“I’ve got nothing.”
That ran through my head when I noticed my turn had come up for this column. I really hadn’t the foggiest clue what I was going to write about. Usually I have some idea, even a scrap of an idea, that I’ve been noodling at for a while in anticipation of a deadline. But this time? Nothing.
I’m not new to writer’s block, of course. I’ve grappled with that dreaded blank page and accusingly blinking cursor. But this was different. I wasn’t just blocked. I felt I had nothing to draw on. The proverbial well was dry
As I thought more about this – trying to drum up a kernel of an idea – I realized it was more than just having nothing to write about. I’ve actually been feeling this way about a lot of things lately. It wasn’t depression, per se, though I do get a little glum this time of year as the days grow shorter and greyer. No, I realized, it’s that my brain and my heart are fried.
We have, after all, had a year of too much. Too much that has been shocking, upsetting and disheartening. There has been too much pain and too much injustice rearing its ugly head, once again.
I guess I’m just weary of feeling like that’s not much I can do to shift what’s going on at such a large scale, far, far beyond my reach. Looking into that void, all I can come up with as an answer is a whole lot of nothing.
And then, for some reason, I started to think about the story of creation, as told at the very beginning of Genesis. The earth, the writer says, was “formless and empty” and that “darkness was over the surface of the deep.” Now, if that doesn’t describe a void, I don’t know what does.
Next, “God hovered over” that void and, I’m presuming, looked into it. Then, out of that void, God created, well, everything. But the void, it came first. God took that lonely, hopeless darkness and transformed it into something wonderful and full of possibility. More importantly, there had to be a void in the first place. If it had been cluttered up with old magazines, pizza boxes and spare batteries there wouldn’t have been room for anything new.
I think what the Genesis writer was getting at is that God needs space to work, and there is no better space than nothing. As I thought of that I also remembered the Apostles gathered after Jesus was crucified and before he rose and appeared to them. He was gone, absent, and for several days they were left with nothing. They had been abandoned, with no idea what they were going to do next. I can’t even imagine the hopelessness they must have felt, staring into that void.
But, of course, Jesus rose, appeared to them, and, even after he ascended, left them with what they needed to go on – an example of how to be community through the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit to guide them. But they had to go through that nothing after his death in order to fully grasp what they would then be given.
So, yes, God can do a lot with nothing. And, I think, so can we. Nothing is, in fact, a great gift. It allows us to see clearly, without any clutter, and start from there. There is possibility in nothing – even when we can’t see it at first.
You can, for example, write a whole column about nothing.
Kevin Aschenbrenner is a Victoria-based writer, poet and communications professional. He holds an M.A. in Culture and Spirituality from the Sophia Center at Holy Names University in Oakland, Calif. He blogs at www.dearpopefrancis.ca.
You can read more articles from our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE
* This article was published in the print edition of the Times Colonist on Saturday, Nov 4 2017
