Comments - Atheists in Space
As an illustration of this point, I wanted to share part of a beautiful poem my late grandfather, Dr. Howard Fulweiler, wrote about John the Baptist. His portrait, for me, captures both the gritty, idiosyncratic physicality of desert asceticism and the awe-some divine presence that permeates its forbidding landscape:
A homeless man was sent by God to teach
A change of heart. Bizarre in camel’s hair,
Baptizing in the Jordan he came to preach
Isaiah’s vision in the desert air.
He called out loud for a fresh start there;
Nature’s blind beginning now must yield
To the new world foretold in Isaiah’s prayer:
Don’t hurt or harm; the law of pain is repealed;
Let wolf and lamb be friends; the world’s wounds be healed . . .
(From The Christian Year, a poem cycle by Howard Wells Fulweiler, Jr.)
If you have spent time in the desert, as I have, you know that in its inhumane -- or perhaps better put, humanity-indifferent -- silence, the divine presence manifests itself as palpably as the heat and grit. We may not all be able to don the camel's hair, but the saints' voices carry far on that clear desert air when we listen.
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