"There is a refreshing, ludic quality to the lives of the early desert Christians. They anticipated the dictum of Thomas Aquinas that ‘unmitigated seriousness betokens a lack of virtue.’ …

“Only those having sustained the terrors of the cross can understand the raucous laughter of resurrection. Only the ones who have died completely to the expectations of the world are free to be truly eccentric, off-center by every standard of the majority.”

Lane, Belden C. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 170-171