the graceful rhythms of the winds. It ripples and shimmers in a way that a belly dancer could only try to recapture. The soft orange sand dunes is like the ocean; its constant heaving and surging is a heartbeat; its hues deceptively invite you and beguile you to wallow in it, but the fiery depths will undo you in ways that are both tender yet violent. Everything around you is vividly etched – the sky an impossible shade of blue, the air sharp and biting, the whiteness of the kandura worn by the desert men shine with a brightness that capture the distillation of the sun. The soft strides of the camel are languorous, and hypnotic; the soft sand yields to your footstep, and beckons you to go deeper -a clever disguise to the menace of the grainy sea before you.

I am drawn to the desert. In the same way I am drawn to the sea, I am drawn to the desert. For like the sea, the desert harkens to something ancient in all of us. It is a place where everything that is unessential is stripped away. It is a place where the hardiest and the most resilient can survive. And like the sea, the desert’s vastness humbles us. And while the sharp blasts of warm air comfort us, it ultimately brings a warning: there are forces far beyond our grasp and our comprehension. But while these forces can undo us, He who controls the rhythms of the desert, is tender and compassionate, and touches us in ways that will not break us.

My heartfelt gratitude to the Aguilar family who took me not only to the Arabian desert but also to the edge of the Arabian sea (another story). Thank you for your generosity and kindness!

*from http://www.desertspirituality.com/tools/default.asp