SINCE YESTERDAY WAS ASH WEDNESDAY, the beginning of Lent for the world’s Christians, I thought I might talk a bit today about my love of our deserts here in the West, and what they have taught me.

The desert as an image is pervasive in the Bible, from the place through which Moses led Israel away from Egypt in the Old Testament, to the place where Jesus is first tested in the New:

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’

“Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’

“Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’

“Jesus answered him, ‘It is also written: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’

“Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”’

“Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.”

I’ve camped in and travelled through most of the deserts here in the West (for reasons more prosaic and aesthetic than Jesus’ time in the Negev), and in my travels I’ve gained an appreciation of why deserts have attracted mystics, saints and monks through the ages.

When I am immersed in the desert environment, it leads my mind to see past the clutter that hides the forms of things, to see the contours of the land beneath. The austere and naked land reminds me, too, of my own impermanence and ultimate vulnerability.

Christianity — and for that matter, most major religions — have at best a wary attitude regarding the pursuit of material abundance.

Abundance too often leads to confused priorities and muddles perceptions of what life is, and what life means.

We Americans would do well to get away from the electronic and material distractions that make so much of our lives a detour from what truly matters.

I was traveling once in the high desert in New Mexico, and one night I camped next to a sage bush. I spent most of a day quietly observing the many lives of creatures for whom that bush was a critical refuge. What I saw was a revelation.

That one sage bush was an entire small world — the twiggy branches provided critical shade in the heat of the day, the leaf litter enriched the soil beneath it and provided cover and sustenance for beetles and other insects, which in turn fed the occasional passing lizard, which themselves nourished snakes and coyotes, and so on.

Remembering how that austere little world functioned and prospered makes me reflect on my own life, and I see too much empty busyness. Not only that: I see myself too often striving for things that will not make me happy — that, in fact keep me from happiness.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

I’ve said before in this space that we Americans spend our days immersed in lies designed to tell us that some product can fill the emptiness in our souls, and that most of us, to one degree or another, buy into the basic idea being peddled that this product or the next can fill the hole in our hearts that can only be filled by love and truth.

Pope Francis has spoken of this directly:

“It is true that nowadays, to some extent, everyone, including our young people, feels attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer hope: money, success, power, pleasure. Often a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these ephemeral idols.”

Dr. Martin Luther King also spoke of the dangers of materialism, which, for him, was bound up inextricably with militarism and racism. When I am caught up in keeping up the Joneses, I am not attending to my obligations to my fellow citizens. For King, our world is as interdependent in its way as that bush in the desert of New Mexico I camped next to:

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Matt Talbot is a writer and poet, as well as an old Benicia hand. He works for a tech start-up in San Francisco.