Sweet Emptiness

Some days as I sit down to write this blog, I feel empty. Empty of ideas, inspiration, let's face it--empty of anything meaningful to say. But I recently had a revelation about these moments. In reality, when I can't find things to write I'm not empty; I'm too full. I'm too full of my own thoughts, preoccupations, worries, and distractions. I let too many other things get in the way of the inspiration. The truth is, this is not a phenomenon that happens to me only when I write.

Sometimes I let myself and all my "busyness" get in the way of really living a meaningful life. I become too full to hear God's whispers and feel his inspiration leading me. I find myself feeling empty, scattered, purposeless. . . I suspect it happens to you, too.

I found a passage on this very idea in Margaret Silf's book the Inner Compass.

I discovered another picture of freedom one night while lying in a warm, deep bath. I had emptied one of the little plastic bottles of bath oil into the water, hoping that its promise to be "revitalizing" would rouse me from the threat of lethargy and despondency that was lurking around the corner.

I watched idly as the bootle bobbed up and down on the water. Then I held it down and filled it up. I let it go and watched it sink slowly down and settle on the bottom. I fetched it up again, emptied it, and let it float. My childish pastime made me realize that God sometimes does the same with me. I fill up, gradually, with all the things I desire and want to hold on to. The more I fill up, the deeper I sink, until eventually I lie like a lead balloon at the bottom of the bath, quite incapable of movement. Then something happens to "tip me up and pour me out." It is usually something unwelcome that I resist with all my strength, but if it succeeds in draining me of all the attachment feelings I have collected, then something new happens. The little bottle bobs up again, freed of its cargo of bathwater, light, floating, and responding to every wave. This is the gift of emptiness; only in my emptiness can I be sustained by the buoyancy of God's unfailing love and move on as he created me to in order to grow.

I love this imagery. I have certainly been that bottle weighted at the bottom of the bath. But I rarely recognize the solution. I mistake a feeling of empty for a reality of being too full. Think about your own life. Have you found yourself feeling empty or lost? On closer inspection, might you really be too full? What freedom might come if you were able to let go of all the heaviness and weight of negative emotions, old attachments, distractions, fears, and compulsions?

Might emptiness be a welcome relief leaving you room to be filled with the things God really intends for you?

[Source: Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality by Margaret Silf. Loyola Press, Chicago, IL. ©1999.]