In her evocative study, Rachel Wheeler invites us to reread and rethink the Christian desert tradition from the perspective of the women present and absent in the ancient desert texts. Wheeler examines various stories and sayings that include or mention women. When present, women in these stories are often admonished for “bothering” and “distracting” the men, usually the woman's son or brother, from their pursuit of spiritual perfection. Women are also present in their absence when the sayings warn men to avoid women as much as possible as they may tempt men to give up their vocation. Yet, Wheeler observes, the presence of women in these stories and sayings also stands as a subversive reminder of another way to approach the Christian spiritual path: through the communal and family-centered life that the traditional desert spirituality presumably rejects.
One of the most intriguing parts of Wheeler's book is in the second chapter, where she examines several different stories and lessons from the desert tradition that present women as dangerous distractions to the pursuit of spiritual perfection. Even the men's mothers are to be avoided, lest they stir up any desire for physical human contact or a family of their own. Wheeler argues that behind their misogynistic fronts, these stories reveal a “psycho-spiritual anxiety” embedded in the desert spirituality that “might have had to do with the feeling that the desert Christians, in some way, ‘misunderstood’ God's message in and through Christ, and had not lived into the fundamental reality to which Christians were invited: that of sharing God's unconditional love” (70). By naming the anxiety, Wheeler creates space to constructively critique the text's assumption that desert solitude and separation exemplify Christian holiness by showing that even those who espoused this way of life sensed something was missing.
The concluding chapter presents another thought-provoking interpretation of some of the stories of desert daughters themselves. The stories show that women remained in the desert, even when cast aside by the male family members who followed the monastic vocation. These women forged their own desert spiritualities rooted in caring for one another in a variety of ways, including providing space for one another's grief and turmoil. Wheeler's imaginative exploration of the lives of the desert daughters helps upend assumptions that the “ideal” male-centered desert spirituality of solitude and separation from family was the only spirituality worthy of the title “desert spirituality.” She then points to the ways these desert daughters—particularly as biological and marital kin to the men seeking separation—offer us another authentic Christian desert spirituality that has long been ignored and neglected.
Wheeler's constructive hermeneutic allows her deep knowledge and love of the Christian desert tradition to guide her critique of the misogyny and gynophobia that is woven throughout its various surviving texts. Her feminist reading is refreshing and brings the women both absent and present in the traditional stories and sayings to the forefront of our consciousness. Perhaps even more significantly, her rethinking of the desert tradition compels us to confront the ways its misogynistic tendencies continue to infect Christian spiritualities today. By reclaiming the hidden yet present desert daughters, she shows us that the call to familial and communal love in Christian spirituality has never been nor will ever be completely extinguished. It will always find a way.
Students and teachers of Christian spirituality will benefit from reading this insightful text. It will prove to be valuable resource in upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate courses in theology and spirituality, particularly when read in conjunction with the various texts from the Christian desert tradition Wheeler seeks to critique and liberate.
