Tag Archives: Kenosis

Marilynne Robinson and the Importance of Need

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Marilynne Robinson’s novel, “Housekeeping” and the movie that resulted from it has really stuck with me.  Robinson has a deep spiritual dimension to her life and work because she knows a lot about spiritual depths.  One must in order to write like she does, and in order to gain the respect of someone like Barack Obama so that in his Presidency he flew to Des Moines, Iowa to interview her. That is right!  For him, to interview her!

One line from “Housekeeping” grabbed me when I read it 25 years ago, and even today tugs at my soul, “Need can blossom into all the compensations it requires.”  Need, or emptiness, is what makes us human and is what the Christian tradition has in mind with the doctrine of kenosis, the “self-emptying” of Jesus; this “self-emptying” means “to making nothing.”  It is the knowledge, and experiencing of our Absence, that represents a developing familiarity with the innermost regions of our soul.  Avoiding this neediness/emptiness is what our persona was designed to cover up until we could find the maturity to allow it to become porous a bit so that our innermost being could come to light.  Shakespeare put it like this, “Within be rich, without be fed no more.”

Our materialist, consumer culture offers us a steady array of “stuff” to invest in, to “feed upon,” and avoid this redemptive inner core.  And speaking from experience, religion can offer its own version of “stuff” when dogma and sterile ritual are relied on rather than doing the soul work which would allow this dogma and ritual to have a meaningful impact in one’s life.

Emptiness, Kenosis, and Art

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I’m really into emptiness. Yes, it says something about what I’m made of! And, actually I think that is quite accurate as, according to Eckhart Tolle, quantum physics says that we are about 95% empty space.

Now emptiness to me means the “stuff out there,” meaning, some “external reference point.” (Oh, if my mom could hear me saying this, she would echo Hamlet’s mom, “Oh what a noble mind is here o’er thrown.” Well, in mom’s case, she probably would not elevate me to “noble.”)

Emptiness, such as the Christian doctrine of “kenosis” and the existentialist notion of “nothingness” convey to me merely the notion that there is something “out there” beyond the “small bright circle of our consciousness” (Conrad Aiken). Our finite minds cannot grasp it all which is what Einstein recognized when he noted that the end result of his studies was that a mystery lay at the base of existence. Einstein recognized that even his brilliant intelligence could not wrap itself around the majesty of life.

My grasp of this mystery is intellectual. I admit it. I humbly confess and beg to atone for this sin but I am just “stuck in my head,” damn it! But I’m married to an artist and musician, and I know artists and others who approach life with a different conceptual apparatus. (I try to straighten them out, to get them to see things the “right” way but they only look at me with bewilderment!) And therefore I increasingly embrace “otherness”, the fact that there are other ways of approaching this incredible mystery that we are all caught up in, that actually has encompassed us, that has “caught us up in” itself.

I would like to share with you a blog from a visual artist that a sister of mine has turned me on to which often really intrigues me. His name is Robert Genn and he just approaches reality differently than I do; he is much less “verbal” and I really like that. His emphasis is on the importance of emptiness, or “nothingness”:

Back around the turn of the 20th century, household gadgets, from sewing machines to new fangled vacuum cleaners, were decorated with floral or other motifs. In those days, people thought things looked better when they were covered with busyness. Sewing machines themselves were sometimes made in the form of dolphins, angels or even snakes. The wide ranging art critic Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968) wrote, “The necessity of ornament is psychological. There exists in man a certain feeling which has been called horror vacui, an incapacity to tolerate an empty space. This feeling is strongest in certain savage races, and in decadent periods of civilization.”

While sophisticated Asian art tends toward the spacious, and minimalism is not yet out of fashion in the West, Western art reveals a general trend for decoration. While we may indeed be living in decadent times, my argument is we’re just being Aristotelian: “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

Fact is, a blank space may be the much needed rest period that comes before the action. It may also be the part of the work that sends the viewer yawning. A bit idiosyncratic and certainly not for everyone, I make actors of my blank spots, especially the interminable ones. Spaces can often be gradated, blended, softened, hardened or at least formed into a strong negative area. Spaces also need nearby busyness to be effective in their spaciousness, just as sophisticated neutral tones and grays are needed for the surprise and excitement of nearby colour.

A significant space in many landscapes is the sky. While plain skies have their value, a more active and complex sky can bring drama to otherwise ordinary work. “The sky,” said John Constable, “is the principal actor in your painting.”

In sculpture, the surrounding space becomes as significant as the figure. “You leave space for the body,” said Henry Moore, “imagining the other part even though it isn’t there.”

To my eye, paintings and other art take their strength from a calculated dance in which the various elements come together, interact, and move apart. No matter what the subject matter or motif, abstract style or realistic, negative and positive spaces contrive to juxtapose in a way that engages the viewer’s eye. Like a lot of art concepts, this isn’t the only way to go, but it’s a valuable one.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “A painter is a choreographer of space.” (Barnett Newman)

Esoterica: A painter who understood the value of space was Henri Matisse. Subject matter was often second to the organization of flats. “The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive,” said Matisse. “The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.” Attention to space gave Matisse permission to play with colour. Some of the most interesting and spatial of Matisse’s works were his figure studies. We’ve taken the liberty to post some of my favourites at the top of the current clickback.

“Unpacking My Heart with Words” Review

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When I started this “literarylew” adventure about two years ago, I prefaced my efforts with a line from the book of Job, noting that “my heart is full of words, like a taut wine skin, about to burst.” I then borrowed a line from the other important body of Holy Writ in my life, Shakespeare, and proposing that I would “unpack my heart with words.”

As I have been “unpacking” in word, and in the “deed” of my day-to-day life, I’ve realized that when you “unpack” anything at some point you empty it out. You realize the obvious, the suitcase or box is empty and you can quit unpacking. But when you “unpack” the heart, you do discover and experience “emptiness” but you find that it is a never ending “emptiness” and that, paradoxically, in some very uncanny way you are full when you are empty.

Now part of me is still very vain and wants the above to conclude with some report of an epiphany of sorts, some glorious spiritual experience which puts me up with the luminaries of the past and present. And, I might add, this “unpacking” spiel kind of invites it! But, it ain’t there! And I’m so glad I don’t want it to be and in part this is because of cowardice. I have a hunch it would be too painful. “It is what it is” or “I am what I am” or the Popeye the Sailor Man version, “I yam what I yam.” I know emptiness more than before but mine is mercifully a very prosaic emptiness. Thus I’m not a poet, huh?

We so miss the point. And we do it persistently, brazenly, and deliberately. This is because we do not like to confront our emptiness for doing so exposes our frailty and foolishness, showing us to be veritably “strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage.” Now, don’t get me wrong. My life is now also daily “strutting and fretting” but I view it with a different perspective now. I don’t take it (i.e., myself) so seriously and, paradoxically, realize just how infinitely important “it” is. The Infinite becomes manifest through each of us as we go about our day-to-day lives humbling chopping wood and carrying water.

I want to share again Lao Tzu’s thoughts about this emptiness:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
�Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.
(trans. By Witter Bynner)

 

Emptiness beckons

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We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

I’ve always loved this aphorism of Lao Tzu.  It pre-dates the wisdom of Jesus who taught that only when we are empty are we filled.  Specifically, I make reference to the doctrine of kenosis, or “self-emptying” taught in Phillipians 2:7 by the Apostle Paul.  It is so difficult to take pause in our day to day life, practice a “mindful” moment, and catch a glimpse of our ego-fullness.

And once again, I quote Rilke who noted re the “hero”—- “Daily he takes himself off and steps into the changing constellation of his own everlasting risk.”