Surveying the hysteria of contemporary culture and particularly the crisis of leadership in the church, I am convinced that the quiet, remote disciplines of prayer and pilgrimage, silence and solitude far from being extraneous to modern life are urgently, startlingly essential for anyone aspiring to live prophetically and consistently within such turbulent times.

Nothing but our hidden lives in Christ can lend our public witness for Christ the necessary credibility of dissonance and depth.

Our loveliness amidst the ugliness flowers only from a sort of holy loneliness.

Somehow the simple, time-worn practice of private prayer - merely the maintenance of a personal devotional life - has become an act of outright defiance against the contemporary cult of narcissistic expediency.

Shouldn’t we sometimes arise from our knees a little taller? What if we walked out of the wilderness into the world eyes afire, fists swinging, senses sharpened, saying: ‘Watch out world, I am here with questions for your answers, I have breathed immortal air, alone with All That Matters!’?

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“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.” ~ Luke 4:14

“But this kind goeth not out save by prayer and fasting.” ~ Matthew 17:21