Finding The Power

 Most children are introduced to God, religion, through going to buildings of worship gatherings, such as a church or synagogue, ashram, temple.  In Catholic school this is where the nuns marched us for weekday mass.  We go to church to find and be with God.  But as we grew up we did not get any other venue options.  Church for God-finding.  In the Gospels Jesus started out the same way.  He was brought to the temple as baby and an offering of two doves was made. At 12 he was found in the temple.  He is a kid and goes to temple, synagogue to find God.  Then something happens.  We pick up his life again, but now in the desert where he finds John the Baptist and gets baptized.  My point?  Between boyhood and adulthood, Jesus began to find God in the silence and solitude of the desert.  Where did he find his off-putting way of teaching the scriptures, the life values?  I don't think it was in institutional settings.  The desert is anything but the status quo.