A poem I wrote years ago had the line "hands never empty/heart never full" - an apt description of a life busy with activity and empty of soul - the action of life without the heart of it - or something like that.
After a full day, and weekend, of perpetual motion, the days' end left me exhausted. I took some moments to journal, but also to look-up the writing lecture series which led to reviewing a low-residency MFA which caused me to consider a new hire possibility at my job and eventually led me back to looking at the book I am working through about Centering Prayer and lectio divina.
The review of the low-residency MFA brought me to an article about the process of shaping a student in said MFA. Basically, the writer had been a previous professor at this program and discussed his process of guiding the students in their pursuit of nonfiction, which often translated as memoir. In essence, he said he created space for them to consider what they were "really" trying to say with whatever story they shared. Yes, questions made the walls, but not to keep the idea in, but to give it space to breath - pleasant boundary lines, as the psalmist might say, so the neighbor's conversation doesn't hijack your own.
Then in the book, the author speaks of space: The space created by breathing out, by being still when all the world pushes for movement, by sweeping out the constant ruminations of the mind so the grain of the soul may come into sharper relief.
Of all the spiritual practices which lead to God, I struggle with this the most. The granddaughter of a woman who survived The Great Depression and the daughter of a woman who majored in details, attaching a memory and feeling to each one; I hold on to anything which may be resurrected to a new life or which may someday remind me of the laughter I shared with J on a cold morning in February.
What I've realized is the physical filling of space imitates mental and spiritual cluttered-ness as well. When I sit to be silent, the room in the inn lights the no vacancy sign, and Jesus must again find other lodging with someone who has some room to share.
While the hyperbole may indeed be overdone, the point remains - for any rearranging to occur, at least a little space is needed to shuffle the boxes around enough to get what isn't needed out the door.
I guess the grace in all this is Love really can squeeze in between all the boxes in the first place and simply occupy the nanometers between surfaces if need be. My experience teaches me the veracity of this statement as well as the truth of Love rearranging all the furniture in the house in a heart's beat - wanted or not. Fortunately, the majority of the time, Love gently calls from every corner and provides whatever "umph" I need to get me to the room to begin the process of creating space, so my life - my soul - may be "filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
And often the desire to create space is all that's needed to do so. Thanks be to God.
Photo credit of a Tokonoma: https://japanobjects.com/features/japanese-tea-house
