I recently had the gift of traveling to Africa, concretely to Morocco. Although there were many highlights in the trip, like spending time with my only sister, I have to say that I did end up with a favorite PLACE. I pray I never forget my short time in the Sahara Desert. The darkness, the silence, the wind driven sand beating against my skin. As we were heading out to our camp, driven by a gracious Berber native whom we could not understand, all I thought was “we are in the middle of nowhere.” If we die here, NO ONE will ever find us (this is when I realized I had seen one too many episodes of Criminal Minds).
In my mind and in my thoughts I was nowhere; in reality, everything really led me to NOW and HERE. As I looked around at the dunes, I suddenly realized how attentive I was. Was there really a fear of dying out here that kept me vigilant? Or rather, is it a characteristic of the desert, where your footprints erase as soon as you take another two steps and there is absolute silence, to bring you to all your senses? Is the desert the only place that you can listen to the ONE VOICE that matters?
Silence is the key to being alert and being in loving attention to what IS. What did Covid 19 bring to humanity? Our mind will say – death of loved ones, economic hardship (and now inflation), too many zoom meetings, etc. Our mind sees what “divides.” Yet, we can sense that it also brought a massive, collective, worldwide NO WHERE, NO TIME. It made the whole world a desert – a place to be attentive. What is God saying to us in the silence? That is what we need to remain vigilant to this Advent as we continue living in the winding roads and rough ways of the Corona virus. Happy second week of Advent!