Empty Spaces
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
1/6 & 1/7/07

"Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft,
my voice so tender, my need of love absolutely clear." 
–Hafiz, 14^th century Persian Sufi poet (trans. Daniel Ladinsky)

 

Call to Gather

We welcome each other into this space, at this time, at the edge of a new year, with the words of member Greg Pelley:

 

a new calendar

dates unfilled

times unclaimed

birthdays unmarked

 

the holidays fade

as the stupor subsides

as the winter sets in

as the quiet returns

 

a new calendar

mistakes not made

relationships not broken

nothing to take back 

 

the measurement of time

as if it could be measured

as if it should be measured

as if…[we] could stop its measure

 

a new calendar

abundance of possibility

possibility of abundance.

 

Story         “Finding God in Silence” by Mary Ann Moore

 

Once there was a man who wanted to know what God was truly like. Other people had told him about God, and he had many ideas himself, but he wanted to see what God would tell him. So he set off to find God.

He searched and searched. Finally he thought he had found God. He said, “God, I want to be sure I know what you are truly like. Some people say you are like a woman and some people say you are like a man. Other people say you are like the sky and yet others say you are like the earth. What are you truly like? Will you tell me, God?”

 

But God did not speak. God was silent.

 

So the man went on speaking. “Some people say you are in animals and trees and mountaintops. Other people say you are in the sun and the moon and the stars. What are you truly like? Will you tell me, God?”

 

But God did not speak. God was silent.

 

Again the man spoke: “Well, I think you are there in all these things, in earth and sky and animals and people. And I even think you are in me, too. God, why aren’t you answering me? God, why don’t you tell me what you truly are?”

 

But still God did not speak. Still God was silent.

 

Finally the man stopped talking. He waited to hear what God would say. At first he only heard his own words blowing through his mind like a strong wind: “Man—Woman—sky—earth.” The words blew around and around and the man waited, but God said nothing.

 

Then the wind grew stronger and the words began to break into little pieces and fall away from him: “M—an, wo—m—an, s—k—y, ear—th.”

More and more the words broke up and fell away. The man waited and God still said nothing.

 

When the words were all gone, the man still waited, but God said nothing. And then there was only silence, a calm and peaceful silence, and in the silence he knew God.

 

 

Meditation 

“Disappointment” by Tony Hoagland

 

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat

looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,

fish in their tin armor.

 

That’s what I like about disappointment:

the way it slows you down,

when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
                  goes dead calm

 

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors

and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

 

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.

Then he didn’t get the job,--
or her father died before she told him

                  that one, most important thing—

 

and everything got still.

 

It was February or October

It was July

I remember it so clear

You don’t have to pursue anything ever again
It’s over

You’re free

You’re unemployed

 

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude

with your scarf of resignation

                  lifting in the wind.  

 

First Reading

from the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:

 

Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that allows the wheel to function.

 

We mold clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that makes the vessel useful.

 

We fashion wood for a house,

but it is the emptiness inside

that makes it livable.

 

We work with the substantial,

but the emptiness is what we use.[1]

 

Second Reading

from the American poet Galway Kinnell:

 

How many nights

Have I lain in terror,

O Creator Spirit, Maker of night and day,

 

only to walk out

the next morning over the frozen world

hearing under the creaking of snow

faint, peaceful breaths…

snake,

bear, earthworm, ant…

 

and above me

a wild crow crying ‘yaw yaw yaw’

from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.[2]

 

Sermon

 

It was a Father’s Day gift from my wife.   A certificate for a massage from a local practitioner and friend of hers named Linda. I think my eyes got a little teary when I opened it. Many years had passed since my last massage, but I still remembered how good it could feel...and how overdue I was to feel that good again.

 

Life gets busy, even during vacation.  It took me until early August to make my appointment.  By then, I was starting to feel the familiar late summer anxiety about returning to work…about all the things I wanted to accomplish…about all the hours I would soon have to divert from my family and back to the other ministries of my life.  No doubt my family was sensing my unease, too.  I think Susan was relieved to know that I was finally cashing in my present…and getting out of the house.

