I read this book slowly, savoring how Arndt drew from the Desert Fathers and Mothers to bring insight to the Scriptures and then to give thoughtful applications to life today. I also feel like his writing has grown since the previous book of his I read. This is a book to be reread and pondered.

This is a beautiful book that takes Biblical truths illustrated through the lives and sayings of the desert fathers and applies them in very relevant and real ways to modern life.

Honestly, nothing more needs to be said. But still, I will speak. I guess I need to reread that chapter on silence. For the most part, I was reading this book a chapter a day. It was uncanny how often the chapter seemed to be exactly what I needed to hear that day. More than once, it paralleled what God was showing me through scripture in my own daily devotions. I have read a lot of books on the early monastics (the desert fathers). Most will provide you with more information, but I don't think I have ever read one that did as great of a job of disseminating their story in a practical way for our own times. God bless Andrew Arndt. Halfway through this year, this is unquestionably the best devotional/inspirational book I've read in '23.





Some quotes:
We cannot and will not be fully human until we are human as Jesus is human.

Whatever good work a man undertakes, if he perseveres in it, he will attain rest. But prayer is warfare to the last breath.

The point of the rules is the flourishing of people, and if we can't see the connection between the two, we'll only misinterpret and misapply the rules.

Sometimes the way forward is backward. Sometimes you have to break a thing down to its most elemental before you can transform it into something better.

Under the innocent banner of a supposedly harmless self-actualization, we torch our world with verbal napalm and like fools wonder why everything is burning down around us.

We don't need a change of location. We need a change of heart.

“God does not save us from people but for people and into a people—the church. People are the entire point of the work of God in Christ, and if our spirituality is going to be deserving of the name Christian, then it will and must be oriented to people.”

Streams in the Wilderness is a beautiful walk through the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers and the radical nature of their embodied faith. Andrew Ardnt has such a pastoral voice and a heart oriented towards people and community. I love the gentle way he writes without shying away from the countercultural truth of Jesus’ way.

"If there is any hope, therefore, for the renewal of our culture, the Desert Fathers and Mothers remind us that it will not come through a church bent on protecting itself from the world. Nor will it come from a moralizing church spouting judgment on the world--and least of all from a church trying to 'take back' the culture from the world. All of these are but manifestations of the blockade and chief contributors to the desolation of our age." (from an uncorrected advance copy)

Arndt is a preacher who is trying to make the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers relevant for our time, their radical turning to simplicity, silence, and non-possessiveness in an age when the formerly threatened Church was finally being made secure by its alliance with Empire. Being a Christian is not about "protecting oneself from the world" at all, nor about gaining power and security, but about entering into a process of life as self-giving, constant offering, prayer. It's a good message to keep in mind during our own apocalyptic times.

The excerpts and reflections from ancient texts were good for pondering and reflection, and Arndt's commentary was homely, folksy and down-to-earth -- sometimes too much so for me. I think I'd rather just read the source material. But I did appreciate this introduction to a subject I hadn't known much about.

There were repeated fulminatings against people who are looking for self-realization or to do their own thing, and exhortations to return to the church, which always knows best. I think this is a bit outdated. Humans have evolved, and we do need to individuate and become ourselves, beyond all institutions and rules. Even divorce may be necessary sometimes, gasp! Of course, we do need to return to community, to find our way back to healthy relationships. But Arndt's attitude to the "self-seekers" was too patronizing and one-sided, I think. He admits he's always been part of a church and found his deepest life meaning there, and it seems hard for him to imagine another way.

Andrew Arndt's Streams in the Wasteland is an excellent, if not entirely groundbreaking, reflection on the ways that the lives of the Desert Fathers and Mothers might have present significance to us in the present. Arndt does the not insignificant task of introducing his presumably mostly protestant audience with figures that aren't widely talked about of seminary or deeply Catholic or Orthodox corridors. He immediately makes them relevant to the daily lives of his audience though and through numerous citations of the Desert Writings he deftly weaves ancient wisdom into the context of our present situations.

Arndt's book is also wholly pastoral in a way that many recent Christian theology/spirituality texts haven't been. It' seems that every other book I read in the genre recently has either picked one side or another of the political spectrum. However, Arndt does not make that mistake and instead walks the very pastoral line of trying to focus on the root causes of our conflicts, especially as we emerge into a hopefully post-Covid world. Arndt's book ultimately is much like it's title in this regard; it's a stream in the desert of the divisiveness we see around us daily and is a call to not engage in conflict but instead in building community.

I think this book is a less theologically heavy version of Belden Lane's Solace of Fierce Landscapes and should be a popular one upon it's publication later this year. I will strongly recommend it to members of my community and church. Thank you!