thought exercise on Emptiness

I learned a long time ago that if I hustle fast enough, the emptiness will never catch up with me. First I outran it by traveling and dancing and drinking two-for-one whiskey sours at Calypso on State...

“Christianity promises to make man free,” Anglican priest William R. Inge writes; “it never promises to make them independent.” Freedom and independence are polar opposites. The former leads to wellne...

Joy’s trick is to supply  Dry lips with what can cool and slake,  Leaving them dumbstruck also with an  ache Nothing can satisfy.

Psalm 101:3: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” The term here—worthless—is a compound, literally: without profit. It is “the quality of being useless, good for nothing.” Pg.11...

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for pe...

We would do well to keep in mind that Solomon’s words on the necessity of friendship were written toward the end of his life, well after he scaled his own Mount Significance. His accomplishments were ...

Many of us presume that atheists and agnostics don’t think or care one bit for God. But this is not the case. Heinrich Böll, a German writer and devout Catholic, once joked, “I don’t like these atheis...

The movie The Intern did not win any Academy Awards, which is hardly surprising. Punchy blockbuster comedies rarely receive Hollywood’s highest honors. But its message is nevertheless award wort...

There is an old legend about a rich, yet selfish old man who kept all of his wealth hidden away in a secret chest in the darkest corner of his attic. Each night, when he was sure no one was watching, ...

At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only toward the next time, the moment when her brain, infused...

Contentment is when we tell the Shepherd that His provision is enough for all our physical and material needs. If our old car gimps down the road, that is fine. If we get a shiny newer auto with less ...

‘Space’ means an area of freedom, without coercion or accountability, free of pressures and void of authority. Space may be imagined as week-end, holiday, a vacation, and is characterised by a kind of...

One day Saint Francis and brother Leo were walking down the road. Noticing Leo was depressed, Francis turned and asked, “Leo, do you know what it means to be pure of heart?” “Of course. It means to h...

Barbara Brown Taylor recounts her first experience with caving, the exploration of caves that are not prepared or made easily accessible for inexperienced explorers. Her guides gave her a bit of helpf...

Creation as it felt to God — since then every artist has felt an echo, a sympathetic vibration: a craftsman who squints at his finished product and reckons, “Very good”; a performer who cannot suppres...

Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step—on the level it looks petty; but then this step they keep up, on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and ...

Revenge and forgiveness are major themes of Michael Christopher’s play, The Black Angel. In it, Herman Engel is Nazi general responsible for killing over 200 French Jews. Convicted of his crimes by th...

The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...

The character Quentin from Henry Miller’s Play, After the Fall explains a life without God: For many years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove ...

Infinity is vacant, lonely, endless time, time without God. There will always be tomorrow is a lie. Eternity is time with God. God doesn’t just give us time (time between the resurrection of Jesus and...

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed wit...

Thomas Merton describes those who never experience the gift of a contemplative life. His explanation for why some people never experience this can be found in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation: [T...

Frustration is something that does not exist—except within the self. It translates my world to me through the filter of my own need to control it. Frustration becomes the space we put between ourselve...

During a retreat at the Taizé compound in France, a young American shared a remarkable discovery. He said: “Back home, surrounded by all my possessions, I often feel uncertain about many things. Here,...

One of the universal experiences of life is questioning whether God really exists or if we are ultimately, alone in the universe. The great British theologian (this isn’t meant to be taken seriously) ...

I know a spiritual director who begins each of her sessions with five to ten minutes of silence. Sitting in silence is a new experience for many, and she told me that during these few minutes nearly e...

In his novel, The Pale King , David Foster Wallace discusses the issue of boredom, or, as he puts it, dullness: . . . Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where ph...

I am abashed, solitary, helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me. But this sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pur...

Awesome stuff never satisfies. Nothing in the entire physical, created world can give rest, peace, identity, meaning, purpose, or lasting contentment to your awe-craving heart. Looking to stuff to sat...

I sit in a bright-lit June meadow at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. It is early afternoon, and I have been here since morning in what can only be described as an uneasy sol...