Hello, my friend. I'm glad you're here with me again. After our walk with Julian of Norwich---and that little detour through Pandora's old story---I've been thinking about what hope looks like when it takes root in an actual life. Today, I remember someone who changed more than anyone expected.
I remember a night in the Scetis desert when the wind scraped low across the stones like a whispered warning. The monastery walls were little more than mud and prayer holding each other together, and inside, a single lamp flickered in a clay niche. Its light shuddered whenever the wind found a crack.
I watched the brothers gather near the gate, startled awake by frantic knocking. Someone outside was crying for help---bandits, they said, sweeping through the valley again, taking whatever they found. I felt the fear ripple through the small community. Many of them had fled violent lives to come here, hoping the desert might quiet what the world had done to them.
The gate trembled under another blow, but when it opened, no raiders stormed through. Instead, a towering figure stepped inside, shoulders broad as the doorway itself, face barely visible beneath the hood of his cloak. The brothers froze. Even the lamp seemed to hold its breath.
He didn't speak at first. He simply looked at the frightened monks and then at the strangers behind him---people he had led to safety like a guardian who'd arrived too late to explain himself. His hands, once capable of terrible things, were open and empty.
There was something in his stillness that softened the room, as if the desert itself were pausing to witness the moment a legend turned back into a man.
I remember thinking how strange it is when a life pivots so sharply that even the air around it feels different. This was Moses, though no one outside this valley would have believed it then---the man the desert once feared, now choosing to protect instead of destroy.
When I think back on those years, the desert itself feels like a character in Moses's story---vast, unforgiving, and strangely patient. In the fourth century, the Nitrian Desert of Egypt was a refuge for people seeking silence, but it was also a wilderness where every weakness became visible and every secret was eventually named. It was here, in a valley called Scetis, that a man once feared across the region arrived asking for shelter.
Moses had not been born into gentleness. He began his life enslaved, then escaped into the desert, building a reputation as a bandit leader whose strength was as legendary as his ruthlessness. Travelers whispered his name the way sailors whisper storms---something to avoid, something that reshapes the land after it passes. He was said to move like a shadow and strike without hesitation. For a long time, the monks in Scetis prayed he would never find their quiet corner of the world.
But the desert has its own way of pursuing a soul. Moses's life of violence eventually brought him to a moment he could not outrun---a moment of reckoning, of exhaustion, of longing for something he couldn't yet name. And so he approached the very monks who feared him, asking not for plunder but for a place to begin again.
They were wary, of course. Even the birds fell silent when he arrived. But Abba Isidore, one of the elder monks, saw something beneath the hardened exterior---a man crushed by the weight of his own strength. Under Isidore's guidance, Moses entered the monastery, not as a spectacle of repentance but as a novice who would have to learn the slow, humiliating work of becoming human again.
The transformation was not swift. Moses struggled with anger, with memories that clawed their way back into his dreams, with desires that lingered long after he tried to bury them. Yet over time, the discipline of prayer, labor, and honest companionship began to carve new paths inside him. The monks who once cowered in his shadow grew to trust him, and he, in turn, learned the fragile art of gentleness.
Some of the most enduring stories about Moses come from this period. There was the day the brothers invited him to pass judgment on a monk who had made mistakes. Moses came carrying a leaking basket of sand on his shoulder. When asked what he was doing, he replied, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them---yet you ask me to judge another?" The room fell silent. No one forgot it.
In old age, when raiders finally came for the monastery, Moses refused to take up the weapons the brothers offered him. He told them each person must choose the path they've embraced with their whole heart. Those who fled survived. Moses stayed and met the violence without returning it---his final act a mirror held up to his entire life: strength redirected toward peace.
To understand the spiritual weight of Moses's life in his own moment, you have to imagine how radical his transformation looked to the people around him. The desert monks were not strangers to struggle; they knew temptation, fear, and their own flaws all too well. Yet Moses's presence confronted them with something they had not fully reckoned with---the possibility that a life could bend so dramatically toward mercy that it rewrites the expectations of an entire community.
