I've written before about the power of the desert.  It's weighty and timeless.  As I have been reading Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, his account of his long ago travels in the so-called Empty Quarter of Arabia, I find myself struck anew at the profundity of those distant sands.  As Wilfred writes, "Time and space were one.  Round us was a silence in which only the winds played, and a cleanness which was infinitely remote from the world of men."  It's no accident that prophets of all religious ilk frequently found their calling in the desert:  where else can we find a place, on this planet, in which time and space are one?
     Or a "cleanness" that is "infinitely remote" from all else?  It is the desert's ability to scour our hearts, minds, and imaginations that represents the core of its power.  We're helpless in its grip.
     And being helpless, be it, as Neil Young sang many decades ago, the inability to fathom the meaning of geese flying across a full moon in late summer, or, even more deeply, feeling inadequate before the idea of God, is what we, frail humans we are, ought to be.  Yes, we can reason, and yes, we can investigate and discover, but no, apart from opening ourselves to the metaphysical unknown, we will never know the full meaning of who we are.
     Helpless we live, helpless we die.  Why?