Coming Up Empty

This morning as I found myself awakening, I felt empty. I climbed into it and found a treasure.  We are in the middle of two weeks of reading the Passion of Jesus, a man who some of us call the Christ, the anointed one of god, the son of god. It’s a grisly, troubling experience. It’s messy. And to add to the challenge, this blog has invited you its readers to enter the story, to climb into the mess, to experience it from the inside. I confess that I am not eager to do so, to enter a place where suffering and death will surround me, especially when the suffering and death involves an innocent victim.  So I have been in no hurry to move into this long text (click for a link)  from the time Jesus had his last meal until his death and burial the next day. I have gone back to the beginning, to the meal, and gone ahead only until something stops me; some inner door opens and invites me in. This morning it was the cup.
In Entering the Story, I have encouraged us to find ourselves as a part of it, one of the characters, or perhaps an observer at the periphery of the scene. This morning I found myself to be the cup. I was, by then, in my study, and at my computer I had typed the first line of this posting: “This morning as I found myself awakening, I felt empty.” I turned off the light and sat in the dark, feeling my emptiness, climbing into it. The climbing into led me to climb into the story, and I realized that I was the cup. I sat in my cup-ness. I imagined hands holding me, soft on my hardness, bringing me to their lips, warm on my coolness. And I realized that I was not the wine, I was just the cup, the hollow place that was useful in holding the wine, the shell that gave the hands a grip. I felt my durability; as the wine eventually became poured out and consumed, I remained.

Crusades were fought over this sacred cup, saving it from the Islamic people who occupied Spain. The term “Holy Grail” continues to be used to refer to the thing sought but never quite found, the unreachable goal.  And we have it all along, this Holy Grail, this treasure…within our reach. It is our emptiness.

Here is a link to something that you might consider using today to discover and embrace the treasure of your own emptiness. It is a Latin song. Ego sum pauper; nihil habeo; et nihil dabo; ego sum pauper. I am poor; I have nothing; nothing to give; I am poor. Listen to the harmony and beauty in it. Let it play in you today and during this Holy Week to come. (Click to play)

And this emptiness is put to use in availability.  Prayer is the practice of the presence of God, availability to God; are we?   Almsgiving is the pracice of the presence of another person, availability to them; are we?  Emptiness alone does not give us meaning.  That comes from being open to our capacity, our participation in divinity.  Here is a song worth listening to.  (Click to play)


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.