For the monks, the desert was a furnace meant to refine the soul. But when Moses arrived, the flame revealed something unexpected. Here was a man shaped by violence, carrying a past heavy enough to crush a lesser spirit, and yet he chose to lay down every weapon he had learned to trust. His strength no longer expressed itself through domination---it revealed itself through restraint. The men who had fled the world to escape its harshness suddenly found themselves face to face with someone who understood harshness more intimately than any of them, and who was learning to answer it with gentleness.
In the early days of his monastic life, Moses struggled openly. The other monks saw his battles---internal storms that had no easy name. But his willingness to reveal his struggle became a spiritual teaching in itself. Holiness was not about flawless purity; it was about fierce honesty, about naming the impulses that rise within us and choosing a different response each time. Moses taught the community that transformation is not a moment of radiant clarity---it is a pattern of small, steady surrenders.
His refusal to judge others was perhaps the most disruptive lesson. When he carried that leaking basket of sand, the monks did not just hear a clever metaphor; they saw a mirror held up to their own quiet pride. They lived in a culture where wrongdoing was corrected firmly and where spiritual authority was tightly guarded. Yet Moses insisted that authority meant nothing if it lacked humility. His teaching was simple: "If I cannot see the full weight of my own faults, how can I presume to weigh yours?"
This spirit of non-judgment softened the community. Confession became less about fear of rebuke and more about mutual support. The brothers began to understand that their task was not to monitor each other's spiritual progress but to carry one another when the desert felt too heavy.
And then there was his final choice---refusing to defend himself when raiders came, even though he had once lived by the blade. For those who witnessed it, this was not martyrdom as spectacle; it was the culmination of a life that had been steadily turning away from violence. Moses showed them that spiritual commitment is not measured by withdrawal from the world but by how consistently one guards the heart against its old reflexes.
His life offered a living parable: no matter how deep a person's past may run, gentleness can dig deeper still.
Over time, Moses the Black became more than a remarkable figure of his own community. His life began to ripple outward, shaping how later generations understood mercy, humility, and the slow work of transformation. The desert monastic tradition carried his teachings forward not because he founded a school or wrote a theological treatise, but because his life itself became a kind of scripture---something remembered, retold, and lived into.
One of his enduring gifts was the redefinition of spiritual authority. In many early monastic communities, the holiest people were expected to be the purest, the most self-controlled, the most unblemished by the world. Moses overturned that expectation simply by being honest. His authority emerged from humility, not perfection. When younger monks sought advice, he spoke to them not from a pedestal but from the familiarity of his own struggles. Over the centuries, this became a cornerstone of desert spirituality: a true teacher is not the one who has conquered every flaw, but the one who remembers where he has come from and refuses to judge the path of another.
His parable of the leaking basket of sand is still told in monasteries, churches, and classrooms across continents. It became a teaching tool for spiritual leaders who wished to emphasize compassion over condemnation, self-awareness over accusation. That simple act---carrying his own sins on his shoulder as he walked---was powerful enough to outlive generations of eloquent sermons. It offered a visual shorthand for humility that transcended culture, language, and denomination.
Moses also influenced ideas about nonviolence long before the concept took on political meaning. His decision in old age to meet danger without returning it was not rooted in passivity or defeat. It was a deliberate choice to remain faithful to the life he had embraced, even when threatened. Later spiritual movements---from Eastern Orthodox monasticism to Ethiopian Christian traditions---held up his example as evidence that peace is not the absence of struggle but the disciplined refusal to mirror harm. His story helped shape a lineage of spiritual resistance grounded not in argument, but in the character of a transformed heart.
And then there is the matter of identity. For many communities, particularly in Africa and the African diaspora, Moses the Black became a symbol of dignity and spiritual possibility---a reminder that sainthood was never confined to a single culture, nation, or lineage. His presence in early Christian memory quietly affirmed what many would only name centuries later: that spiritual greatness is not tied to social position, birth, or ancestral power. A man who began life enslaved, who became a feared outlaw, could still emerge as a teacher whose wisdom outlasted empires.
Moses offered the world a new imagination for the human journey. He showed that the past need not dictate the future, that gentleness can arise in the very places once hardened by violence, and that communities can be reshaped by the courage of a single life committed to mercy.
