Empty Chairs, Empty Tables, and the Reaches of Space and Nothingness
Yesterday in an empty building, void of anyone but me, I walked into the chapel portion, which was mostly dark, with its borders of light, both electric and natural (from the morning sun in the front steeple windows), and I thought of how the emptiness, the lack of people and things, including noise and movement, was a solemn good thing.
It occurred to me that most of the known universe is empty, which is space with the occasional smattering of dust, or asteroids, or strange types of film, and even dark. There is light everywhere, from the distant stars and galaxies, yet there are planets that are mostly dark, too. Most planets have caves and crusts that hide further darkness and "nothingness", as it were. Like the dark side of the moon. No light, no motion, just empty valleys and craters and dust.
Much of our deserts and mountains are like this. Plus our underbelly and core. Empty and dark, and full of nothing. But there are bats, and rivers, and fish, and some creepy crawlies, sure.
There can even be some warm-blooded bears in some holes.
But for the most part, there are empty, dark, reaches in our own earth, and other planets and moons, but even these orbs are surrounded by 99 percent nothing. Void. Lack or dearth of material and things.
Plus, mostly silence.
Does that give the apprehender, (us), any peace or pause?
I say it does, at least this observer.
As do our empty holy places, our quiet spaces, our empty times, the moments of nothingness or meditation, of silence and perhaps oneness with the mostly silent universe. Most of the oceans are silent in their own way, as are the vast mountain ranges and the plains and the forests.
Well, the forests have their own quietness and solitude, but full of birds and bugs and other creatures.
Even us. The humans.
Speaking of humans: have the death of loved ones left voids in our lives? Certainly. Have living people left the indelible traces (what does that mean?) of their lack or absence in our souls?
Yes. Death and separation take us away from many that we know.
Jesus has left us many times; He is the one most millions of believers take solace and succor in. He has left the multitudes, through death and through earnest farewells.
Many go, through natural death, which is age-related, through sickness or accident, which is fretful and more tragic, and sometimes through violence or purposeful murder. To include suicide. Or war. Or crime.
Those gone leave absences and voids, certainly.
Like the chairs and tables sung of in Les Misérables, which my son likes to sing at publicly populated venues.
References to holier, or hallowed, times and people, who have left their marks and presence, now in places where they inhabit no more.
Like the empty tomb, or the empty cross. The empty building, the empty hallowed ground, like a battlefield or graveyard, memorial, or meditation chamber, as in temples and monuments, like a pyramid or some other vast reach of nothingness and everything.
Where are you now? Are you with or without them, those of the empty chairs and tables?
You can be with them and without them, but you can present all the same.
In only just remembering, contemplating, existing.
Like Christ or Holy Mother in the empty, quiet, sacred places. Like an empty sky, or full of clouds and majesty and rain, however.
It is all empty and void, but full and whole.
Like you and me.
Some Christians call the holiest spot of their chapel a word. I cannot remember it, I have been trying.
Some things are holy enough to keep searching for, in the recesses of our brains and memories. Our own empty, silent, holy places.
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I wrote this early this morning, before talking to others, getting showered, getting dressed. Maybe during my shower, or driving away from the house, I remembered the holy place of some churches that they call "sanctuary". This is the legal meaning that gives some criminals protection in some houses of worship, and what some cities now in the 2020s are known for that allow immigrants, typically illegal, to not be aggressively prosecuted or removed from the country.
Sanctuary.
A place of safety, which may not always be safe.
Now, this word of a sacred nature, seemingly hallowed and merciful, has left this entry, my Sunday morning posting, less peaceful.
Such is life and space.
Now it is a warm October afternoon day.
