On Being Nothing
The wisdom of the desert is radical:
Mozart wrote some wonderful music.
Michelangelo painted some lovely art.
Sunsets can be nice.
But before God, those things are nothing.
There is within God an operation named love; and this love dwells within each person; and there is nothing else that is.
There is a joy that the world cannot comprehend.
The desert is not sweet, and real solitude is brutal: their value is not in themselves, but in their being empty to the senses: they are where nothing is, but God alone.
The desert fathers did not (metaphorically) go into St. Peter's Basilica to experience sublime architecture and art and music. They chose instead the barren wasteland of desert. This choice was not accident: it was essence.
Why the cross? Was it accident?
Contemplation sees a beauty that cannot be designed or shown or seen.
To MTV -- even to PBS -- beatitude is neither cool nor sublime: it's nothing.