The Desert Again

A voice of one crying out in the desert: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.
Mark 1:3

From an interview with Bruce Feiler regarding Walking the Bible:

I went looking for all these rational questions, and could I make it connection with my kind of secular, rational world, and then I realized that was just this kind of crutch that I was relying on. And that what I really learned was that going into the desert, in particular, you have to learn to let go of those crutches and the civilized world, and open yourself up to something higher.

I think that one thing that Judaism, Christian and Islam have in common is that they are the story of a man - at their heart - the story of a man who leaves the civilized world and goes into the desert, has a transforming experience, and then comes back to the civilized world to share that experience with others.

The key thought here is that when you go into the desert you can't use reason and intellect as a crutch. You have to confront the higher realities. It reads like a primer on my own spiritual dilemmas.