Why go on a retreat about contemplation and why do it in Death Valley?

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After 30 years of active ministry in the Church, I am more and more convinced that the "conversion" the Church says is necessary for every Christian is ultimately a conversion from illusion to reality.  Cultivating a contemplative disposition, I believe, is the key to authentic conversion of heart.  Contemplation teaches us how to strip away illusion and see the real.  In my view, there is no better way to be liberated than to go though this kind of transformation.

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This is why a retreat like this is so important.  We focus on how to see (instead of what to see).  

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This is also why the desert is the least inadequate place to do a retreat like this.  

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Jesus did not go to the synagogue after his baptism, he went to the desert.  He did not take Peter, James and John to a classroom to witness his transfiguration, he took them up a mountain.  Jesus did not preach the beattitudes in Jerusalem, he did it on the plain.  He did not heal Lazarus in his home before he died, but raised him from a dead sleep in a tomb cut from the rock.  

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Transformation in the Gospel always seems to happen out in nature.  Although we believe that God is speaking to us through all of Creation, it is in the desert where we can hear best because there, distractions are few.  The sands, the flats, the mountains and the canyons can teach us contemplation better than any master or any catechism!