Desert Windows

A real priest knows that he cannot teach God. All a priest can do is to help others to have an experience from which springs admiration and awe of God, of life and of creation. Fr. Eddie was such a man.

Desert Windows contains the meditations of Father Eddie Doherty, the first Poustinik (desert dweller) of Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. His "poustinia" was his upstairs room where he came to grips with the solitude and silence of God.

Blessed is the man, blessed is the priest who abandons his own life to multiply it in others. Father Eddie was that priest and that man. Winner and loser, saint and sinner, a genius in giving in receiving, always hugging close to the ball of the earth for life and for being. A priest is indeed life, light and radiance, but soaked with tears, and drenched in suffering.

Eddie Doherty loved life passionately. He enjoyed life fully. He suffered from life intensely. Love, joy, and suffering were always with him as an everlasting celebration of freedom. Desert Windows opens into that freedom and onto that celebration.