The desert seems like it's dead, seems like nothing is alive, but if you look closely, it is full of life. The desert is where the early Christians went to escape the cities and find solace in the silence for they believed it was in the silence they would hear the voice of God. The desert is a place that either makes you into a saint or into a demon. I have been drawn to the desert because paradoxically, it is in its wide expanses that the fullness of creation can be born. It is the emptiness that calls out abundance. This is a photoessay of the Arizona desert and the miraculous St. Anthony's Monastery, modeled on the first desert monastery founded by St. Anthony the Great in Egypt. Who would have thought that a spiritual oasis such as this could exist in an infernal desert? It is a piece of heaven built in the middle of hell. Uninhabitable with no water, crawling with scorpions, snakes, and spiders, the monastery has become a haven for pilgrims all over the world. It glitters with the Byzantine iconography bejeweled and golden.