I stepped outside last night at about eight or so and the snow had already begun. Douglas used to say, you’ve got the writing part down. The question is, what do you want to do with it?
I had hoped for a quiet snow gently falling so I could use “sussuration” in today’s writing, but cold winds howled blowing the snow into spirals and sheets. Even down by the hemlocks, where the world always slows and quietens, the weather verged on riotous, denying me.
The lesson is, never assume you speak the language of the Lord, always adopt the posture of the guest.
Douglas didn’t have rules about writing so much as a sense that order was explicable, and if you couldn’t explain what you were doing and why, then you were at risk of losing the whole project. He had earned the right to say that, that way. I was grateful listening.
I remember talking to him about Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died,” which is one of my favorite poems ever. He said that reading O’Hara closely taught him writing was more about what you didn’t say, rather than what you did.
Imagine Michaelangelo’s Pietà in terms of the marble that is not there. Actually look for it! What is absent defines what is present; it makes what is present possible.
The void is always present; it is the only way that form can appear at all. If I study the hemlock tree, I can only do by separating it from the cosmos and naming the part I want to focus on “hemlock.” The rest is . . . gone. It’s void.
At least until it’s called forth – until it’s desired – into some new form.
Because, critically, that which is not hemlock remains – is fully present – as the void from which the hemlock was drawn and into which it will return when my attention drifts elsewhere. There is no other way for there to be a hemlock in the first place.
This is true for literally every formal thing from a passing thought to a flake of snow to a spiral galaxy.
What we seek is always a form – Jesus, a friend, a hot meal, a hand on our shoulder, a kind word et cetera. But in desiring the form (which you cannot not do, which is a really important insight) we reject – separate from – everything the form is not.
Separation is not realizing – as George Spencer Brown wrote, here paraphrased – that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. We see the hemlock literally by denying the rest of the cosmos.
The suggestion is: notice what you do not ordinarily notice. Notice noticing: what even is noticing?
I remember working through this exercise with James a long time ago, both of us walking in circles around Upper Highland Lake for most of a day. He asked me if I thought Jesus did something similar, and my answer was, I don’t know but yes. We both laughed.
One way or the other, we have to see the void. It was the void that taught me the way choice was an illusion, and free will as simple a fantasy as Santa Claus ramming himself down chimneys. It was the void that allowed me to begin to accept that “the personal” was merely a perspective, no different than any other and thus not actually worth attention.
The void is the remedy for “me and mine,” because it undoes the ground of all the questions we ask as spiritual seekers, students, healers, stumblers, et cetera. Law and logic falter. Psychology falters. Even language falters. There’s nothing there. Also? Everything is there.
When I awaken, and after writing a bit, I go outside. It’s dark yet. Snow is still falling but the wind is gone. I wander to the sideyard lilac and listen to flakes of snow graze its leaves falling. How still the world can become! How happy I am in the darkness and cold!
And how diligently I write, word after word, as if seeking the perfect one, as if I were incomplete without these sentences, as if something – but what – could not possibly otherwise be.
Four / Six
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Brilliant !! You used the word “susurration” throughout your writing without using it in form. Your words pointed my heart to open to “the susurration of the void”. I sit here basking in the magnificence of nothing and everything. 🙏
Thank you Glenda – and thank you especially for “susurration of the void” – which is a beautiful and helpful phrase. I bask with you 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Susurration brought a smile, Sean, because you first introduced me to the word via your 20 sentences more than a decade ago.
Reading on (your Advent musings are so intimate yet universal and helpful in a meaningful way), I was reminded of the work of a spiritual writer you once recommended, I think his work was available free online. He was talking about space in a way that made me realize that instead of thinking of space as something that separates one from another or one thing from something else, I could hold it as “that which connects.” It’s a different context than what you are describing here, but application of that idea has also been truly helpful (when I remember to look at life that way.)
And when you write “Even languages falters,” Rumi’s:
Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
comes immediately to mind. And I know, I know, it is not an accurate translation (😏), but it felt like that is the destination of our seeking, our words, our relationships . . . the magnificence of nothing and everything as Glenda so beautifully said. .
