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In her biography, The
Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day shares how, shortly after her conversion to
Catholicism, she went through a painful, desert time. Her prayer at the time
was wrenching, naked. She describes how she laid bear her helplessness,
spilling out her confusion, her fears, and her temptations to bitterness and
despair. In essence, she said to God: “l have given up everything that ever
supported me, in trust, to you. I have nothing left. You need to do something
for me, soon. I can’t keep this up much longer.
She was, biblically speaking, in the desert – alone,
without support, helpless before a chaos that threatened to overwhelm her –
and, as was the case with Jesus, both in the desert and in Gethsemane,
God “sent angels to minister to her”. God steadied her in the chaos. She
returned to New York
and, that night, as she walked up to her apartment she saw a man sitting there.
His name was Peter Maurin. Together they started the Catholic Worker.
We should not be surprised that her prayer had such a
tangible result. The desert, Scripture assures us, is the place where God is
especially near. In the desert we are exposed, made vulnerable to be
overwhelmed by chaos and temptations of every kind. But, because we are so
stripped of everything we normally rely on, this is also a privileged moment
for grace. Why? Because when we are helpless we are open. That is why the
desert is both the place of chaos and the place of God’s closeness.
The desert is both the place of chaos and the place of
God’s closeness
Ron Rolheiser
OMI
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