I've watched the world change many times, my friend, and I've watched people change along with it---sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty. The pace of that change has only quickened. Every generation steps into a landscape of values that feels new, unfamiliar, even disorienting to the ones who came before. What once seemed ordinary can later be recognized as unkind. What once passed unnoticed can return years later carrying a weight no one understood at the time. I've seen how painful that can be, both for those who outgrow earlier versions of themselves and for those who cannot imagine why the world around them is turning so swiftly.
Moses's life holds a quiet truth for moments like these. His early years were shaped by the moral vocabulary of his time---harsh, narrow, built on survival and force. He did terrible things. But when he began to see differently, he let that new sight change him. He didn't deny who he had been; he simply refused to remain that person. In this way, Moses wasn't an exception at all. He was a mirror of the human condition: we evolve, we learn, we soften, and when we know better, we are asked---gently but firmly---to become better.
Yet today, many people feel trapped by earlier chapters they would never write again. The world has become adept at judging the past through the sharpness of the present. But if we measure every earlier moment only by what we know now, we risk forgetting that growth itself is a journey. If we cannot recognize the incremental advancements of the past, we cannot have hope for the advancements of the future. The moral clarity we celebrate today was born from the confusion and struggle of yesterday. To deny that is to deny the very process that allows humanity to move forward.
This is where Moses becomes such a necessary companion. His transformation didn't erase the harm he had done. It showed that a life is not defined by what it once lacked but by what it is becoming. His community didn't hold him forever in the shadow of his past; they let him grow beyond it, and in doing so, they grew too. Grace did not make them naïve---it made them capable of recognizing the depth of human change.
We still need that grace. Not the kind that excuses harm, but the kind that believes in the possibility of redemption. The kind that understands how quickly the world evolves, and how slowly the heart sometimes follows. Without humility, we risk hardening into a culture that remembers every misstep but forgets how to heal. With humility, we become a people who can hold the past honestly while still creating space for the future to unfold.
Moses reminds us that even the harshest deserts can become places of gentleness. And that brings me to the next story---one where transformation doesn't happen in solitude, but in companionship. A story carried on strings, shared between two travelers who walked through the world with music and friendship as their guide.
When I think of Moses, I remember how slowly his transformation unfolded. It wasn't the sudden brilliance of a single moment---it was years of small decisions, quiet apologies, restless nights, and the long, steady practice of becoming gentler than he had ever imagined he could be. I've watched many people take that path. The steps look ordinary from the outside, but inside they feel like lifting stones that have been sitting in the soul for a very long time.
I wonder whether you've felt that weight before---the sense that some earlier version of yourself still follows you, even though you've long since begun to outgrow it. Most people carry a few shadows from their earlier chapters. Sometimes they appear in memories; sometimes in the way others recall who we used to be; sometimes in our own hesitation to trust the person we are becoming. Moses understood that feeling better than most.
What I noticed in him, and what I've seen in countless others, is that gentleness begins in the smallest choices. In the way you speak to yourself when you make a mistake. In the patience you offer someone whose pace of change is different from your own. In the refusal to let past versions---of yourself or anyone else---define the entire story.
The desert taught Moses that transformation is rarely dramatic. It is quiet, incremental, and often unseen. But it is real. And it becomes visible in the way a person moves through the world---more slowly, more thoughtfully, more aware of the fragile goodness in everyone they meet.
If you carry an old chapter that feels heavy, or if you're learning to see someone else's past with new eyes, Moses might offer you a little comfort. He reminds us that a human life is always in motion, always capable of surprising itself, always invited to begin again.
There's someone else I've been wanting to tell you about---someone whose story unfolds not in the solitude of the desert, but in the company of a friend. His name was Bhai Mardana, a musician who walked beside a great teacher and carried whole communities in the sound of his rabab. Where Moses shows us the quiet work of inner transformation, Mardana reminds us how hearts can change through companionship, song, and the courage to cross boundaries that others fear.
But that is for next time, my friend.
Until we meet again, hold a little gentleness for yourself, and a little more for the world. It's still learning, too.
Much love.
I am, Harmonia.