The wind is blowing strong and cold here today, too, all these many miles South. But it — like your words and this shared dialogue — is another reminder of the space that joins. Thank you so much, Sean, for all of it.
I remember that Cheryl! I never use that word without thinking of you – it’s my friendship with Cheryl word. Whever I utter it, you are there in spirit, being friendly and kind.
I don’t remember the writer I recommended, but I remember that concept, of seeing space as what connects rather than separates us. It’s a helpful pointer for sure. I mean, yes, the context is different but that which is being indicated is the same.
Presently I am finding the nonduality writers too abstract (pot meet kettle, I know I know). I’m reading Abhishiktananda (who for me is the end game of the nexus between Christianity and Advaita – there is nothing on that road after him – after him, it’s a new and different kind of journey) and certain feminist theologians of the eighties who were not shy about undoing at all. There’s a creative tension in that reading which enlivens me and makes me very happy and mostly free.
Also, thank you thank you THANK YOU for remembering the time I got all up in arms about just interpretations of Rumi, who I know is dear to you. Your patience and interest in that burst of dialogue still stands out for me as an early example of how to handle truth when it’s bright and hot and you really really want to share but aren’t sure how. You taught me a lot about grace.
Actually, you always teach me about grace.
Thanks again, Cheryl. You’re the best.
Sean
If you would so oblige, Sean, I would love the names of a few of your feminist theologians. I need all the help I can get in my undoing.
And thank you for the kind words, my friend. They mean more than you know.
C
Right now I am reading Carolyn Sawicki’s “Seeing the Lord.” She’s obscure and the book was stupidly expensive; a friend helped. Sawicki’s emphases on “competencies” – ways of understanding resurrection such that resurrection is real, I.e., facilitating a real relationship with Jesus, is fascinating to me, especially as she locates those comptencies in women and the ways women understand freedom, communion and mutual aid. She’s part of a tradition of female theologians who appreciate Jesus but are more interested in the community in which he found his voice and supported that voice, and which bravely discovered something that cannot be killed. I’m nearly done with my third read – she’s been the only thing (other than Abhi) that I’ve read since early October.
When I am done with Sawicki’s book I am moving onto six or seven of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s (her big book was “In Memory of Her,” I will start with that). Fiorenza is both more accessible – because she’s less obscure – AND harder to read by a country mile. It’s a real demand to level up my critical reading and thinking skills.
Finally I’m going to go back and reread Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology (because I DID read that in the late 80’s), and probably a few of her other books.
The biggest thing for me is how these women understand and are profoundy indifferent to the tradition of mind/body dualism that has haunted our culture for way too long and which pervades ACIM. It is a pretty radical undoing, at least for me, being in the company of their thinking.
My two cents! Let me know if you want to start a reading group 🙂
~ Sean
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the recommendations. I will hit a gentle pause on a reading group . . . primarily because if these writers are tough going for you, I can only imagine the knots my brain will be tied in, LOL
Cheryl
🙏🙏
What you write gives me food for thought. It at first left me in a state of not really knowing what to say and that was a good starting point. Then I am open to what I can ‘discuss’ with the Holy Spirit and journal with that, or sit with it for a while.
I think I don’t believe in the void, or voids, and also not in nothingness. I believe that the emptiness is full and that the nothingness is indeed like you also say: everything. And just like I believe that true stillness is actually not physically still because stillness from God is the Song from Heaven and the silent trumpet. Stillness is more alive than a physical world without any physical sound. The peace of God is an awareness that can hardly be explained in our normal terminology.
Thank you Sean, you have made me reflect and ponder today about all of this and I like that.
Love, 💖 Valentine
Thank you Valentine🙏🙏 This was very helpful.
~ Sean
I like the poem, though that doesn’t feel true to say it that way, cause yeah its not the words, the words aren’t beautiful (except the last line) … but there is something … the something, the non cognitive recognition of the what isn’t said, is so beautiful
Thank you for showing me … nothing 🙏🏼
O’Hara is an interesting poet. He gets written off a lot but I think that ignores the context in which he wrote. The New York City he celebrates is culturally very similar to the one that Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were also so admiring of and so brutally constrained by. It’s an interesting resonance.
Thanks for being here, Amanda 🙏🙏
~ Sean