 

Linda’s office was easy walking distance from our place.  Upon entering the building and heading up the stairs toward the room where she was waiting, I breathed in a familiar scent of massage oil mingled with fresh linen, which stirred in me memories of the past and high hopes for the next hour.

 

Linda invited me to sit down and, after a little get-to-know you conversation, she asked if I wanted a massage or a zero balancing treatment.

 

I then asked the question I imagine most of the world would have asked in that moment, “What is a zero balancing treatment?”

 

She handed me a brochure and gave me the basics. It’s a technique that’s been around since 1973, developed by a doctor and student of alternative healing methods named Fritz Smith.  It’s an integration of Eastern practice and Western Thought, of reiki technique and hands-on body movement, a means of working with the body’s energy as well as its structure.

 

I confess, it sounded a little suspect to me, this zero balancing…like a procedure Mr. Spock might perform on the starship Enterprise. When it comes to massages, I’d always been a meat and potatoes man: just manipulate my muscle tissue and joints and spare me the new age-y stuff, please.  Why would I settle for a frothy tofu and wheat germ shake sprinkled with fairy dust when I could have a steak? 

Still I wanted to keep myself open to the possibility of something different…something unexpected. So, I left my decision up to her.  I described my mental state, explained what I hoped to get out of the session and asked for her recommendation.

 

And thus began my first session of zero-balancing.

 

She sat me on the edge of the massage table.  After some preliminary explanation of what she would be doing, some gentle movement of my arms, and evaluation touches along my spine, I was soon lying on my back, where I remained for the rest of the session.  Linda alternately moved my limbs and strategically applied mild pressure at various places with her fingertips. She began at my feet and worked her way up.  I kept my eyes closed and tried to focus on my breathing but mostly I maintained an inner monologue of critique and concern: “Mark, why didn’t you just get a massage? This is so flaky.  You are going to get up and wonder why you wasted the money.  Zero-balancing.  What were you thinking?” and so on.

For 30 minutes.

 

Near the end of the session, however, my thoughts started to wander into places they hadn’t visited for twenty years or more. I was remembering details of who I had been as an adolescent, even as I was acknowledging who I had become as an adult.  Not all these memories were happy, but they were undeniably mine and I welcomed them as if they were long, lost friends. 

 

By the time Linda suggested that I sit up again, I was in a completely different state of mind than I had been when I arrived.  I felt more in touch with myself…more neutral…more balanced.

 

When I stood, I realized my body was in a different state, too.  I was convinced I was at least a foot taller.  My posture had improved and my head felt light on my shoulders.

 

When I returned home, I couldn’t get the smile off my face. 

Susan immediately noticed something had changed. 

“What happened to you?” she asked. 

“I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I know I’m going to do it again.”

 

A month later at my next treatment, my inner monologue on the table had changed.  I still didn’t fully understand what was being done, but I was much more able to go with the flow and to embrace the process as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

 

During this second treatment I began to sense the deeper meaning of my zero-balancing experience. For it was during this second treatment…and those that would follow…that I began to appreciate that the primary work of the sessions does not seem to occur when Linda is moving limbs or applying pressure, but when she lets go…when she isn’t touching me at all.

 

The primary work does not occur in the touch itself, but in the space that remains after the touch has ended.

 

When I mentioned my understanding to Linda, she nodded and said that’s why she likes zero balancing.  She feels the approach is respectful of a person’s ability to heal or work through things herself.  The goal in zero balancing, she explained, is not to manipulate or impose an agenda, but rather to find or form fulcrums (or pivot points around which energy flows through the body) and to hold these fulcrums open for a time so that the individual can receive and integrate the life force that is already there.  Think of it like flipping switches on and off to suggest to the body/mind system different possibilities for functioning….and then to trust that the body/mind system knows what to do.

 

The primary work does not occur in the touch itself, but in the space that remains after the touch has ended.

