The Desert Foundation

07/01/2026

What do you think when you hear the word "contemplation"? How about "dissident"? After hearing Anand Ghiridharadas' interview with Gal Beckerman, I've been putting the two words together.

Contemplative practices move out of the monastery and into our daily lives of work, family, and politics, becoming contemplative dissidence.

06/11/2026

Summer greetings from the land of fruit-bearing saguaros. Read our new Caravans newsletter for reflections on "Healers, Healing, and Archives." We mourn the loss of a healer and dear friend, gain wisdom from the saguaro, and get an update on Tessa's latest podcasts and archive project.

We celebrate our winter-spring “visiting season” and Learning from a saguaro. Fr. Dave mourns the loss of a dear friend and healer.

05/31/2026

None of us knows how much time we have. I'm more aware of that than ever. So I'm trying to pour more life into what I write.

When it comes to social and political action, is contemplation simply out of the picture? "Out of the picture” can mean different things.

03/31/2026

During Holy Week, we reflect on the weight of empire and institutional power attempting to crush a movement by killing its young founder. How do you see it? Is that world long gone? What world do you live in?

According to presidential advisor Stephen Miller, “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”

According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, "We ... don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters." He prays that there be “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy."

According to Pope Leo XIV, "... this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’” (Is 1:15).

(Photo by Leo Visions on Unsplash)

03/31/2026

As we move through Holy Week, find inspiration in Tessa Bielecki's Via Saguaro, the fourteen Stations of the Cross she composed several years ago as she walked the desert during Lent and saw the suffering and death of Jesus mirrored in the saguaros all around her.

Dramatic photographs create a "Via Saguaro" in a meditation on life's sorrows, inspired by the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.

03/01/2026

I love the Jewish Sabbath prayer that calls the Sabbath a "soother of sorrows ... healing the hearts that were broken." It ends, "Banish despair: here is hope come."
So I pray for a just peace in all conflicts and for the grace that banishes despair through peacemaking. Even as I grieve.

The most fruitful penance is positive. I find solace in the Pope’s words, the Buddhist monks’ mindful walk, and the Love Forward March.

02/18/2026

Here are some thoughts for Ash Wednesday on treating each other as wonders while also embracing alchemical anger:

At the beginning of Lent, I’m thinking about speech, words and their power. God speaks and it comes to be. We exist through a primal Word.

02/14/2026

Tessa and Fr. Dave loved their recent retreat with the Community of the Incarnation at the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson.

02/12/2026

Thinking about glory in a dark time and what it looks like in action.

We grow younger and younger because we realize how wondrous Reality is, how vast Love is, and it all keeps attracting us, now and forever.

01/23/2026

Courageous Christian disciples who resisted war and bigotry often ended up in jail while many denominations “remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows,” as Dr. King declared from Birmingham jail.

Those years listening to loons, skating in the moonlight, perched on a mountainside or having my heart broken planted a kind of madness.