Desert Wisdom- Asking For a Word

Wisdom of the Desert

April 6 – April 11, 2025

Sunday
Western Christians have proceeded as if the first centuries of Christianity were unimportant, or not part of the essential Christ mystery. The very things early Christians emphasized—such as the prayer of quiet, divinization, universal restoration, and the importance of practice—are some of the most neglected parts of the Western Church. —Richard Rohr

Monday
For the desert mothers and fathers, prayer was understood not as a transaction that somehow pleased God, but as a transformation of the consciousness of the one who was doing the praying.
—Richard Rohr

Tuesday
We are in need of those values central to African monasticism and early Christian hospitality; they include communal relationships, humility, and compassion. —Barbara Holmes

Wednesday
Having left behind the noise and clutter of city life, the desert monks placed a premium on brevity of speech. They knew that words too easily got in the way of what matters most.
—Belden Lane

Thursday
Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love. Quite often this can happen right in the midst of human relationships and busy lives.
—Richard Rohr

Friday
Almost always, the desert spaces are places and moments of paradox: knowing amid the unknowing, refreshment in the parched places, life amid death, fecundity in the barrenness, midnight blooming, and acceptance of seasons. —Cassidy Hall

Week Fifteen Practice
Give Me a Word

A monk once came to Basil of Caesarea and said, “Speak a word, Father”; and Basil replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and the monk went away at once. Twenty years later he came back and said, “Father, I have struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me”; and he said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also.
—Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward

Spiritual writer Christine Valters Paintner suggests we might adopt the desert practice of asking for a “word”:

Repeated often in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers … this tradition of asking for a word was a way of seeking something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes even a whole lifetime. The word was often a short phrase to nourish and challenge the receiver. The word was meant to be wrestled with and slowly grown into….

This story demonstrates how a word could be worked on for years at a time. The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counseling. It was part of a relationship that had developed between elder and novice and the assumption was that this word, when received by the disciple, would be life-giving.…

As you work through the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers, consider releasing your thinking mind and enter into a space of receiving. Imagine yourself in the story and ask for your own life-giving word. The word might be an insight from the text. It might come in that time of stillness, or it might arrive later in the day in the form of a line of poetry, wisdom offered from an unexpected source, a dream symbol, or an image you stumble upon that seizes your imagination.

I often ask for a word as I take my daily walks. I listen for what the trees and pigeons might have to offer me. When I receive a word, often it is confirmed through synchronicities that continue to appear to me. The purpose of the word is to simply hold it in your heart, turning it over and over, pondering, but not analyzing it. Give it space within you to speak.