Peaceful Emptiness

It has been a while since I wrote anything concrete; it has been a while since I had any desire to.  I have been emotionally and spiritually in a new place the last few years, and it was not until recently that I began to be able to put words to the sort of peaceful emptiness that I have fallen into.  

A place where I comfortably gaze upon the contradictions in myself, life, and others with a peaceful smirk.  Where knowing and unknowing equally have a presence within each breath.  A place where the prison of a reputation no longer traps my anxieties.  Ultimately, it is a place where my need to create, manufacture, or try to “figure out” has been replaced by a renewed baptism into the beautiful, good, and true.  The permission to reach the Cross again with broken chains is a renewed choice. 

In my early twenties, I discovered the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton. His writing captivated me in ways my brain couldn’t fully understand, but my soul certainly did. That said, it has taken me 25 years to realize what my soul understood immediately. Here is one example that attempts to describe the peaceful emptiness of the second half of life.

“When in the Soul of the Serene Disciple”

By Thomas Merton

When in the soul of the serene disciple

With no more Fathers to imitate

Poverty is a success,

It is a small thing to say the roof is gone:

He has not even a house.

Stars, as well as friends,

Are angry with the noble ruin.

Saints depart in several directions.

Be still:

There is no longer any need of comment.

It was a lucky wind

That blew away his halo with his cares,

A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

Here you will find

Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.

There are no ways,

No methods to admire

Where poverty is no achievement.

His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

What choice remains?

Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:

It is the usual freedom

Of men without visions.