A Ceremony in The Desert and New Work: "a prayer for the desert mother"
the desert asks nothing of you if you come, but everything of you if you stay
On a recent evening, I found myself sitting in the desert at night, during a new moon. The wind whipped my face as heat lighting approached from the distance. The warmth of the desert summer retreated, covered instead by the sting of cool drops of rain falling from unexpected clouds.
Overwhelmed by the night’s energy, I fell to my knees in the sand. I closed my eyes and allowed my palms to meet the ground, steadying myself. Breathing in. Breathing out. The wind kissed my cheeks and I heard her voice:
“Hello daughter.
Keep going — go deeper,
walk deeper in —
I have more to show you.”
“a prayer for the desert mother”
“a prayer for the desert mother” captures the love one feels after a particularly moving experience with the natural world. It is a large, acrylic on unprimed canvas painting, framed in a custom pale wood floating frame. Canvas measures 30” x 40”, framed work measures 31.5” x 41.5”, 2023. Work ships framed for $2250.
The painting has finished edges and ships framed with hanging hardware pre-installed. Painting is available to ship unframed by request. For questions or additional images/videos, please reach out to hi at alexmaceda.studio or reply to this e-mail.
Studio Notes: More (and More and More) Words on The Desert
In May, I received a gift I had been calling in for a long time — the opportunity to sit with indigenous plant medicine in the desert, to sit with medicine WITH the desert.
The experience was moving, to say the least, and like many of these spiritual experiences, inspired me to create a painting and write more (and more and more) words on the desert. To begin:
The desert is an initiatory experience.
This is not a personal observation, this is an archetypal truth that is reflected in nearly every major world religion. Haggar and Ishmael, the Exodus from Egypt, Jesus’s fourty days, the vision quests of the Native American red path… spiritual teachings are littered with the teachings of and struggles in the desert — the use of the desert as a backdrop for, and key figure in, the individual’s spiritual development.
The desert is where you go to face your demons, or perhaps, where you are slowed down enough for your demons to catch up to you. She is a hall of mirrors, a maze: simultaneously clear, wide open space, and mirage. She is a harsh and brutal environment that doesn’t allow one to hide. She strips away your layers with her elements. She calluses your fingers, blisters your skin. She rips you apart to rip you open.
The desert demands you die. She will kill every part of you that isn’t strong enough to stand. It is up to you to gather the strength. It is up to you to grow your roots first then your trunk, to strengthen yourself for her repeated tests — to be able to look into the mirror she is holding: can you face your shadow? can you let it die? can you continue to walk forward across, with faith that your thirst will be quenched eventually?
The desert has triggered all my deepest fears. She has sent me harassment and bullying, tears and blood and sweat and pain, literally. She has shown me my ugliest parts, via the mirror of others or simply in my heart itself. In my day-to-day life this experience has been extraordinarily harsh; in my ceremonies over the past two years even harsher, but also increasingly clear.
My time living in Joshua Tree has been extremely difficult. But it has also pushed forward my evolution (as a person, as a soul, as an artist) in ways that I didn’t think possible. It is deeply humbling work, and work that continues.
Shortly before my desert ceremony, I hit two years here full-time. The first 9 months were, barring the darkest parts of my depression, the hardest of my life. The following 9 were better, slowly but surely. The past 6 have been some of my best, anywhere.
The desert asks nothing of you if you come and everything of you if you stay. I wrote this for the first time about a year ago, and it is the saying most quoted back to me by other desert dwellers. It is desperately, desperately true. So I’ll say it again:
The desert asks nothing of you if you come and everything of you if you stay.
Many people leave. Many people lose themselves. But if you can give the desert that everything throughout all her initiations, if you make it through, she will in turn begin to open all her gifts to you. I have begun to receive the gifts, and oh what abundance they have yielded. Every day I work to be worthy of these; every day I work to listen more deeply to what she asks of me.
I sat in and with the desert that weekend. Quite literally, the ceremony took place out in the middle of the desert, on undeveloped land, where the host had dug a 50ft x 50ft rammed earth hole into the desert sand.
In late May, the weather averages 80 degrees in the evening, perfect for an outdoor ceremony. Or so we thought. Instead, on our first evening, mother nature doused us in unseasonable rain and lighting and 50-60 degree cold and vigorous winds. We sat overnight, soaked and shivering, walking through her newest set of initiations.
I dream of wind often: an element for clearing, for moving energy out and away, for creating space for something new. It was harsh. And yet we stayed. And yet we sat.
And then the next evening, as gift, the desert opened her new moon night sky up to us; the clouds cleared and she showed us the map of the universe. I climbed out of our pit, sat on my knees and faced out into her open landscape. I heard her call me daughter. I felt her kiss my cheeks with her wind. I felt her power come through my legs and hold me up when I didn’t think I couldn’t stand. I looked around, and after that long and deep initiation of loneliness, I saw she quite literally surrounded me with friends that I didn’t realize I had.
I closed my eyes and heard her voice: “You see my signs, hija. You know how to read them now. Keep going. Go deeper, walk deeper in — I have more to show you” 🌵✨