Once I enter wilderness, I am more honest with myself. The lure is less what I can tally or photograph than what I can sense: the quiet, intangible qualities of desert, mountain and forest. Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of the wilderness have always been its spiritual values -- silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude -- able to be harvested by any traveler who visits. Prayers in the wilderness were like streams in the desert for me -- something unanticipated and unchronicled welling up, and because of that surprise, appreciated all the more. Not until I actually left the wilderness was I conscious what had been the extent of my thirst.
~ from WILDERNESS SOJOURN: NOTES ON DESERT SILENCE by David Douglas
It is not right to acquiesce in the notion that our lives are divided into the time we spend on our work and the time we spend in serving God. We must be able to serve the Divine Plan, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation... Every maker and worker is called to serve God in their profession or trade -- not outside it.
