The Warm Blanket Gospel...

                                                                                  Sahara Desert


​Little Brother of Jesus, Carlo Carreto, related a version of this story in his spiritual classic, Letters From the Desert... Without shade during the day and warm blankets at night, the great Sahara Desert will claim one's life... with no evident thought, whatsoever... As a novice in the Order which took on the mantle of Charles de Foucauld, Carlo Carreto was required to go out into the desert as a spiritual pilgrimage and trial by fire... 

​Brother Carlo had a small bag of dates, dry bread, water, and two blankets as provisions for his journey... Walking away into the desert, his beads passed slowly, with his breath, as he walked. A hood covered his head from the blazing grief of the Sun... that night, he not only gave thanks and praise to the Beloved, but also to the two blankets that would preserve his life during the plummeting cold... How strange the ways of death in the desert: fire or freeze! Not a human choice...

Brother Carlo survived that first night and a number of more as he kept walking and walking... breathing his prayers... calling out the holy Name as he stumbled in the sand, rocks cutting his hands, and the last of his dates spilling out... That night, he looked up into the stars: so many stars! They said there were more stars than grains of sand in the deserts of the world... he began to drift into the sleep of an exhausted man... when he heard a voice: not of the Divine, but of another man...

​How could that be? In that vast desert, how could another man have stumbled across him in the night? Brother Carlo invited the Stranger into his barren camp... he had nothing but the clothing upon his seemingly ancient frame. He asked Carlo if he might have a blanket for the night... Carlo knew the bitter cold of the Saharan nights, just as he knew that, at a minimum for survival, two blankets were required... If Carlo shared one blanket, both lives would be at risk... if he refused, the Stranger would certainly perish...  How could he refuse though? He was a Little Brother of Jesus, after all...

​Share he did... both he and the Stranger shivered, shook, and near morning, joined in a jump-about dance to celebrate their survival... Morning prayer was silent, touched with tears, but with a deep peace that he had not known before... As the Stranger departed, Brother Carlo called out, "Brother! You forgot your blanket!" Carlo handed the blanket to his Elder Brother... And strangely, as he continued his journey with his single blanket, he was not cold again...

​It seems,  after all is said and done, there is really only this little Warm Blanket Gospel...