Witness in the Desert
Document Actions
by Dana Greene
The highway north of Damascus snakes through unrelenting desert. After about eighty kilometers a small road heads east from Nebek to the edge of the Great Syrian Desert; the border with Iraq lies further on. There, in mountain caves, early Christian hermits lived out an ascetic existence ultimately forming small monastic communities.
One of these was Deir Mar Musa, founded in the sixth century by St. Moses the Abyssinian. In this harsh and empty wasteland it is only with difficulty that the extant monastery, indistinguishable from the surrounding mountains, comes into view. The long haul up eight hundred steps finally yields the fortress-like building that housed a religious community that flourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and slowly declined until it was abandoned in the 1830s. Entrance is through a low stone doorway into a dim light. One is startled not so much by this dramatic change from brilliant sun to semi-darkness, but by the fact that life could be carried on here at all or that any vision could reclaim this ancient place. After all, this is the desert, the Syrian Desert at that. The combination of the all-encompassing barrenness and isolation with that of a nation reviled seems too unlikely a source of hope.
Yet Deir Mar Musa is alive and witnessing to both its contemplative past and to the great need for religious dialogue in a world driven to destruction. Today the small monastic Community of Khalil, extraordinary in its aims and composition, inhabits this craggy terrain. Its story began in the 1980s when a young Italian Jesuit, Paulo Dall'Oglio, a student of Arabic, visited the abandoned site. Inspired by the great French scholar of Islam, Louis Massignon, and the modern desert father, Charles De Foucauld, Dall'Oglio took up the promise to love Islam. He was ordained in the local Syrian Catholic Church and began working with that community to restore the monastery's ruins. In 1991 an ecumenical community of Syrian Catholic and Orthodox men and women was formed.
Members take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and make promises of contemplation, work, hospitality, and love of Islam. They follow a daily rule of prayer, meditation and Eucharist carried out in Arabic. The rule is entered into by other lay persons who join the community for shorter periods of time. This little band is linked to the wider world not only through its purpose but through electronic communication, making their mountain community accessible to all who have interest in their work.
It is to the contemplative life that the community gives priority; it is this which serves as the basis for reinventing the earliest relationship of Christians and Muslims, that of peace and respect. Their sacred labor is hospitality, the welcoming of the other and the dialogue among believers in Allah, God of reconciliation and peace. Father Paolo--clear, intense, attached yet free from attachment--is chastened and humbled by this commitment; he lives in hope and trust that the community's vision may somehow be realized.
The center of the monastery is its eleventh century church embedded deep in the mountain interior and entered through a series of small doors. Its arched vaults, rugged floors and painted fresco walls create a space where prayer is palpable. The iconography of Mary, the saints and the judgment of sinners links back to the community's Byzantine origins. People come to pray, visit, retreat and study. Workshops and seminars on Islamic-Christian dialogue take place in a new building that has been hewed from some nearby caves. Here hope is strong and commitment to a particular vocation is intense.
Outside the church, the simple tasks of community go on: tending goats, making cheese, harvesting olives, assisting the many seekers, Christians and Muslims, who make the steep climb to the monastery. As an agricultural community eking out a living from this rough place, the community is alive to its natural environment, protecting its harmonies and living simply with it.
It is the vastness of desert and mountains that dominate at Deir Mar Musa. Human efforts, no matter how visionary, are dwarfed by them. In the cliffs encircling the monastery, one finds the caves of ancient hermits and experiences, as they must have, the "thinness" of this place. If one can hold at bay the surrounding primal forces, the emptiness is filled with a presence both awful and unrelenting.
Daily, in the brutal heat and dust of summer, in the snows of winter, this small community witnesses both to the faith of its forbearers and the hope that Abrahamic peoples can be reconciled. Theirs is the work of purification, what Father Paulo calls "the jihad of the soul." It is the beginning point of the transformed life, pursued in the desert, a witness to believers everywhere.
Dana Greene, Professor of History and Dean Emerita, Oxford College, Emory University, is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program and former member of the Shalem Board.