In the desert, deity goes into an eternal ekstasis through which all of creation is drawn into loving union.

"In the desert, we encounter and experience our finitude - the limitation of our being human. But the experience of the desert is also an experience of the overturning of human finitude, the opening of human being to the mystical basis of its identity. This place is where the divine as 'God' empties itself into finite human being and where finite human being discovers its own deep participation in transcendence. This is the place of desert encounter: the encounter of the self with itself; and encounter of the self with the unknowable Transcendent Other that in the end is not other than self . . . This is precisely the awareness of the eternal ekstasis of deity by which the divine draws all creation into loving union."

David Jasper,
"The Sacred Desert"

Photos: Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27 - December 1, 2014