The only thing to be done now,
now that the waves of our undoing have begun to strike on us,
is to contain ourselves.

To keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us,
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.

Among all the smashed debris of myself,
Keep quiet, and wait.
For the word is Resurrection.
And even the sea of seas will have to give up its dead.

D. H. Lawrence, “Be Still!” D. H. Lawrence: Complete Poems,
Edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren F. Roberts

What are our own waves of undoing? What are the waves that feel as if they would smash us into oblivion?

• Exterior circumstances beyond our control?
• Profound loss, grief?
• Personal attitudes?
• Illness?
• Deep interior wounds?
• Discouragement or fear?
• Our own weakness or sinfulness?
• Aging or diminishment?

D. H. Lawrence says that the only thing to be done is to contain ourselves.  If this is so, how are we to contain ourselves?

Does this mean giving up on life?  No, not at all.  Does it mean adopting a fortress mentality – walling ourselves round about so that nothing can touch us?  No, just the contrary, I believe.

It means turning to what is most vital and most true to ourselves.

According to the poet, when we are feeling helpless against the waves of destiny, we must:

…keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us,
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.

When the ship we are on is sinking, we do not weigh ourselves down with stacks of old magazines or a closetful of clothes and shoes. If the house is on fire, we do not dally long enough to carry out the rubbish or even to pile up our favorite books or retrieve the jewelry.  We hold to nothing but the essential.

This “tiny grain of something” can only be the essential core of ourselves, what we have named in a Cenacle assembly as the mystical dimension of our life – that part of ourselves both as individuals and as corporate body that knows God, that is never apart from God, that sees God face to face even when our conscious life perceives nothing and is overwhelmed by the waves, even as we tumble over and over helplessly on the dark shore. Here the Holy Spirit prays in us and intercedes for us (see Romans 8). It is in this tiny grain that we are who we truly are.

LIke the widow’s mite (Mark 12), this grain may seem of little account, but in reality it represents all we are and all we have.  So we must let the “wreckage of ourselves go,” be still, and claim nothing but this indestructible grain.

• It is in this quintessential kernel of being that we are able to “keep quiet and wait,” though there may appear to be nothing left to wait for;
• It is here that sighs and murmurs, creakings and groans, once fearful, do not foretell destruction, but Resurrection;
• It is from this core that the Spirit at times surprises us with glimpses of beauty or goodness.

It is this tiny grain:

• that whispers in us that in all things God works for good with those who love God (Romans 8:28);
• that reveals to us that while our own love for God and neighbor is insufficient, we may love rightly and serve well from that same central grain through which we love with the love of Christ.

In truth each of us is being undone in one way or another.  If nothing else manages to undo us, time and age most certainly will accomplish the task.  The only tragic outcome would be not to yield to our remaking through that “tiny grain of something,” through the mystical core of ourselves where God is known.

According to Paul

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

(Philippians 2:5-7)

From an old hymn

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

“And Can It Be That I Should Gain”, Charles Wesley, 1738.

From Pope John Paul II

The approach to this mystery [of the Triune God] begins with reflection upon the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God: his coming as man, his going to his Passion and Death, a mystery issuing into his glorious Resurrection and Ascension to the right hand of the Father, whence he would send the Spirit of truth to bring his Church to birth and give her growth. From this vantage-point, the prime commitment of theology is seen to be the understanding of God’s kenosis, a grand and mysterious truth for the human mind, which finds it inconceivable that suffering and death can express a love which gives itself and seeks nothing in return.

Fides et Ratio, September 14, 1998

From Meister Eckhart, on the empty spirit, or free heart, one that is not filled with self-will

An empty spirit is one that is confused by nothing, attached to nothing, has not attached its best to any fixed way of acting, and has no concern whatever in anything for its own gain, for it is all sunk deep down into God’s dearest will and has forsaken its own.

The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. by Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, 248.

]]> http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/2009/03/he-emptied-himself/feed/ 0 http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/2008/01/empty-sky/ http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/2008/01/empty-sky/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:44:12 +0000 Cybernun http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/?p=161 The astronomers of centuries past – Ptolemaeus, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, not to mention those Persian or Babylonian sky-watchers we call the Magi – would be astonished and awed by what modern science shows us of the cosmos. (If you haven’t done it already, you might want to browse through NASA’s Image Gallery.) What a boon the Hubble Telescope has proven to be, after its rocky beginnings.

Between Sept. 24, 2003, and January 16, 2004, the Hubble focused on a patch of largely “empty” space. What appeared is known as the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field,” and it is something the mind strains to grasp – around 10,000 galaxies heretofore invisible to the human eye.

Coming back to earth, I ask what it would be like to turn our attention toward our own “empty” space — not for several months, but for a few minutes at a time, and not with a view toward analysis, but simply with a loving gaze?

It is unfortunately true, however, that our society does not encourage the honoring of our empty space. It is both easier and more acceptable to fill up every vacant nook, every idle moment, with purposeful activity, or (still easier) with television or surfing the internet.

Are we afraid of being swallowed up in the void? Perhaps. I believe this is a natural fear. Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées, expressed succinctly what we may feel:

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
(Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.)

The Hubble directed its focus toward the vastness of outer space and revealed thousands of galaxies. Is it possible that as we gaze peacefully into our interior space, we will find that the silence and the emptiness are filled, not with galaxies, but with God?

Lord, I want to be a Christian
in my heart, in my heart,
Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart…

I enjoyed singing it through verse two (“Lord, I want to be more loving”) and verse three (“Lord I want to be more holy”). The last verse, however, was another matter:

Lord, I want to be like Jesus
in my heart, in my heart,
Lord, I want to be like Jesus in my heart…

I was not at all sure that I did want to be like Jesus. Not only did he have to wander around with no home of his own, but look at what happened to him on Good Friday.

