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About this blog

By Anonymous
Wisdom of the Desert is a ministry of Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Memphis, TN. Contributors include the Revs. Amber Carswell, Scott Walters, and Paul McClain, along with the occasional guest.

We'll be referencing the collections of sayings of the desert fathers, along with "Where God Happens" by Rowan Williams and "Wisdom of the Desert" by Thomas Merton. We hope you'll read along with us.

Visit us at www.calvarymemphis.org for more information!

Popular posts from this blog

Painstaking speech

By Anonymous
Technology, folks are saying, will help us overcome the isolation we’re feeling during this pandemic. And to some extent, that’s true. I can see my friends and co-workers in digital replication on Zoom, or glean some good ideas from my creative friends on how to spend the time, or track how communal response is unfolding in communities far from me. But considering the well-established fact that social media hasn’t had an overall positive effect on our relationships, self-esteem, anxiety levels, loneliness, sleep patterns — not to mention our national conversation — I’m more than a little concerned. If social media and the digital existence are our lifelines now, what sort of life will we find answering on the other end of the line? Rowan Williams writes in Where God Happens  (p. 76), “However physically distant we may be from the more obvious temptations, there is always the damage that can be done by speech, by the giving and receiving of doubtfully truthful perspectives, the hal
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Easter Monday: A note not from the Desert Fathers

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by the Rev. Buddy Stallings Since I am very part-time, non-stipendiary, and somewhat curmudgeonly, I am choosing not to write this morning about a piece of wisdom from the Desert Fathers. Today is Easter Monday, the second day of the Great Fifty Days of Easter; and not a single one of the “top ten hits of the Desert Fathers” seems very Eastery to me. This is the time when Episcopalians delight in saying “Happy Easter” much longer than our non-liturgical brothers and sisters do so. To be clear, God loves “them” just as God loves us, though I suspect God wonders why in the world “they” would choose to celebrate Easter just for one day when Easter is, in fact, a glorious season, lingering all the way to Pentecost. Lord knows we are in particular need of a “Glorious Season” this year! My wondrous, brave, and talented colleagues at Calvary gave all of us with eyes to see, ears to hear, and fingers to click thoughtful and beautiful online services during Holy Week (indeed throughout this d
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Love Over Fear

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After a long while in the Egyptian desert, Anthony said, “Now I no longer fear God, I love him, for love casts out fear.” by the Rev. Buddy Stallings When Scott first asked me to write a brief meditation on a teaching of one of the Desert Fathers, my response was, “Do you have any idea how long it has been since I have thought of a Desert Father?” In his inimitably kind way, he chuckled gently and told me the deadline for having it written. To tell the truth, even when I studied the Desert Fathers long ago in seminary, I didn’t think about them a great deal. None of them, not one, seemed like someone I would enjoy getting to know or certainly one with whom I would want to share a meal. Asceticism by definition does not elicit imaginings of culinary excellence. And, yet, even then, I was insightful enough to know that my real resistance was that I suspected they were on to something in their search for God that I most likely would never have the nerve or strength to engage: l
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