Emptiness--Again...

You know, I know a little about marching around Jericho, blowing my own trumpet, 7 times before anything happens...it's the old "been here, done that" thing. How many times does it take?

A number of years ago, the Holy spent a lot of time revealing to me the power and hope of emptiness, but like most of us, it's not a lesson easily learned. And it hurts. Ask Jesus. Paul reminds us in Philippians that Jesus chose to be fully human. He chose to be made empty. I think that's our call, too; to choose to be made empty.

I love empty pots. The significance is huge to me--I always think of Jesus and the marriage at Cana--all those pots just sitting around, empty, waiting to be filled. A full pot can't receive anything, can it.

So, that's where I am again this morning. Seems the Spirit has been speaking to me again on the subject of "subtraction", the power of being made empty, death being required before resurrection, dying before being born again. It's not something I long to hear being spoken to me, but it's something my physical body is screaming to me at the moment. And, because the pain body is screaming, I have to pay attention.

It's those damned expectations again. St. Theresa tells us it's those damned expectations that send us right back to the basement of the castle where all the reptiles live. It's those damned expectations that bind us and freeze us in the past or predicting something about the future--anything at all, good or bad. It's those damned expectations that keep us from living in Today, the only place God and I can relate. Seems it's time for this pot to be emptied again. And I didn't even realize the pot was full.

In my reading this week, I was introduced to a couple of Lao Tzu's verses from the Tao te Ching. I've probably read them before, but they've held my thoughts now for about 4 days. I just keep going back and re-reading them, thinking about the truths they teach, and pondering how they are connected to true spiritual authority. So, for your reading pleasure, and because it's hard to go it alone:

Verse 11 The Importance of What is Not

We join thirty spokes

to the hub of a wheel,

yet it's the center hole

that drives the chariot.

We shape clay

to birth a vessel,

yet it's the hollow within

that makes it useful.

We chisel doors and windows

to construct a room,

yet it's the inner space

that makes it livable.

Thus do we

create what is

to use what is not.

Verse 22 Celebrate Paradox!

No-thing remains itself.

Each prepares the path to its opposite.

To be ready for wholeness, first be fragmented.

To be ready for rightness, first be wronged.

To be ready for fullness, first be empty.

To be ready for renewal, first be worn out.

To be ready for success, first fail.

To be ready for doubt, first be certain.

Because the wise observe the world

through the Great Integrity,

they know they are not knowledgeable.

Because they do not perceive

only through their perceptions,

they do not judge this right and that wrong.

Because they do not delight in boasting,

they are appreciated.

Because they do not announce their superiority,

they are acclaimed.

Because they never compete,

no one can compete with them.

Verily, fragmentation prepares the path to wholeness,

the mother of all origins and realizations.

Sometimes You Just Have to CROW!

"If I say I am working for peace but am myself angry and self-righteous, then the energy I am putting into the atmosphere is anger and self-righteousness. If I come preaching the gospel of Christian love but am myself rigid and judgmental, I am putting into the atmosphere rigidity and judgment. " from Mystical Hope, p 91.

I have just finished reading a very small book (less than 100 pages) and I must crow about it. The title is Mystical Hope, Trusting in the Mercy of God, by Cynthia Bourgeault. I first read this little book about 5 years ago, and it was good. But apparently something's changed in my own "software" since then. This is a wonderful book, a book full of GOOD NEWS. This is a grace-filled book.

Her discussion of "righteousness" being "the quality of aliveness" in our lives, I think, may have been my favorite discussion. Mostly because we are in Romans in TAEHS, and Paul's discussion of righteousness makes me yawn (sorry all you Paul lovers!). Cynthia cuts to the chase with her stories and vivid pictures, such as this one:

She shares a story of a young African woman who saw an unusual snake glistening in the sun, brightly colored and absolutely beautiful. She talked about it so much that a friend killed the snake and made a belt from the skin for the woman. "To her great dismay that once glistening skin was now just dull and gray. For all along the beauty had lain not in the physical skin, but in the quality of its aliveness."

I thought about all the stories I've heard around here from Jim and his fishing buddies of the beautiful dolphin fish. I've heard how gorgeous it is, bright and beautifully colored, glistening in the sun and the water. But the ones I see in the boat are gray and lifeless, dead, absolutely NO color. That's what they've lost--that quality of aliveness.

Cynthia defines "righteousness" as that quality of aliveness that is present in our "works" for God. She writes: By "righteousness" [the ancient Hebrews] did not mean a moral template they could use...They meant an energy-charged sphere--a forcefield...in which all their plans, efforts, and schemes had to move in order to come to fruition. The innermost and the outermost had to be totally "in sync."...Otherwise, no efforts undertaken out of one's own righteousness (one's own forcefield), no matter how cleverly simulated the outward action, could possibly be worthy because the crucial element was missing: the aliveness of God moving in it.

Now THAT I can understand easier than Paul's many words.

A few of my favorite quotes:

Energy is what happens when divine being expresses itself outward.

Where is God? God is all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light--not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them, but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationship that animates everything that is...I want to proclaim that God IS the unity--the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go. (quoting Barbara Taylor Brown)

...hope is the current that flows through, carrying us toward the future. As we let ourselves yield and go with it, it will open to us toward the authentic unfolding of our being. The opposite is also just as true: any form of resistance, be it nostalgia, clinging, bitterness, self-pity, or self-justification, will make it impossible to find that current of hope, impossible for hope to carry us to our true becoming. We become stones in the riverbed...Hope's home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth.

This is a beautiful book, and I highly recommend it--read it, chew on it, and watch hope come alive as you find yourself swimming in that great body of mercy called God.