Desert and Transformation
Sunday, February 15, 2026
CAC Dean of Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher takes inspiration from the desert Christians of the fourth century. These men and women fled to the deserts of Northern Africa and elsewhere to practice their faith apart from the Christianity of empire.
Around 313 CE and the Edict of Milan, Christianity became yoked with empire. [1] A lot of people who wanted to have a genuine experience of living out the promises of Christ left the empire, so to speak. They went out into the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Arabia. There were women and men, rich and poor. Some of them had been working in royal courts, and some had been murderers. Some were people of high esteem in society while others were viewed by society as scoundrels.
The Christians who went to the desert sought an interior martyrdom. That’s how they thought about it, at least. They wanted to learn how to die to aspects of themselves that were preventing them from experiencing an intimate relationship with Jesus in a mystical dimension. The seekers would go out into the desert, and they would say, “Abba, father or Amma, mother—give me a word,” because they really wanted their souls to be awakened.
The desert elders have meant so much to me, and the really great thing is that even before I quite understood them, I loved their stories. My favorite story is about Abba Moses of Egypt. Somebody sent a message to him and said, “We need you to come to the elders’ gathering because there’s someone who has committed a sin, and we need you to help us make a judgment about his behavior.” He just said, “I don’t want to go.” Then, a priest sent word to him and said, “Moses, we need you here. They’re asking for you. You’ve got to come.” So reluctantly, Moses got up. He went over to the old basket he had. It was full of holes, and he filled it with sand. Then, he put it on his back and walked to this meeting where someone was accused of a sin and was awaiting the judgment of the group. People came out to him and said, “Moses, what are you up to? What are you doing?” He said, “Well, here I am going to judge someone for a sin they say he has committed, and yet here my sins are running out behind me, and I don’t even see them.” [2]
The accusers just fell away. They went back to the gathering and told the man, “We don’t have anything to say to you.” It disbanded because of Moses’s humility. It’s very much like the woman accused of adultery by the men in John’s Gospel, where Jesus comes up and says, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).
For me, the main message of the desert elders is one of love, and that is what keeps me coming back to them.
Desert Magic
Monday, February 16, 2026
Professor Rachel Wheeler describes how the desert offers a sacred invitation to people of all faiths and times:
The desert occupies a powerful place at the heart of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic spiritual traditions. Simultaneously, the desert is a place of resistance, refuge, and revelation. In the early centuries of Christianity, the desert was home for those seeking countercultural withdrawal. Many men and women, who came to be known as desert fathers and mothers, experienced the wilderness as a refuge from an empire increasingly inhospitable to them…. Its association with the powerful and wealthy was inconsistent with how many desert mothers and fathers believed they ought to live out their Christian calling.
The ways these desert Christians navigated the difficulties of their own time and place may seem irredeemably remote to most of us, but I find their stories strangely compelling, like stones yielding different veins of mineral and precious metals whichever way you turn them. Their stories and teachings are brief, sometimes cryptic, sometimes profound, as these gruff desert patriots rubbed shoulders with each other and uncovered uncomfortable knowledge of themselves and their habits of thought, fallibilities, and limitations.
Early desert Christians can serve as a model for how to wrestle with paradox:
The desert offered a particular kind of formation. It could be harsh, offering unwelcome discipline as a parent might. It required the desert dwellers to grow up and fend for themselves, to play well with others, and to share—all guidance we may have received from our own parents at one time! The desert would have offered a strange kind of consolation, as well, when loneliness or the particular boredom called acedia kicked in. Wild animals might have offered companionship, as they did for Abba Theon, who made his solitary home in the desert, sharing food and water with the wild animals who visited his dwelling. [1]
The prototypical desert father, Antony of Egypt (251–356), is said to have fallen in love with the place he lived, deep in the desert, where a few palm trees, water, and arable soil made an oasis. [2] This was the desert’s magic: that within what appeared scarce, there might emerge surprising abundance. What could be harsh might offer a warm welcome. The landscape’s paradox offered space for theological paradox: The incarnation! The virgin birth! The Trinity! The Apostle Paul’s simultaneous willing and not-willing to do good! Even: the subtle interplay of the body’s, mind’s, and spirit’s needs! The desert helped these Christians lean more deeply into undermining their assumptions and cravings for what is and what should be….
For me, these stories shimmer with the heat of desert light and sun.
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Three discussion questions:
- Butcher says the desert elders sought “interior martyrdom” — dying to the parts of themselves blocking an intimate experience of God. What’s one thing in you right now that you sense might need to die, even if you’re not eager for it?
- The Abba Moses story is striking because his humility didn’t just change the mood — it dissolved the whole accusation. When have you witnessed (or experienced) humility doing something that argument or judgment simply couldn’t?
- Wheeler says the desert’s paradox — harshness offering warmth, scarcity yielding abundance — created space for theological paradox too. Where in your own life are you being asked to hold two things in tension that don’t seem to belong together?
