Empty Isn't the End
Dear Human is a Verb Community-
I spent a week recently with a friend who has lost her ability to speak. One afternoon we sat together on the fourth floor of her rehab building. We looked out at the mountains, the cars moving through the streets below, the trees just beginning to bud in pinks and whites. What felt like an hour was probably fifteen minutes.
I knew I needed to be silent. Not fill the space, not coax her toward working towards words, not manage the moment. Just let her lead. Just let the space be what it was going to be.
The space was empty.
And it wasn’t.
It was full of loss, and wonder, and uncertainty, and hope. All of it at once, the way the budding trees were doing something quietly extraordinary while we just sat there watching. That room held more than silence. It held everything we could not say, and somehow that was enough.
I made this image on the plane flying home. It is part of me and part GPT. I created a sketchbook drawing on my iPad and continued to co-create it with ChatGPT.
Three crosses on a hill. The empty tomb, swirling gold and orange, alive with color. And the sky behind it all: purple, red, yellow, blue. In this image and within me, every feeling is present at once.
That is closer to resurrection than most of what I was taught.
Resurrection is not the part where everything gets neat and tidy. The empty tomb is still a tomb. The stone was still rolled away from something. Empty is not the same as nothing. Empty can be the beginning of space for something new.
I’m wondering, when does resurrection come for my friend? What does it even look like? Does it look like words are returning? Or does it look like something I do not yet have a category for? Maybe it is a different kind of fullness, a life that has learned to be whole in a new shape?
I do not know. I am sitting without knowing.
What I do know is that empty is not the end. The Psalms taught me that. My friend is teaching me that too, in ways she may not even realize, because thank God she is still present. We sat for fifteen minutes watching pink trees bud in the spring air, and I have not stopped thinking about it.
Life, death, resurrection. The whole arc. And look at all the color it takes to tell that story.
I do not want to live so deep in resurrection that it turns sickening sweet, all light, no shadow, no room for the squirming and the grief. But I do not want to live so deep in death that the color drains out entirely. Most of us live in between most of the time.
Praying with Scripture and Song Series
Here are links to the series of guided prayer practices:
Episode 1, Soften me, Oh God: Psalm 51
Episode 2, Hiding Place: Psalm 32
Episode 3, Still Walking: Psalm 121
Episode 4, Drop Everything: Psalm 95
Episode 5, You Might Be Real: Psalm 23
Episode 6, