The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat. So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.” (Mark 6.31-32)
The 1976 novel, The Education of Little Tree, tells the story of a five-year-old orphan who finds a new home in the Appalachian Mountains with his part-Cherokee grandpa and full-Cherokee grandma. For the next five years, he absorbs lessons about life from his grandparents, whose unconventional lifestyle provides him with important truths about living.
At one point in the book, Little Tree, as he is renamed by his grandparents, finds a solitary place where he returns frequently to feed what his grandmother calls his spirit mind. He tells of the day when he found this special place, “I got to know the spring branch, following it up the hollow: the dip swallows that hung sack nests in the willows and fussed at me until they got to know me–then they would stick out their heads and talk; the frogs that sung all along the banks, but would hush when I moved close until Granpa told me that frogs can feel the ground shake when you walk.”
“He showed me how the Cherokee walks, not heel down, but toe down, slipping the moccasins on the ground. Then I could come right up, and set down beside a frog and he would keep singing.” He continues, “Following the spring branch was how I found the secret place. It was a little ways up the side of the mountain and hemmed in with laurel. It was not very big, a grass knoll with an old sweet gum tree bending down. When I saw it, I knew it was my secret place, and so I went there a whole lot.”
Later, when Little Tree tells his Granma about his secret place because, as he says, he was too young to keep a secret, he finds that she is not surprised. He explains, “Granma said all Cherokees had a secret place. She told me she had one and Grandpa had one. Granpa’s was on top of the mountain, on the high trail. She said she reckoned most everybody had a secret place, but she couldn’t be certain, as she had never made inquiries of it. Granma said it was necessary. Which made me feel right good about having one.”
What Little Tree called his “secret place” is what the gospel today calls “a deserted place.” Both serve the same purpose–to feed the spirit mind. This section of the scriptures that we hear today follows last week’s sending out of the apostles by Rabbi Jesus to neighboring communities where they were to heal the sick and to dispossess those possessed by evil spirits.
Today, the gospel tells of their return from their missionary journey, reporting to Rabbi Jesus “all they had done and taught.” Whereupon, the Rabbi instructs them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” We are told that they get into a boat to cross the sea because on shore they were surrounded by “people in great numbers.”
It is on the other side that they seek “a deserted place.” While the meaning is clear enough to us, it is interesting to look at the literal meaning of the words, which provides us with an enhanced understanding of this so-called deserted place. The Greek word that is used here for deserted means lonesome, signifying no one else is there, or even a wasteland, again signifying the absence of anything, near to our notions of a desert.
In other words, when the Rabbi takes his followers to a deserted place, he is taking them somewhere apart, away, at a distance from the noise and numbers that typically surround them. In this place, they are to be free of distraction or disturbance, a freedom that allows them to “rest a while,” as the text tells us, the word implying not only rest but also a refreshing of the spirit.
While the passage does not use the word prayer, it is safe to assume that this deserted place is, in the mind of the Galilean Rabbi, a place for prayer, where he and his followers can listen in the silence for the voice of the Most High God, a voice that whispers into the deep recesses of their hearts, feeding them with his spirit, revitalizing their worn and weary spirits.
After time spent in this deserted place, they can return to the chaos and the confusion of the world in which they live, revitalized and recharged now to continue their mission to heal the sick and to cure those possessed of evil spirits. Their depleted spirits again energized by their communion with the Great Spirit, they can do the work that they have been called to accomplish.
The lesson for us, obviously, is to allow ourselves a deserted place, some space in our world where we can be alone and apart from the helter-skelter demands of our day, an empty place where we can be alone with the Divine Spirit, a sanctuary where we find refuge and refreshment. Much like a filling station for our cars, our deserted place is where we refill our souls, emptied by the demands of the world, replenished by the Spirit that is found in this deserted place. It is the place of encounter, creature with Creator, a return to the primordial womb.
There is an old story told by the Desert Fathers, a group of ancient monastics who intentionally sought out the desert, believing it the place where they could most have an encounter with the Divine One. According to the story, a monk went into the forest one day where, hearing a nightingale sing, he became so enthralled that he stopped walking so that he could simply stand and listen in awe to the song.
