On the Way

A DESERTED PLACE
 
Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while. 
Mark 6:31
 
One of the most exasperating irritations of life in the twenty-first century is information overload. We are constantly being bombarded with far more information than we can handle. The amount of data streaming our way is a flood which overwhelms us, leaving us not so much enlightened as confused and innervated. The bits of data stored and instantly available are doubling every eighteen months, while our ability to absorb this torrent of data is increasing not at all. Our smart phones are smarter than we are. 

It is not just the volume of information, but also its omnipresence and fragmentation. Modern man and modern woman are constantly receiving messages that demand attention: tweets to follow, emails to answer, YouTube videos to watch, Facebook contacts asking to be friended.
 
So it is the words of Jesus are refreshing and so very welcome. “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’” Welcome words, indeed. 

Seeking such a deserted place, I recently was privileged to visit the Arctic, sailing aboard an expedition ship around the Svalbard archipelago high above the Arctic Circle. We were cut off from all contact with the outside world. Above eighty degrees north latitude no internet service was available, no cell phones worked. It was blissful! We were in a polar desert where trees grow only a few millimeters high. We hiked on tundra among reindeer and walrus. We had no distractions from the outside world. We truly were in a deserted place all by ourselves.
 
But this reflection is not a recommendation for wilderness travel far off the grid. Rather, it is an invitation to consider our local churches as deserted places for resting a while in the presence of God. But how can a place of corporate worship be considered a deserted place? 

The literal meaning of a deserted place or a desert is an area of detachment. The word desert comes from the Latin prefix de meaning undo as in deactivate, and from the root serene meaning to be joined together as in an electrical series. Thus a deserted place, literally, is a place where we are unplugged. It is a place for simplifying our lives, focusing on what is primary, what is absolutely necessary. A desert is where we free ourselves from distractions of the peripheral, allowing ourselves to concentrate on the essential. 

I think this is what Jesus has in mind when he tells his disciples to seek a deserted place where they can rest for a while all by themselves. He is advising them, and advising us, to take a break from the demands and distractions of our daily lives, from all our frantic busy-ness, and to rest quietly at the essential center. 

Jesus is not counseling a life of permanent solitude or asceticism. He and his disciples, after periodic retreats, soon resume their ministry among the people, healing the sick and preaching the gospel. But Jesus knows his ministry, and the ministry of those who follow him, must be balanced with times of retreat, quietly resting in a deserted place before resuming the task of building the kingdom of God. 

When Jesus visits the home of the two sisters Martha and Mary, Martha scurries about tending to household chores while Mary sits quietly at the feet of Jesus and listens to every word he says. When Martha complains about Mary’s apparent inactivity, Jesus replies with words of gentle reprimand: “Martha, Martha you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Yes, work must be done, meals must be prepared, life is full of worries and distractions; but the one thing needful is to be quietly present with God. 

Perhaps this is what T. S. Eliot is saying about corporate worship in “Little Gidding” (1942), a poem inspired by his visit to a seventeenth-century English church in the rural countryside of Huntingdonshire. In the midst of our togetherness, we need to seek the solitude of being alone with God. In the activity of our communal experience, we need to find the transcendence of the present moment, the intersection of the now with the eternal. Surely none of us goes to church to add to our information overload, to be instructed in sundry matters. I imagine Eliot’s words being addressed gently to you and me as we gather each Sunday at our local church for common worship, seeking simply a quiet time and place “to kneel / Where prayer has been valid.” 

To update the gospel scene of Jesus and his hard-working followers: “The mid-career executive wedded to his iPhone, the newly minted priest agonizing over her career path, the exhausted mother overwhelmed with the responsibilities of motherhood, the retired pensioner worried about his partner’s health, the widow trying to make sense of a tangle of financial records, the loving grandparents beset with anxiety about distant grandchildren—these gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’”