Philosophy and Theology

Volume 16, Issue 2, 2004

The Desert

The desert is an experience before it is a figure or a concept. The experience of the desert is prior to any figure or concept, and in itself it is without figure or concept. Yet its emptiness is not therefore abstract but, to the contrary, vital. The emptiness of the desert, like the emptiness of God, coincides with an immeasurable plenitude. The words and actions that we live from presuppose the desert in which they are at once indispensable and unsatisfying.