into the desert

Let us embrace the winter dark.

A very singular icon of St. Mary of Egypt from the chapel at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration.

The season between Theophany and Pascha is always my least favorite time of year.

Bleak midwinter days, stripped bare of their Christmas bustle and finery, followed in short order by bleak Lenten days.

Everyone is tired and gloomy and slightly irritable.

There’s a temptation to seek relief from the monotony by scrolling, overconsuming, oversleeping, or abusing modern conveniences to try and live like it’s July.

Now is the time to endure.

This road from Christ’s baptism to His resurrection is a long one. Through the desert, the wilderness, the tundra. Months of slow, tiresome plodding towards an unseen resting-place.

There on the horizon– you can see it if you look very hard– is Calvary. Beyond that, only shadow. Anything more is too far to make out from this side of the Jordan.

In past years, I tried to shortcut the road by stretching out the Christmas season as long as possible (at least through Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation, which is February 2) and then obsessively watching for signs of spring.

Some years, the snowdrops make their appearance down by the river in the final days of January. Not this year. It’s been so cold that I don’t expect them for a full month at least.

A long winter and an early Lent– ideal conditions for despondency.

I’m so tired of here and now. The cold and the quiet and the long, dark nights in an empty townhouse by an empty field. All I want is to be somewhere, anywhere, that I am not. One bitter, lonely day blends into the next in a seemingly endless whiteout.

Again and again and again.

The same turtlenecks and sweaters and heavy socks.

The same songs on repeat, over and over.

Leftovers for dinner night after night.

I’m cooking mostly from the pantry and freezer these days, using up the meat and bones before Lent, clearing out the frozen produce from last year’s growing season. Making space, little by little, for next summer’s harvest.

Church services and evening events keep getting canceled at the last minute due to extreme cold. Walks are rare and brief and biting. There’s plenty of snow but it’s too cold for sledding, or much of anything else.

My car growls at me when I start the engine and clanks her way grudgingly over the icy back roads. She’s not happy with the status quo either.

Everything is frozen… silent… sleeping.

And I just want to run, but there’s nowhere to go.

“You need to spend some time in the desert like Saint Mary of Egypt,” a friend told me earlier this month, four days after Theophany.

His advice is rarely wrong, but it’s usually the exact opposite of the thing I want to do.

Embrace the routine, the silence, the stillness.

Don’t fight it, don’t resist.

Stop trying to get out of the desert; just be here for now.

“Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything,” as Abba Moses said.

Here in the bleak heart of winter, we cannot escape so easily into our usual busyness and running around. We must stop and abide and watch a little.

On the eve of Christ’s baptism this year, I did the first prophecy reading from the book of Isaiah, which contained this verse:

“A pure way shall be there, and it shall be called a holy way. No unclean man shall pass through there, neither shall there be an unclean way there. But those dispersed shall walk in it, and they shall not go astray.” [Isaiah 35:8]

In the moment, I took it as a promise of a smooth and easy road before me. Until I found myself alone in the wilderness with my eyes bound.

When it feels like God has chosen the worst possible time to take away His hand, what do you do?

Be still, and then do the next right thing.

Quiet, patient endurance builds faith. These dull days are the time to grow strong, deep roots that will nourish the flowers of spring. To build a reserve of strength for the trials ahead.

When I say, “God, deliver me” do I really understand what I’m asking?

It took forty years for the Israelites to be delivered from the desert because they had so little faith.

I keep praying for a new home, a new career, a new family– all things made new. And one day, I trust, those prayers will be answered. But not today.

Will there be Pascha and lilies and tulip-fields and baskets of red eggs? One day.

And joy in the morning? That too.

And toddlers to gather the eggs? God knows.

For this season, perhaps the mundane and the ordinary are enough.

Is it not enough that there was a bluebird sky this morning and a fine layer of crystalline ice sparkling on the tree branches?

Is it not enough to earn a comfortable living from home, even when it’s all nonsense?

I think back to the lads I worked with last summer– no matter how cold it gets, they’re still out there washing windows in the snow.

They were good to me in their boyish way, and never tried to take liberties, and showed me little quiet courtesies that they certainly did not show one another.

And even with gloves on it must be painful to constantly dip your hands into freezing water, or to stand outside in the wind for hours when morning temperatures hover around zero. I don’t suppose any of them complain much– they’re a cheerful lot.

Is it not enough that I only have to worry about Zoom calls and not frostbite?

Is it not enough that today, my elderly ex-Marine neighbor came out to jumpstart my car’s dead battery– and not for the first time this winter? His arthritis has gotten so bad that he struggled to get his arm into his coat sleeve, fumbled to connect the zipper.

But he set the jumper cables with bare fingers, warning me not to touch them lest I shock myself, brushing off my thanks and my apologies with equal indifference.

“I’ll help you,” he said gruffly. “Call me if you get stuck out there.”

And I knew he meant it, because he never says anything he doesn’t mean.

Is it not enough to leave the bone broth simmering on the back burner and go shovel the sidewalks? Maybe one day I will have a whole houseful (or conventful..) of people to cook and shovel for. But for now, for today, is God not enough?

Can I learn to love a snowflake simply because it is a snowflake, without asking what it can do for me?

I had become so focused on what I wanted– what I thought I needed– that I had gone blind to everything beyond myself.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened…” [Isaiah 35:5]

Wasn’t that in the reading too?

The prophecy only promised a holy way. It didn’t say anything about a roadmap or a five-point plan. God gives us the what, but we have to take the how on faith.

Israel received just enough manna and quail to feed themselves day by day. No saving food allowed, except on the eve of the Sabbath, because they had to learn to trust in Him.

So this is my prayer for these days in the desert– just the next step, Father. Just the next right thing. It may be that I have a long road still before me, and it is good and right that I cannot see it, for my heart might fail me if I knew. Only help me to take this step, and then show me the next one.

Step by step.

Gently, patiently, softly.

Footprints in the snow, footprints in the slush, footprints in the mud. And one day– have faith!– bare feet running through wildflower meadows. Little feet as well as big ones. Dawn is coming.

The shift begins long before we can see it, or feel it.

Already the Lord has come to Zacchaeus (an especial favorite of mine because I am also of short stature and like to climb trees).

The day after tomorrow begins the Triodion, the three weeks of preparation before Lent proper. And next week is the Prodigal Son, the Sunday out of all the Sundays in the year that never fails to break my wandering heart.

A light is growing in the east– only our eyes, darkened by sin, cannot quite perceive it yet. But they will.

Until then, light a candle, stir the porridge-pot, brew another cup of tea, listen to a good story, sing a hymn, make something beautiful.

We can only be good and happy and obedient here and now, not in some imagined future summer.

And when the weariness is overpowering, when the weight becomes too much to bear, ask for just enough grace to meet the present moment.

Just one more verse. One more prostration. One more rep. One more email, one more page. One more bit of data to feed the machine. God help me. Just one more.

Forget the to-do list and the abyss and the gray hopelessness of it all. Take one right step after another, and then go to bed early.

Trust that every seed planted now will bear fruit in the time to come.

And do give a thought to the men– they are almost all men– who work outside in this harsh weather. The snowplow drivers and the linemen and the farmers. Say a prayer that God will keep them. The wind chill will be -20° here in Ohio tonight, and just because they don’t complain doesn’t mean they don’t suffer.

Yours in Christ,

Elisabeth