Later, he returned to the monastery, but when he got back nobody recognized him. He gave the monks his name and the name of the abbot under whom he lived. Finally, they looked into the historical chronicle of the abbey and realized what had happened. A thousand years had passed since the monk had gone into the forest. Enchanted as he was by the song of the nightingale in that place set apart, time had stood still for a millennium.
Although fanciful, the story is a good reminder of the deserted place that each of us should seek, a sacred space where time is irrelevant and where the stillness seems like the song of a bird. Resting in that place, our spirits are enthralled and embraced by the Divine Presence, who enters our souls as we breathe deeply, drawing in the divine breath as we did at the moment of our birth.
In seeking out such a deserted place, we do not necessarily need to enter a boat and go a long distance, although historically pilgrimages and retreats have served a similar purpose, the distance traveled a means of putting away or behind us the noise and the nuisances of everyday life. Today, most of us can retreat in our own homes, making a deserted place in the corner of a room or on a bench in the backyard or in a swing on the porch.
The requirements for such a retreat are few, minimalism generally the rule of thumb. First, it needs to be a quiet place, not filled with a rabble of people or the racket of modern living, a condition that requires our intentionally unplugging ourselves from our habitual escapes, such as our iPhone, laptop, or TV. For people glued to social media, as many are in today’s world, this unplugging may initially cause distress and discomfort. But the Divine Presence is not going to be found on Facebook.
Also, it should be a location where the chances of disturbances are few, intrusions and interruptions the death knell of contemplation. In this place, freed from distractions, we are allowed to sit in silence, our souls gradually sipping the breast milk of the Spirit, filling us with nourishment and sustenance, as a mother with her child.
An exchange of words is not necessary, anymore than a child in the comfort of its mother’s arms. As one old man who had come to understand a great deal about the Divine Presence, having spent years finding it in his own deserted place, said of his experience, “I say nothing to him, and he says nothing to me. But I look at him, and he looks at me.” For the true contemplative, such as this old man, words are superfluous. It is enough to bask in the warmth of the divine glance. If we make ourselves visible to him, he will make himself visible to us, hidden in mystery, but felt in the depths of our souls.
While place is important, insofar as it has these parameters, time is equally important, insofar as it is set aside with regularity. The real weakness in a plan for prayer is not the place, but the time, often our relegating time for it to the last place in our hectic day, realizing as the day ends that we have done nothing for our souls. The answer, then, is found in building into our day sacred moments, those brief intervals when we can step out of this world into the spirit world.
We pause our activity and take a coffee break for the soul, seeking out that deserted place for a few minutes, returning from there renewed and replenished. Themselves aware of the importance of making time sacred, the Jewish rabbis taught that there were three times to pray, in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. The number was ascribed to the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each of whom had prayed at one of these specific times.
Again, the number is not as important as the regularity of consecrating moments of the day, taking leave of chronos for kairos, the former meaning regular time, the latter referring to spirit-filled moments. Just as bodily weakness alerts us to the need to stop and feed our bodies, so spiritual weakness alerts us to the need to stop and feed our souls. And just as the body requires regular sustenance, so the soul requires regular support.
As we see in the scriptures today, Rabbi Jesus understands it is time for his followers to step away from their work and to rest in the DIvine Presence. “Come away by yourselves,” he tells them, “and rest for a while.” While we tend to over-complicate these times of retreat, the Galilean shows no such complication in his words. Step away. Find a deserted place. Rest. Those are his instructions.
The popular preacher and writer, Barbara Taylor Brown, offers the same simplicity when she tells of her own prayer life in her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. She writes, “When people ask me about my prayer life, I describe hanging laundry on the line. After a day of too much information about almost everything, there is such a blessed relief in the weight of wet clothes, causing the wicker basket to creak as I carry it out to the grass.”
She continues, “I smell the sun. Above all, I smell clean laundry. . . As I watch the breeze toss these clothes in the wind, I imagine my prayers spinning away over the tops of the trees.” She concludes, “Prayer is to live our lives conscious of God’s grace in every moment, an awareness of God’s love in our midst in both the bread of the Eucharist and the lunch we make for our families, in the waters of baptism and the laundry, in our quiet moments of prayer and the rambunctious joy of playing with our kids.”
As Rabbi Jesus did, so she does, drawing our minds to the wonder and the mystery that surrounds us and animates all living things, always within our grasp. We simply have to be still and allow God to show us his marvelous being.
–Jeremy Myers
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