Thoughts on Spiritual Formation from great examples who dare to go before:

The mountain is where one seeks to transcend ordinary human experience; the desert is where one enters it most deeply.

Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes

I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost, from “Desert Places”

Go and pray to the Lord to command some struggle to be stirred up in you, for the soul is matured only in battles.

Abbot John the Dwarf in Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

Precisely because our secular milieu offers us so few spiritual disciplines, we have to develop our own. We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart