T.E. Lawrence

The desert makes it very plain that a God of awesome and elusive grandeur cannot be had. The God of wilderness lies beyond human control, beyond acquisition. Yet the desert lover continues to beat on the distant heart of God with the slow, repetitive word of his prayer. The word or phrase is transformed into an arrow of steel, says Carlo Carretto, and it beats again and again against God's thick cloud of unknowing. The fourteenth-century mystic who first employed this image knew the subtle truth that God longs to be feverishly sought, hiding from those God cherishes so as to quicken desire into a deep, long-suffering love

[…] Our little caravan grew self-conscious, and fell dead quiet, afraid and ashamed to flaunt its smallness in the presence of the stupendous hills.

Landscapes, in childhood’s dream, were so vast and silent.

We looked backward through our memory for the prototype up which all men had walked between such walls toward such an open square as that in front where this road seemed to end. Later, when we were often riding inland, my mind used to turn me from the direct road, to clear my senses by a night in Rumm and by the ride down its dawn-lit valley towards the shining plains, or up its valley in the sunset towards that glowing square which my timid anticipation never let me reach. I would say, ‘Shall I ride on this time, beyond the Khazail, and know it all?’ But in truth I liked Rumm too much.

“So already I knew that when we had taken Akaba I would have to lead the movement either directly or indirectly, and as I was little a man of action the prospect appeared hateful. So many men craved action, detested thinking: it was an irony I should fill one of their places unwillingly. I had never coveted a greater office than the one I held: never envied a greater man than the self I was: but always I would have given all my soul for something less, because of a certain sluggishness of sense which demanded immediacy of contact for the attainment of sharp perception: it was sensation for me when the turn meant food or hunger: but in the category of food dry bread and a feast seemed alike. Accordingly, on this march I took risks with the set hope of proving myself unworthy to be the Arab assurance of final victory. A bodily wound would have been a grateful vent for my internal perplexities, a mouth through which my troubles might have found relief.”