Paradise?  As I, along with millions of others, contemplate the surge of cold that is currently sweeping across the midsection of the United States, I think once again of Joshua Tree, that oasis of cactus and rock in the remote California desert where I was last week.  I think also of a novel I read many years ago called Islandia.  It is a tale of a utopia set in a series of idyllic and pastoral islands in a distant ocean.  Far away from the turmoil of war and the ravages, as it saw it, of capitalism, Islandia offered its inhabitants a life without worry or care.  It was a life shaped by mutual exchange, cultural openness, and community, a land in which all people are at peace with each other.
     Although Joshua Tree and Islandia are very different places, they both offer havens, respites, places of solace and rest.  Just as it's not surprising that historical visions of the afterlife pictured a land of glory and peace, so it is no accident that some of the most intrepid monastics, regardless of religion or creed, found their richest insights in the desert.
     Oddly enough, while places like Islandia and Joshua Tree provide comfort in very different ways, we need both of them to find our meaning.  In bucolic bliss we find joy through leisure and ease; in the rugged landscapes of the desert we find joy through abnegation and sacrifice.
     Would his mission really have changed the world if God, in Jesus, had come to Islandia?