 

Now I don’t claim to really understand all of this in a literal sense.  It still strikes my all-too-dominant-left-brain perception as too fuzzy to fully grasp. But I definitely get the metaphorical wisdom…the wisdom of the necessity of internal work…work that happens on one’s own in the empty spaces…because it feels familiar to me.

 

It is familiar from a religious standpoint in that so many of the world’s religions revere stories of prophets, sages, searchers and average Joes having to go off to spend time in the wilderness or the desert, by themselves, wrestling with their disappointment, or their loneliness, or their doubt.  They have no choice but to find insight and redemption in solitude…to do their work themselves…in their own unique empty spaces.  They have no choice but to tap in to their inherent wisdom.  They have no choice but to
just stand there
looking out on the emptiness
in their trench coats of solitude

with their scarves of resignation

                  lifting in the wind.

 

This wisdom is familiar to me from a personal standpoint, too.  As I think back on the times of revelation in my own life, the big ah-ha moments, the fulcrum points around which my understandings of life have revolved and evolved, I recognize that they have typically grown out of the circumstances in which I felt most alone, or lost or despairing. These were the times when I had to trust not only my own inherent worth and dignity, but my own inherent resiliency…my own inherent ability to see the empty spaces for what they truly are…callings not to turn away from life, but rather to reach for it.

 

I like the way my friend Dr. Erle Fitz describes these moments, when the empty spaces threaten to overcome us, when we get so consumed by the empty that we forget the possibility of the space.  He says, “What is wrong with us is what’s right with us.” 

 

What is wrong with us is what’s right with us.

 

The empty space, the broken heart, the feeling of despair over plans gone awry is, or at least could be, in the end, what can usher us to a better understanding, a new possibility, a deeper and more sure sense of ourselves, the life we share, and what that life may be encouraging us to seek, to do or to be.

 

The news is filled with stories of empty spaces…of tragedies being experienced all over the globe, tragedies that, despite our distance, can wear us down with their brutality, their senselessness.  Meanwhile, we’ve shared a lot of more personal losses in our community over the past couple of months, too.   Many of us have said goodbye to parents, to friends, to expectations of how our lives would unfold, and we’ve had to grapple with some empty spaces we did not invite.  All of these empty spaces are poignant for those involved.  But I suggest to you that their poignancy rests not in the lack of life they represent, but in the possibilities for new life they offer.  I’ve come to believe that these empty spaces are not merely voids, but opportunities for a deeper connection to what we have lost…as well as an encouragement toward what is still yet to be found.

 

My purpose today is not to suggest that we should seek out disappointment and loss. After all, each of us will get our share whether we seek it or not. But I have learned that it is in these moments of emptiness—these days…weeks…years of emptiness—that that each of us may be closest to what it means to be human…to be alive. It’s why I sometimes encourage people who are grieving, who are doing the work of letting go, to honor the struggle it can be, to open up to what I would call the holiness of loss, to settle into the empty space as best we can, not only as a way to remember what we have lost, but as a means to lead us to what we have yet to find, both in ourselves and in this world we share.

 

So to all of us grappling with empty spaces this season:

 

Whether we find ourselves in a session of zero-balancing,

on the therapists couch,

or staring at the phone wondering if we can ever summon the courage to make the call we know we need to make…

 

Whether we are crying on the shoulders of our siblings or our spouses, reading the obituary for the sixty-third time,

or going to an AA meeting rather than the bottle….

 

Whether we are in the doctor’s office getting some bad news,

creating a suddenly needed resume,

or calling out to the night-time sky in hopes that one of the stars may offer us a sign that things will be ok after all….

 

Whether we have spent many nights awake in terror,

or asleep in grief…

 

My hope for us this new year is that each of us will one morning

…walk out

over the frozen world

hearing under the creaking of snow

faint, peaceful breaths…

 

and above us

a wild crow crying ‘yaw yaw yaw’

from a branch nothing cried from ever in our lives.

 

And we will know, in that moment of surprise,

in that moment of possibility,

in that moment of hope,

that it was the empty space that led us there.