Being an honest child, I didn’t want to sing verse 4 without meaning it, so I pondered what to do about my moral dilemma. That’s when I noticed the phrase, “in my heart.” I felt I could ruthfully avow that I wanted to be like Jesus in my heart without committing myself to being like Jesus in any other part of myself.

Little did I know that if I were really like Jesus in my heart, I would also be like Jesus in the whole of my life and the totality of my being.

The self-giving of Jesus

The three days of the Easter Triduum summon us to wonder and awe before the self-giving of Jesus for us. But how perplexing the events of those three days must have been while they were happening. The mission of Jesus appeared to have been a failure. One of his friends had betrayed him. Another had denied him. Most of the rest had deserted him. And from his pain on the cross Jesus cries out in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

But out of the darkness we hear another prayer as well, once again echoing a psalm (31) which Jesus must have known since childhood. This one is “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Commending my own spirit to God

What about our own participation in this mystery? What about the song I sang in Sunday School, not realizing the import of the words, “Lord, I want to be like Jesus in my heart”?

Karl Rahner believed that “somewhere within our lives there happens — or there may at least happen — an absolute letting go, an absolute yielding of everything.” [†] While this may happen at the time of physical death, it may be instead at the moment of what he calls “death in the theological sense, which may ultimately consist in the unconditional, quiet, yet trustful capitulation before the incomprehensibility of one’s own existence, and thus also before God’s incomprehensibility …. One gives up everything, one lets everything go.”

Though all may seem meaningless, though cruelty may seem to have won out, though the powers of darkness appear to have triumphed, we put ourselves without reserve into the hands of Love. Rahner adds, “And precisely in this seemingly dumb, dreadful and frightening emptiness there dawns the arrival of the infinite God of eternal life.”

This is perfect freedom. This is being “like Jesus in my heart.”

[†]Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews, 1965-1982, ed. by Hubert Biallowons, Harvey D. Egan, S.J., and Paul Imhof, S.J. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1986).
______

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:5-11)

Before long, however, I passed a car with a small uncovered trailer attached, pulled off the road. In the trailer were articles of furniture. The occupants of the car looked as if they were securing the furniture in the trailer. I considered turning around and going back to tell them that I had seen their easy chair and drawer a way back on the highway, but this was rural Alabama, and the next exit was miles away. I realized that by the time I got back to spot where I had seen them, the people with the trailer would probably be long gone, either in the hunt for their furniture or bemoaning its irrevocable loss.

I couldn’t help but wonder at what point they had noticed something amiss. Didn’t they feel a certain lightening of the load as objects dropped from the trailer? Were they so busy looking ahead at the road or perhaps debating politics or religion among themselves that they observed nothing of what they were hauling?

Questions to ponder:

What am I hauling around with me, spiritually, emotionally, or physically, that I would do well to leave alongside the road — and move on, lightened in spirit?

Can I let go of what no longer serves — unnecessary possessions, fear that keeps me from God, the need to be perfect, or the need for things around me to be perfect, even the need for my prayer to be filled with what St. John of the Cross calls “sweetness”?

Can I hold lightly the things that do serve, knowing that when I cling to anything that is not God, it weighs me down on the spiritual journey?

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth
that I desire besides you.
(Psalm 73:25)

Here in North Central Florida, too, we see signs of approaching winter, but these tend to be subtle. If you pay attention, you will notice a thinning-out of the jungle: vines are dying, spaces opening up to reveal neighbors’ houses across the way. More sky is visible through our heavy tree cover. It is as if nature were undergoing a sort of emptying, abandoning herself to the new season.

The Kenosis of God

The last Sunday of the liturgical year (November 21 in 2004) is the Feast of Christ the King — not a king like other kings, as the gospel reading (Luke 23:35-43 this year) makes apparent. We see the rulers and soldiers sneering at Jesus on the cross, while above him a sign proclaims, “This is the King of the Jews.” We hear one of the criminals crucified alongside Jesus saying to him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Pope John Paul II, in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, writes that “the prime commitment of theology is seen to be the understanding of God’s kenosis” (93). Kenosis comes from the Greek word meaning “to make empty.” The reference, of course, is to the Incarnation of Christ, who “emptied himself.”

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

If an understanding of the mystery of God’s kenosis is “the prime commitment of theology,” could we not also say that an expression of the prime commitment of the Christian is to enter into that kenosis of God? “Let the same mind be in you…,” as Paul says. The society in which we live, on the other hand, incites us to fill up:

- to fill up CDs, DVDs, compact flash cards (remember floppy disks, which seemed to hold so much just a years ago?)

- to fill up the house and rent a self-storage room for the surplus

- to fill myself up with fast food or with a constant barrage of information

- to fill up the earth with trash, toxic waste, and greenhouse gases

- to fill up my spirit with fear — fear that I am not acceptable, not forgivable, or in constant danger from my own inadequacies, or from people not like me.

Making space

Indeed we are filled with much that is not God. I pray to allow God to clear out my interior vines, to thin the tangles of my psychic jungle, so that I may see my neighbors and be more and more one with the love of Christ.

What does this emptying entail in practice? I suspect that the living-out will look somewhat different for each one of us. A certain discipline and a simplification may be required, but not a gritting of the teeth and taking on a super-asceticism in the mistaken belief that this will unite us with the kenosis of Jesus. Instead, our own emptying means saying yes to the Holy Spirit at work in us, creating space in us, moving us into peace.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

(When I think of a holy emptying, I am reminded of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature.)

Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.

You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.

I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out.

Take, oh take—has now become my cry.

Shatter all from this beggar’s bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.

Fruit-Gathering, XXVIII (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916).