petitioning the desert fathers and mothers

The Zen Dads and Zen Moms barely walked barefoot into the desert. Their silent footsteps and stilled voices echoed against the dunes. For the curvilinear tawny dunes, picture, the landscape of Lawrence of Arabia. 'It is written.' By accident or providence, the barefoot pilgrims discovered the Holy City of Lightanddark. They commingled and communed with the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers. The sands were hot, the nights cold. Our protagonist applied to join the community in the desert among the dunes. Only by invitation, he was told. What was on the application, he asked. A portfolio of pain, a paean of penance, a prostrate petition, he was told. This is not the French Foreign Legion, he was warned. You don't enlist, we don't recruit. The hardest question on the application (which existed neither on paper nor on digital atoms) consists of: why? Our applicant surmised this would be a cinch. Easy. Yet he was forewarned. No whining, self-pity, or quixotic gestures toward finding oneself. Skip the escape rhetoric, the confession, or the absolution. The self-actualization crap. Our fallen hero wanted to join, even if momentarily out on the periphery, along the outer borders that required a Passport of Perfidy. The chasm between then and now, between her and him. Hesychasm. Sacred stillness silence. I want to be honed, carved, cured, our triumphant warrior wailed. There is no cure, there is no cause, replied the palindromic Abba (Father). I want to be whittled, reduced, spared, declared the supplicant-applicant. There are no words, smiled the recursive Amma (Mother). Iconic. Dolorous. It is not to hide but to expose, not to lose but to find, implored our narrator. Let me dry out, sober up, be salved, o saviors, prayed our petitioner. Why, the Abba and Amma intoned speechlessly. Read my lips. Quiet. White sands. Ascetic fasting, paring down through prayer, alms as balms. 'Though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed.' The desert monks and nuns, in a chorus cried, Cities of the night, metropolises, subway roars; there's your desert for you. Dig in. Delight. Yet the applicant seeking to join the Settlement of Sandy Silence persisted. Let me be hewn, tell me how, he said. And waited.