The Necessary Vacancy
What if I don't check those phone pings first thing in the morning?
Each morning I begin with my own walk down the Emmaus Road.
Each morning, the alarm on my phone sounds. I turn it over to silence it and inevitably I catch a glimpse of the glowing screen which contains at least a handful of notifications waiting there just for me. A few little signal flares for my brain. Something in me leans in, sometimes with a quiet curiosity… and sometimes with more of an anxious desperation.
I just can’t wait to find out…
What’s in there for me?
Did a friend text—do they need me?
Did someone affirm my writing over night?
Is there an email with some new exciting opportunity?
Is there SOME-THING in there that validates my existence?
I come into the new day, my addictions already buzzing, reaching, crying out for belonging.
But there are other occassions…
When I don’t manically reach for the notifications first thing—when I just unhurriedly sit there and breathe, with coffee in hand, sometimes I begin to notice an alternative universe. Like the slow curl of steam rising, lit by the magical early light and the naked simplicity of the morning quiet.
And then, often, what chases that is the ache.
A subtle but real sense of aloneness. A keen pang of irrelevance. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable enough to send me right back to the numbing screen. But if I ‘m graced to stay there, right there in that irrelevant nothing…
The birds begin to sing. I mean like really sing! That spring song seems especially loud, but it’s more than just noise. As if they’re offering something personal, I didn’t know my soul needed.
This feels like that other form of validation. Personal, but noticeably healthier, actually more quantum and inclusive. It’s a resonance that plucks a string deep within me that vibrates into a gentle reminder that I’m not the center of the universe, but one string among many. One single note within the much larger music of the cosmos.
That sounds so sweet, right? Which makes it so comically tragic how frequently I end up opting out of it all.
Recently I listened to a podcast between an evangelical influencer and one of my favorite comedians.1 I found myself cringing at the regressive yet familiar language, that odd religious insider vocabulary that once made me feel so secure. My empathic gut did acidic somersaults as I felt for that comedian, watching his face grimace and head tilt in confusion, as he tried to wade through interpretations and respond honestly yet kindly to a world that no longer made sense to him.
He now held notions of God so drastically different, far less dogmatic from the interviewer. He spoke of Jesus differently. Related to scripture differently. Now with a new and vibrant spaciousness, unbound from the old country club like echo chambers of his past.
To me, his responses were profoundly attractive and I found myself longing to attach myself to his way of seeing.
But still… not quite, I couldn’t quite claim full resonance. And that disturbed me.
I feel that same lack of full resonance in progressive church spaces too and in so many conversations, like it’s something in the air itself and I can’t quite swallow a full breath.
Maybe its better described as a homelessness. Or maybe a black hole-- that sinking place of non-validation, non-belonging. A deep poverty that comes from never quite settling into your own place and people.
Which brings me back to those two men on the road to Road to Emmaus—walking away from what they thought was a certain future. Walking away from their hope for a home, an inner liberation, within an oppressive empire and all its religious machinery.
Just two ordinary deflated men shuffling uninspired down that dusty road of liminality.
Walking nowhere. No longer able to lay claim to any special cultural movement. We perceive them grieving the death of Jesus, but I think it was more like grieving the death of any and all sense of meaning.
A distinct poverty… like a womb of unknowing. The darkness of that vacant tomb created a vacancy of personal importance.
Meister Eckhart addresses this vacancy:
“So you want to find God? Empty yourself of everything—
your worries and your hopes, your wishes and your fears.
For when you are finally empty, God will find you,
because God cannot tolerate emptiness and will come
to fill you with himself.”2
I suppose those two men had to descend into that void and endure that awful nothingness in order to eventually accept a new experience of Living Presence.
It raises nearly unbearable questions…
Who am I apart from certain outcomes? We seldom sit the glowing notifications—all of our personal meaning projects—aside long enough to really walk out the pain of that unbearable question.
Who are we apart from sex, conquest, and achievement?
What substantial meaning remains?
On the surface, that sounds like some abstract fodder for philosophy bros pontificating over espresso and clove cigarettes, but I’m afraid it’s far more urgent, embodied, and relevant for all of us in this moment.
From questions like these comes the necessity of what Henri Nouwen names as voluntary displacement,
“Through voluntary displacement, we counteract the tendency to become settled in a false comfort… and are brought to the recognition of our inner brokenness, and thus into deeper solidarity with the brokenness of others.”3
And there it is. Father Henri points to my routine morning walks to Emmaus as the daily dusty road toward a more humble human solidarity.
Don’t let me (Mr textbook Enneagram Four) romanticize loneliness, or homelessness, or displacement. That too becomes one more kind of possession, just another identity to cling to.
But we also shouldn’t be too quick to run from it either.
Why would any sane person invite or allow this type of existential struggle so early in the morning? Just give me access to those damned notifications and last night’s scores- a temporary outlet for my itchy restlessness. Some nice shallow comfort and ego affirming pings of purpose.
Why would we invite or allow it - that void, that empty, that no-thing?
Because, we know… While we certainly wouldn’t choose it on its surface, our soul knows… It just knows. And we know that it knows. Knows what? The realistic terrain of true prayer.
It’s an authentic and active participation in the way of kenosis—self-emptying. The blank canvas, the empty tomb or womb, where a new birth can gestate. The creative genesis where Spirit hovers over the dark void.
May we awaken and allow for the irrelevant quiet. That unproductive place where we notice the birds sing and the swirling steam.
Sweeney and Burrows, Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul. p. 58
Nouwen, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life. p.61
Same!
Had those same feeling listening to that podcast with Pete, always appreciate the way you put words to experience!