by Steven Fisher ’16

I don’t want to do the dishes. With a tired and aching body, I squeeze the last drops of soap onto the damp sponge and bury my hands into the mess of the sink. I would rather be back on pilgrimage. I remember praying in the sun outside the Basilica of Guadalupe or walking up the steps toward the Sanctuary at Fátima, or trekking through the Judean Desert on the way to Orthodox monasteries. Remembering keeps me sane and holds together the threads of old experiences that vibrate gently, suddenly through the most mundane moments of daily life.

I decide I am going to remember the Judean Desert—back in Wadi Qelt. I close my eyes. It’s hot. But the air is dry—crisp, even—and soon the scent of “tough on grease” dish soap gives way to the fragrance of frankincense and sunscreen. And the sound of my running faucet slowing changes into the gurgling of the river in the ravine below, beckoning me to hike down to the bottom and enter St. George’s Monastery. Since the sixth century, Greek Orthodox monks have made their home in St. George’s ancient cells and chant in candle-lit chapels built into the cliff walls of this winding desert ravine.

When I reach the monastery, I sit down, drained by the heat and eager to catch my breath. I notice one woman standing on the balcony of the monastery, watching the sun casts its pale light on a table with a silver teapot and a few potted cacti. Her gray hair is tightly pulled into a bun, and rolling up the wool of her pitch-black sleeves, she waves me over and offers me a plastic cup.

She pours me tea. She pours tea in her cup, too. And we stand together side-by-side, silently sipping our cups of tea, and lean onto the railing to gaze at the desert. The ravine is pocked with holes and caves guarded by little doors and inhabited by generations of hermits. At the balcony, I breathe in the warmth of the mint in my tea. I notice the trails leading to the monastery, down to Jericho, and up to bleak, iron crosses dotting peaks to both my left and my right. Without moisture in the atmosphere or a cooling breeze, the air is stagnant. From my balcony, the emptiness of the desert returns my gaze.

I open my eyes. Why am I here, back in the Judean Desert drinking a cup of tea at the balcony of St. George’s Monastery? I should be washing this frying pan with tilapia burnt on it and these mugs with day-old coffee grinds. I want to be in the desert again. I want the desert to answer my doubts. I want the landscape to share my loneliness. I want to take off my clothes and climb up to one of those ancient caves and become a hermit, to escape the to-be-washed dishes cluttering the sink and my spiritual horizon.

It’s difficult to navigate the terrain of our own emotions. It is true that sometimes our minds are barren. Sometimes our bodies—with the marrow dried-up—feel empty. And our hearts too, we find to be barren like picking up the dry, rocky soil and letting it slip through our fingers. With the pile of dirty dishes before me, I realize why my heart feels arid. Because I missed the bus this morning—because I still have to do the laundry and I want to go to bed—because what that coworker said to me was wrong, completely wrong—because I am no longer surprised at what the politicians did or why that bishop lied—because I am realizing I don’t know how to deal with this—because I am losing the desire to pray as I once did, and I want to find that desire again somewhere “out there” rather than within myself. And if given to chance I’d take the offer to leap off the tallest tower and have my problems—and perhaps too my pain—caught and ministered to by all the cherubim and seraphim.

I close my eyes. I remember the wildflowers.

Between the ridges, sprouting forth from melted snow, the flowers’ stems are poised toward the shade of the nearest cloud. The many violet and ochre petals adorn crevices and geological gutters to adorn canyons sculpted by the Qelt river, like the intricate work of a craftsman inspired by Genesis. Bedouin shepherds—their name from the Arabic word badawī, meaning “desert-dwellers”—slowlyusher their sheep into the scenery, who graze on the flowers to the sound of jingling bells, wary of the few remaining Arabian leopards who stalk the desert.

If we have enough courage to look closely beyond a bare landscape, the desert shows that life is abundant. But we must acknowledge barrenness to move beyond it. We must laugh at it as Sarah laughed, and celebrate the joy of not knowing, for the sake of possibilities more numerous than the stars.

Meditating upon the mystery of ecosystems, cultivating meaning from the earth around us is a praying with the landscape. For “landscape” is not an aesthetic object to be contemplated from a distance. It is a dwelling place, a home. St. George’s Monastery is not built on the desert. It is built into it. It belongs to it. Both monastery and desert have served as an ecological womb for many lives and enduring home for past generations who have dwelt within it. Their lives have inscribed the landscape with sacred signs and ways of being that reflect the compass of the spirit.

I linger at the balcony with my tea, startled by a gentle breeze strumming the wildflowers, and begin to count the sheep with their shepherds. “Thank you,” I tell my companion who has already served herself a second cup of tea. Her face wrinkles into a smile. Together we stare again at the desert land that has lain here thousands of years as a home to terrestrial life. I feel the weight of my body drawing me toward the heat of my tea, the wildflowers, and into the surrounding desert.

I open my eyes. I am sane again. I remember: the barrenness of the desert only veils the life dwelling within its terrain. And, smiling to myself, I finish washing my dirty dishes.