I have been reading about the Desert Fathers (wrote Dessert Fathers first but that’s probably a totally different group) who went off in flip-flops into the desert in Africa in times long gone to seek solitude and caves and all of them thought sand was great. There were some Desert Mothers too, but in the main they were mainly chaps and so they’re called the Desert Fathers. The most well known in the 3rd century was Anthony the Great. (I don’t know if that was on his business cards – might come across as a little bit big headed. At cheese and wine parties “Hi, I’m Anthony the Great.” “Any relation to Anthony the Pretty good?” “No relation; merely far better than.”)

And if an Anthony came along after the 3rd Century and did something really brilliant and was even better than Anthony the Great had been, where does the naming thing go from there? Would he be called Anthony the Greater? Anthony the flippin’ Awesome? I’d like to think so.

Anyway, apparently in the intervening 1700 years or so, it seems that absolutely no Anthony has ever amounted to anything better than that which Anthony the Great achieved by sitting in a cave.

Come on Anthonys – for goodness sake pull your collective fingers out!

Still, I feel a little like the Desert Fathers or Desert Mothers today – not because of any competence in cave cohabiting or dune dwelling but because they were all probably clever and deep and mystical and people sought them out to ask them the big questions of life and they would come up with cracking good answers that made you go “Hmmm, wow!” Then that particular Desert Father or Mother may well leave that particular cave in which you had found them and seek a more remote one because with all these people seeking him or her out things were not so peaceful as he or she had hoped when they furtively flip-flopped off into the desert in the first place.

Here’s my deep Desert Parent-like thought for the day. It came in response to one of our children being frustrated that some “stupid” person couldn’t be persuaded to agree with their point of view.

If you don’t think about it too much my answer works…. “Don’t worry. If you change a stupid person’s view to be the same as yours, your view is now the same as that of a stupid person. Do you want to think like a stupid person? No? So don’t worry if someone thinks differently to you.”

OK – so I’m going to totally fail the Desert Fathers entrance test.

But there is, for both Ella and me, a definite feeling that as we head out on Friday we will not only be flying over the very desert these wise souls indwelt (if not over then pretty close I reckon and good enough for poetic licence) but also that we are entering into a potential desert experience. I’m sure we all feel we’ve lived in a desert place in areas and seasons of life.

For me “desert’ will be being out of my comfort zone, without a home base, away from family. Continually experiencing numerous new cultures in which I won’t have any shared history or awareness of how things are done.

But the desert is not merely a place full of emptiness.

Being stripped of our usual go-to comforts or habitual hideaways or the spiritual cushions we place around ourselves. We often work to walk the line of least resistance and can find ourselves carried along by the crowd rather than steering a conscious counter-route. When we find ourselves in a desert space the things that had previously been there surrounding us and are now removed will leave a vacuum. And there is an opportunity of filling the void with something good, or simply self-placed safe padding.

I am a little scared of the desert places – the different to my up-til-now-safe homely places.

And I feel very unprepared.

But not totally unprepared. I have learned one thing from the desert fathers.

For in my bag, although I don’t have much packed, The first thing that I put in….

was a pair of flip flops.