Fullness and Emptiness
- by Brother David Steindl-Rast

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Is it merely by chance that X has two contradictory functions?  X marks the spot, and X crosses out whatever is found on that spot.  With two strokes, X expresses the paradox contained in the word NOWHERE.  By simply making a little space inside of nowhere, we can transform it into NOW HERE.  X marks the spot where we find ourselves here and now in the midst of nowhere.  This puts us on the spot.  Or shall we say it puts us on the crossroads? X is a cross in disguise, a cross that stands on two legs, instead of one.  When we allow ourselves to be put on the spot, we stand at “the point of intersection of the timeless with time,” “at the still point of the turning world” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quarters) now here and nowhere.  X marks the spot where fullness and emptiness are one.

How often we say “Yes!” And yet most of the time we say a conditional “yes” – “yes, if . . .” or “yes, but . . . .”  Most of the time there are strings attached to our “yes.”  But now and then we get carried away like kites in a great wind and say an unconditional “yes.”  At that moment we realize that “yes” is the answer to every “why?” and suddenly everything makes sense.  When e.e. cummings thanks God “for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes,” he has this limitless affirmation in mind.  So does St. Paul, when he calls Jesus Christ the great Yes (2 Cor 1:20).  The “yes” of the human heart is our full response to the “faithfulness at the heart of all things.”  In saying this “yes,” we become what we are.  Our true Self is “Yes.”

The relationship between I and Thou has been brilliantly explored by Ferdinand Ebner and Martin Buber.  But it took them volumes to say what e.e. cummings sings in a single line of a love poem: “I am through You so I.”  (Not only am I through you so happy, so alive, but “so I.”)  In moments in which I can sing this line with conviction, I know that fulfillment is found when I am absolutely empty.

The very shape of zero, written as 0, expresses emptiness.  But the full circle also signifies fullness.  Zero stands for nothing, but by adding zero to a number we can multiply it tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold.  Gratefulness gives fullness to life by adding nothing.  Understanding 0 by becoming 0 – that’s what gratefulness is all about.

From Brother David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness (New York, Mahwah, New Jersey:  Paulist Press, 1984).