waiting and joy

This month was not spectacular. It was interior. I think again of the words heard last Sunday: “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert” Matthew 4:1. It is striking that the first step was not to go toward the crowds, but to be led aside, before speaking, before acting, to consent to being stripped bare. The desert is not a pause. It is a womb. There illusions of control fall away. There the illusion of self sufficiency is undone. There we cease to believe we are the origin of ourselves.