Again, But With Feeling

When I was twenty-two, I ran into a professor in the elevator who said, “Hey, I need someone to do research for me in London. Want to go?”

Going to London is one of those turning points in my life. I spent six weeks there, and it had undue effect on the person I became. Like, I’d always ascribed to second wave feminism enough that I’d refused to care about clothes or makeup or anything appearance related, and then I went and was like, “There are exactly zero guys here I’m trying to impress, and I still want to know what I look like with eyeliner, so I’m gonna do it.” I’d always thought I didn’t like being outside, and one day, on the top of White Horse hill with the wind whipping around me, I found out that I loved being outside. Not being around people I knew meant that I could become who I wanted without fighting their expectations.

In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton says, “In order to know and love God as He is, we must have God dwelling in us in a new way… not only in His greatness but in His littleness, by which He empties Himself and comes down to be empty in our emptiness and so fill us in His fullness” (40).

One of the interesting things about mystics like Merton is that they push metaphors until they break down. All metaphors break down, of course, but most of us try to keep our metaphors in tact, to stop before they crumble. Mystics, though, they just plow through. They want to make sure you know that the words they’re using aren’t the reality they’re trying to communicate. “God’s bigger than the words,” they’re saying. “Stop getting hung up on them.” In The Cloud of Unknowing, the unknown author spends whole chapters discussing how when he says “up” towards God, he doesn’t really mean up, and when he says “in” towards ourselves, he doesn’t really mean in. Merton is more concise in his unraveling: God empties Himself to come to us in our emptiness and in His emptiness fills us.

“Fills us with what?” I ask the text. “You said He’s empty?”

“Exactly,” Merton says. “You’re getting it.”

I’m really not getting it.

Here am I

Emptiness and Wordlessness, In a Good Way