The Desert Season: A Language of Symbols
Volume II wasn’t designed as a commentary on the Gospel of John, yet the entire structure, tone, and symbolic vocabulary naturally unfold in a Johannine way. The Desert Season mirrors the kind of spiritual framework woven throughout John the Evangelist’s writings: the movement from light into shadow, the stripping away of illusions, the wrestling with identity, the quiet revelations that rise in solitude, the discernment between what nourishes and what only distracts, and the eventual arrival at clarity symbolized by living water. Even without intentional influence, the imagery of deserts, mirages, watchtowers, seasons, and oases naturally aligns with John’s own language of wilderness, false light, elevated sight, spiritual rebirth, and the river of life.
In its introspection, mysticism, and poetic exploration of truth versus illusion, Volume II instinctively echoes the Gospel of John’s approach to understanding the human soul. In this sense, The Desert Season becomes indirectly Johannine, not by imitation, but through the same interior lens John the Evangelist used to interpret reality. It stands as a modern echo of Johannine spirituality, a 21st-century desert where ancient patterns still reveal eternal truths.
The Desert Season was also the first time I truly leaned into my inner mystic, the part of me that listens beneath the noise, senses patterns where others shrug, and treats solitude as a place of revelation rather than isolation. I wasn’t trying to imitate Scripture; it was simply a natural instinct to read my own life symbolically: to see seasons as parables, challenges as refinements, and silence as a teacher. That instinct shaped how I wrote Volume II, not with the goal of sounding spiritual, but because the season itself demanded a deeper language. The Desert held truths that only symbols could carry, and the mystic in me gave those truths their form.
Throughout this season, I found myself interpreting life less literally and more symbolically. Everything carried double meaning: the people, the challenges, the quiet days, the fatigue, the small victories. Symbols became the only language big enough to hold the weight of what was happening internally. The Desert, the Mirage, the Watchtower, the Oasis. These weren’t just metaphors. They were the only vocabulary capable of expressing the truths that were unfolding beneath the surface.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
