Emptiness. To a writer, it’s a starting point. It’s the blank page waiting to be filled with word-play; it’s a canvas on which to throw down thoughts of varied color and swirl them, one into another, to see new thoughts emerge.
To a farmer, emptiness is winter. It’s a bare field, a respite from long days spent cultivating, planting, weed-pulling, and harvest. It’s a long pause, a horticultural em-dash.
Emptiness. It surrounds me. It stares me down. It washes over me, this emptiness. It is to be neither feared nor avoided.
On a day whose exterior resembles the past one hundred in its starkness and chill, emptiness is a welcomed friend. The emptiness that stretches in every direction from the old farmhouse begs me to take stock of life, to contemplate a new purpose, to open myself to thoughts that could never find their way to my consciousness on warmer, fuller days. To stare at an unbroken horizon for hours is to embrace emptiness, to answer the call to contemplation, to make room for an active spirit to work within me. To pray.
On this, the beginning of the fifth week of Lent, I wonder at the incredible love God offers mankind in the person of Jesus, who suffered and died so that we all may transcend our humanness and conquer the horror of death, the way Lazarus did in today’s Gospel reading. Only in emptiness is there room enough to spread out the drama of today’s scriptural account, to hear the dialogue and to examine the complexity of the protagonist.
I did this today and two questions emerged. First, “If Jesus will raise up the ‘one he loves,’ what will he do for me?” The answer came easily, like snow in March: Anything.
My second question was more difficult: “If Jesus will do anything for me, what am I willing to do for Him?” In order to answer this question, I need emptiness. I need emptiness to surround me, to wash over me, to stare me down. I need a blank page to throw down my thoughts like watercolors, to mix them to see what new ideas emerge. I need to make room for an active spirit to work within me. I need to pray.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment