The Desert and Transformation

Fr.Richard Rohr and The CAC

Saturday, February 21, 2026

Sunday
The main message of the desert elders is one of love, and that is what keeps me coming back to them.
—Carmen Acevedo Butcher

Monday
The desert helped these Christians lean more deeply into undermining their assumptions and cravings for what is and what should be. —Rachel Wheeler

Tuesday
The ancient path of the desert mystics invites us to disrupt the patterns of ego and empire through the courageous pursuit of inner liberation. —Stephen Copeland

Wednesday
The desert had come for me again—the place where God has come so often in my life. I struggle with my son John’s loss to this day, but in the deepest place of my soul, I’m at peace knowing that this most recent path of descent in the desert has only carried me deeper once again into love. —Belden Lane

Thursday
[For the desert fathers and mothers,] prayer was not an activity undertaken for a few hours each day, it was a life continually turned towards God. —Benedicta Ward

Friday
The spiritual seeds the ammas and abbas once planted in the fertile soil of seekers can still beautifully bloom now in the soil of you, more than 1,500 years later.

This is how the glory of God works. You are the glory of God made manifest. —Lisa Colón DeLay


Week Seven Practice
Entering the Desert

Spiritual teacher and writer Christine Valters Paintner invites us to imitate the desert monks in their commitment to spiritual practices as a path to freedom and transformation:

The desert monks offer us a template for how to transcend the temptations in our midst and plunge ourselves into the beating heart of life. It is up to us to translate their template into our own context….

The desert elders each lived in a cave, hut, or single room called a cell. This was central to their journey, to retreat to solitude with the purpose of staying fully present to one’s own experience.

For them, the cell was an outward reality but also a metaphor for the inner life. It is a symbol for the soul work we are each called to engage in and the place of our intimate encounter with the divine.

They went to seek this kind of radical communion with the sacred presence, which teaches us that it is not the cell itself that brings inner peace…. Their wisdom reminds us that we can bring presence and focus in the midst of a crowd, and we can also sit in a silent place and be overwhelmed by thoughts and distractions….

Allow a few moments to center and breathe deeply, drawing your awareness back to yourself. Rest in the presence of the Beloved who dwells in the cave of your heart, that interior cell where you are called to simply be. Invite in the presence of some of the desert mothers and fathers to be with you.

Notice how they appear to you. Notice if one or two of them approach you, and invite them to sit with you for a while. Share with them where you are in this season of your life and what the questions of your heart are right now. Listen for their response.