Last October, we spent two weeks travelling in the deserts of Utah and Colorado. I wrote this piece as a response to camping and hiking in that dry, dry terrain.

The vast, ancient, red-rock, high desert wilderness of southern Utah speaks of life on the very edge of possibility. Sunlight in abundance, and heat – but water is scarce and precious. Without it, nothing lives – yet the desert has clever ways of hanging on to what little there is for future use. 

Hiking and staying in this desert is conducive to reflecting on creation and its amazing capabilities. How do correspondences come into play? It’s very clear that without any water/truth there is no life. But is an over-abundance of heat/love harmful? They say ‘love is all you need’, but I’m not sure that is precisely correct. 

The Lord’s truth is vital for the order of things. Even a very little bit can be treasured, and saved for future use. A tiny drop of water can be stored in the desert dust, gradually increasing its capacity to keep more water, leading to tiny plants being able to establish and grow, until full clear life blooms. 

Here are photos of life – living things – growing in what would seem an impossible place. And yet there it is! 

Ours is an individual experience. What we see, feel, hear, taste, smell – it’s all subjective. We think we each see daylight or feel snow the same way, but do we really? Experiences are rated on scales – Scoville scale of heat (spiciness), Mohs hardness scale, lumens/lux/candela/footcandles indicating brightness – but can we really know if our bases are the same, if we’ve all got the same starting point?

We know from the Heavenly Doctrines for the New Church that light is about enlightenment and warmth is about love –

The sun in the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God, who is within that sun. The spiritual sun radiates heat and light. The essence of the heat it radiates is love, and the essence of the light is wisdom. That heat and that light have an effect on people’s wills and intellects. The heat affects the will; the light affects the intellect.
(True Christianity 75)

….Does someone who is more enlightened and living in more love experience a warmer, brighter summer day than another? Does someone who is struggling with her faith and living more selfishly experience a longer, colder winter? More seasonal affective disorder? It doesn’t seem so – it can be a brilliantly sunny day outside even when I’m feeling dark & crabby inwardly. I doubt that everyone in Canada experienced a severe dip in their spirituality alongside this winter’s cold snap …. or did they??

A desire to protect people from hurt seems to be a major goal of American culture right now. Public and private conversations about various hot topics are often shut down or sidestepped by those who don’t want to hurt anyone by expressing an opinion that someone might not like. Causing hurt seems to have become the ultimate evil, and protecting from hurt is always the best, most inspiring choice.

I’ve been reflecting on this anti-hurt approach to life, and I don’t think it actually works. In fact, I think it can cause worse hurt than it prevents. For a simple example on a physical level, would we refuse to let a doctor stitch up our child’s wound because the stitching would hurt? If we avoid the hurt of stitching, we will actually cause a far worse hurt as infection sets in. I think you can apply this metaphor on the emotional and spiritual level as well. It seems to me that at every level, there’s a difference between hurt that leads to healing and hurt that truly harms. There are times when it is definitely the right choice to prevent hurt, but there are times
when it is not.

We need hurt in order to survive, and we need hurt to grow. I heard a wonderful church service recently about the story of Jacob wrestling with God. The minister began by telling the kids about an interesting thing that happened many years ago when he lived in Arizona. Some scientists built a huge greenhouse, and one thing they did was to plant trees inside the greenhouse. They provided everything a tree needs to grow, and for some odd reason the trees were weak and easily fell over. At first, they couldn’t figure out why. Finally, they discovered that trees need the wind to blow against them as they grow, or else they are not strong enough to stay up when they get tall. He explained to the kids about the Lord lovingly wrestling with Jacob to provide him with the ability to grow stronger and better.

I know we are well into January, but I’d like to talk about New Year’s resolutions. 

I don’t know about you, but I always feel a lot of pressure around New Years. I feel like I’m supposed to come up with some grand goal and then be on the perfect path to achieving that goal as soon as January makes its midnight debut. In spite of the pressure, it’s tempting to make these glittering promises of self-improvement to myself, because such promises look and feel really good. They’re pretty, shiny pledges and I’m convinced I will look so good wearing them to the ball, or rather, as I watch the ball drop. But if I’m honest, I usually decide to pull a Cinderella and run out the door before the clock strikes twelve. Each retreating foot step seems to shriek: “Just kidding! I can’t handle any big life changes right now! I’m still recovering from Christmas! Even little changes feel huge these days! Maybe next year!” 

I’m not sharing this to be self-deprecating or to pooh-pooh New Year’s resolutions. They really seem to work for some people and that’s wonderful. But what I keep realizing is that we can’t plunge into a meaningful life shift without being ready. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is. We have to be truly ready. And the only way to get ready is to identify what we need spiritually. If we’re not prepared to make spiritual improvements, we won’t see any natural world results. For example, if we want to commit to eating better in the new year, we might first need to really face the fact that junk food has become a false god in our lives. It’s not enough to stock the fridge with celery. We must first acknowledging the spiritual issue at stake or we are setting ourselves up to trip up on the next powdered donut that crosses our path.