First, Emptiness

There is a fable about a man who sought the wisdom of a guru who lived in a simple hut atop a mountain. The man was filled with a desire to attain spiritual enlightenment, and had spent many years preparing himself for the day when he would meet the wise man atop the mountain. Finally, his head filled with wisdom and his heart full of expectation, he made the dangerous ascent and found himself at the ascetic's door, whereby he knocked. The old man welcomed him in and invited him to tea. Beside himself with excitement, the visitor felt compelled to speak excitedly and without pause about all that he had learned, convinced that his wisdom would impress the guru. The old man said nothing while the younger man talked and talked, he simply waited for the tea to steep as he listened. The two sat down, the younger man still talking. The guru filled his own cup first. Then, slowly, still listening to the younger man, he reached across the table and slowly began to fill his tea cup, only he did not stop pouring: he kept pouring until the tea was generously overflowing the cup and the saucer and was forming a pool on the table, at which point the young man exclaimed, "What are you doing?!!" The wise man looked at him and said, you are much like this cup of tea...your head is so overflowing with your own thoughts that there is room for nothing new to enter. You must descend the mountain, return home and forget all that you have learned. When your mind is again uncluttered like that of a child's, you may return. Only then will you be ready to receive wisdom.

We need emptiness. More than we know. Emptiness is the precondition of receptivity. When I travel to the New Mexican desert and find myself standing in the midst of windswept mesas and mountains without another soul for miles around, an odd thing happens: I feel strangely filled. The cacophony of my digitized life turns to inner quiet and eventually to renewed alertness. I feel life with freshness. I am fully present to everything within and without. I rediscover the appetite for God that I had almost lost. I am again like a chalice longing to be filled with holy wine, or like a dry sea sponge anticipating the creeping tide, and with it, a joyful, original saturation.

Paul wrote that Jesus "emptied himself," taking the form of a slave and humbling himself. The work for "emptied" is kenosis: a pouring out. We know that he poured himself out for our sake. I wonder, though, if he did so also for himself. To empty ourselves is to make room for the only thing - the only One - who can truly fill us.