in fullness we dwell in emptiness we resonate in space we stand in and with and from and to we live and move and have our being Jean-Luc Picard stood on the bridge of the space ship Enterprise and looked out at the vast blackness of space. Vast in its emptiness yet full of wonders and potential. "What next?’ he said. ‘I know’ said first office Riker, ‘there’s a lot of useful room out there and it feels a bit boring and colourless. Let’s fill it up. Let’s decorate it and bring in some nice objects to look at. Let’s make some noise. Let’s make the view from this window really interesting. Morale is low. Let’s be entertained and forget the mission for a while. Filling up space will be a nice change”. I know - its a silly story isn’t it? Filling up the vastness of space just to be entertained and distracted. The problem is that is more or less what we humans do each day of our lives. We fill up space. We fill up the silence that is a given. How do we fill up space? Let me count the ways: We fill it up with stuff: We fill it with mostly completely useless, needless stuff of a thousand varieties and types. We fill it with the packaging we wrap all the stuff in to transport it from one part of the world to another. The stuff crowds our shelves, our houses, our garages, our storage faculties, our cars, our world. When we throw the stuff out and buy more stuff it clogs our waterways, pollutes our beaches and is buried in our earth. Even our thermosphere and exosphere are full of junk stuff. We fill it up with noise: There is no such thing as material silence. The universe itself hums in B flat. Nature sings and our own breath sounds in our ears. Yet on top of that we layer more noise. Every cafe has speakers and music, train stations blare radio programs, televisions blare and blast our senses, churches pulse with chatter and clamour and big screens and little screens in our houses beep and sing at us. We fill it up with stories: We have a story to tell about everything. We have interpretation after interpretation about the world, ourselves and others. Everything we touch, everything we see, everything we experience is already an interpretation because we filter and process everything. The self-conscious mind wraps itself around reality and weaves a narrative about that reality. Mostly what is woven is all about us because we are a supremely self focussed, self absorbed creature. We do it for survival and when we don’t need to worry about that we do it anyway. We fill it with ourselves: We project into the world ourselves. At a psychological level we unconsciously endow other people with aspects of ourselves we don’t particularly like. We also endow them with our positive characteristics. We see only that which we are. We are looking at the world through a mirror created by our own constructs and the mirror reflects back to me me. At a basic physical level all that we see, hear, taste, touch, smell and feel has been created from the data fed to us by my sensory organs. All we ever know of the world around are the images produced in the mind. We fill up space through a process of conscious thought and choice. We fill it up through unconscious and uncontrollable physical and mental processes. We fill it up with what we physically create. The final part of this process is that we identify with what we or others have created, narrated and projected. We believe the stories we weave about ourselves and end up trapped in the maze. The fuller our space gets the less room there is for our unfolding selves, others and the rest of God’s creation. Our ‘stuff’ crowds out other people, possibility, creativity, emerging truth and counter-argument. Is there possibly another way? I think there is and it has been explored by countless people through the ages from many backgrounds and perspectives. It is the way of dying, of decreasing, of surrendering, so there is room for the creative Love at the centre of all to emerge and bless. This is the Christian way of love revealed through Jesus the Christ. It is kenosis, self-emptying, that makes room for the other. The concept primarily comes from Philippians 2.7 where Paul states that Jesus did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself taking the form of a servant and became obedient, even to death on a cross. Theologians over the centuries have speculated that if, as Jesus said in John’s gospel, when others see him they have seen God, then God too must have this quality of kenotic, self-emptying. Creation, initial and ongoing, happens because God makes room for All to emerge and become. It is an act of love. When you sit with Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity you get a sense of what this kenotic love is like. Each of the three figures sit around a table with heads bowed in restful pose but what is predominate in the picture is the space between them. It is as if they hold space for something else to emerge or for someone else to join them. This depiction of the Triune God is not of a hierarchical superpower but a relationship of love. Love between three - co-equal, co-eternal, co-existing. The genius of the icon is that the viewer feels part of the picture. How we surrender and make space for the other, for creativity, for emerging truth and possibility is relatively simple that but takes ongoing practice. It is a daily, moment by moment decision to let go of what we grasp - the narratives and stories, the preconceptions and assumptions, the attachments and energies, the passions and desires. It is a daily decreasing of the ‘self’, the self focussed, self-conscious part of us that takes up so much room in our being. In letting go we create space. Of course, if a person manages to surrender and let go and finds that spaciousness within and without, they quickly find they are again holding tightly. It is a continually process of becoming aware of that with which we identify, of the stories we are telling about ourselves and the world, of the ways in which we crowd out our deeper selves and our God and then taking a step back to centre once more into silence and spaciousness. The repetition of sacred words and phrases can help this process. The practise of stillness - also called meditation and still prayer - and the practise of simple awareness of reality in all its mystery and beauty are also key parts of un-grasping and dwelling in spacious love. The literal decluttering of objects and noise plays a part. The recognition that we are the loved child of God is central. And when we think we have finally understood and grasped the truth we let go of that as well….. And maybe, just maybe, we will find that more and more we are no longer entrapped by our 'stuff' - mental or physical - but simply contained in love and acting in love. Peace & love Rebecca _____________________________ Silence: “It is an overarching sense of both containment and potential, of vitality ever emerging and not yet grasped” (Maggie Ross, Silence: A Users Guide 2014)
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Rebecca Newland:
Exploring balance, silence and contemplative living Archives
November 2016
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