God in Search of Humanity

"The realm of the event is the realm of the person."  Merton reflects on the notion of time espoused by Abraham Heschel's book titled the same as this entry.  My mind is drifting today, so I can't help but think of event horizons where the horizon is the domain or limit where light cannot escape the black hole's gravitational field.  I don't think that Merton or Heschel has this sort of physics in mind. 
I suspect the best earth bound analogy for me is my experience in the Libyan Sahara where I worked from 1978-1980.  One day, I was sitting with Muhammed, the buggy driver, a Libyan who had the more prestigious job of driving one of the big vehicles called the cable buggy-a large truck with rods that were welded onto rails around the deep bed where the geophone cables were wound in loops and hung on the outside of the truck to be distributed to the laborers who walked alongside the truck as the new arrays were laid out in advance of the recording truck that I worked in.  Muhammed was a short man, medium build, and his face was proportionate to any race in the Mediterranean.  We sat together taking an afternoon break together sitting on a peak of a small sand dune looking off into the distance.  Muhammed held out his arm pointing into the distance.  "Shufti,"  he said.  Look, and he pointed towards the horizon.  I saw nothing except more and more sand as far as I could see.  Nothing, I told him, I see nothing.  He got a little excited, "Shufti,  Sabha, aywa?"  Look, Sabha, yes?  I didn't understand what he was telling me.  Then he pointed at his eyes, and he squinted and pointed again at the edge of the horizon.  I tried to squint, and suddenly I saw a number of structures far off in the distance close to the horizon.  They were oil wells, I realized.  I pointed at the structures that I saw, but he practically shouted at me as he pushed my arm slightly westward and said again, "Sabha, Sabha."  Then I saw it.  Like goose bumps on skin, composed of shadows rather than light, a small collection of buildings pebbled up against the horizon.  The difference against the surrounding background of the desert made it seem more the matter of a mirage than real sight, but I exclaimed, "Sabha!"  Muhammed clapped me on the back and pointed at my eyes, and then pointed in a circle all around us and said, "Look and live." 
When I got back to camp that night, I found out that Sabha was the closest town to our campsite, about 50 kilometers away.  Through some trick of the light, we were able to see the outline of the town on the horizon, but Muhammed's  lesson for me was that one had to learn how to see in the desert in order to survive. 
I never did get any better at locating the work sites, the laborers always pointed out the path, saying "Maashi gadaam, maashi gadaam" after they began looking around nervously at me and the direction I was driving.  But I did learn to respect the desert, how easy it was to become completely lost.
It takes great effort to truly see what is right in front of us.  I have never been able to look at a horizon without remembering my lesson, but I've realized that everyday requires the same effort or my vision becomes habituated to a kind of blindness and the world is hidden from me all over again.