New growth comes---Emptiness-Gift of the Dark Wood

An early thaw reveals I have some cleaning up to do for new growth.

            Emptiness, we might think of emptiness as being a difficult place to be; an uncomfortable state of affairs.  But as I have reflected on this, I believe it is on our way to emptiness that we may struggle most.

            The unloading, the unpacking, the shuffling around, and the weeding out of our emotional and physical stuff can be difficult.  Full can be comfortable even when there is little room to move or for more.  The feeling of busting at the seams may be better than exposing what we have been covering up for a long time.

            I have begun having conversations with people about parting with our "stuff". It occurred to me that we do not talk about this stage in our lives when we begin to think about what it means to place our things, our stories (for better or worse) and memories in the hands of someone else.  I know from my own experience and from others that we have a natural instinct to hold on tight, even we don't know why or when it doesn't make sense.

            Eric Elnes reminds us that "standing in this place (emptiness) is the beginning of all wisdom and all true understanding."

            My grandmother's photos have been moved from house to house and some have finally landed in my home...I have witnessed them being moved from their home in Holliston Mass. To the attic in Amherst N.H. and each time I saw something new.  Preparing to drive them north to Maine, we sorted through and threw away what others couldn’t; we rubbed our eyes from dust and tears.  The tears of course were from laughter and reflection.  With each move I have seen something different, some new piece of my family. In this go through I saw the creases that both our son's have in their faces when they smile, in the face of my great-grandfather.

            Of course the frustrating piece of making room and weeding out is that just when we thought we were done---there is more!  I walked along my garden on this snowless February day and looked at the daffodils poking through.  I also saw that I while I thought I had cleaned out a space for them, that I had removed all the debris that could stunt their growth, I had not.  While I am comfortable with pruning, at the end of summer the stalks that had some green and color to them were too difficult to take down even when I knew they would fall on their own.

            I once had a person ask me as he was confronting a difficult situation from his past in counseling "How long do I have to keep talking about this?"  I compared this early stage of healing to the baling out of a boat, one keeps scooping and dumping until the boat stops sinking and continues at a slower rate with repair, and then every once in a while a plug gets loose and more scooping is necessary. Only at these times it will be done with wisdom rather than desperation.

            This is what Elnes is talking about---"this is the beginning of wisdom ...and what we thought would be the place of our greatest emptiness may be the safest and most beautiful place in the world in which to stand."

            To be empty is to know there is more, something is missing, not what was but what can be.  “Fill my cup Lord; you lift me up Lord----“

Quotes from Eric Elnes' Gifts of the Dark Wood --Emptiness chapter