Father David Denny

Steeped in the traditions of desert spirituality, Father David Denny is an earthy mystic. His writing and homilies beautifully and carefully articulate the deep harmony between mysticism and love of the world. The via negativa-that ancient and often misunderstood Christian tradition of seeking God through emptiness, stillness, darkness-could not have a kinder, clearer spokesperson for our time. For several years he has been unofficial pastor to Image's Glen Workshop, and has recently served as a guest speaker for Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program, delivering homilies that reflect on writers such as Simone Weil, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and T.S. Eliot. There is nothing vague or dreamy in the meditations he offers, rather humor, wonder, and an intellectual heft that nevertheless does not make intellect a supreme end. Equally at home with ancient and modern art, poetry, and spiritual writing, drawing on poets from John of the Cross to Auden, he reminds us that the desert and the darkness, are not bleak, hopeless places, but mysterious sources of life, where emptiness and stillness open the way for the Beloved to enter and allow the soul to open to God. Father Dave demonstrates in his life and writing that a call to the desert is also a call to the world, that an earnest seeking after God in silence and emptiness is the natural corollary to a profound, intimate love of the created order, and that beautiful work of human hands is not an impediment to the soul's stillness but a pathway to it. In 2006, with Tessa Bielecki, he founded the Desert Foundation, which studies the world's traditions that grow out of desert spirituality and fosters conversations around those traditions. Father Dave shows us that, when they are pursued with energy and reverence, the path of emptiness and the path of love meet.

Read his essay from "The Matter of Devotion: A Symposium on Art, Liturgy, and the Stuff of Worship," in Image #49, here.

A native of Indiana, Fr. Dave moved to Arizona in 1969. In the summer of 1970 he was an exchange student in Afghanistan, which kindled a lifelong interest in the Middle East, especially the Abrahamic spiritual traditions. In 1975 he entered the Spiritual Life Institute, a contemplative monastic community rooted in the Carmelite tradition. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1980. From 1985 to 2004 he was co-editor of Desert Call, the Institute's quarterly magazine. Since 1993 he has been a visiting professor at Colorado College, where he teaches the history of Christian mysticism. In 2005 Fr. Dave left the Spiritual Life Institute and co-founded The Desert Foundation, an informal circle of friends who share a passion for the desert, the Abrahamic faiths, and the spiritualities of the American Southwest. He served as chaplain at the Glen Workshop from 2003-2005, led seminars on art and faith with Seattle Pacific University's MFA summer residency, and led the Image Glen Workshop Seminar "Grief and Belief, Rage and Surrender" in August 2007. An essayist, retreatmaster, and poet, Fr. Dave is also the Desert Foundation's webmaster.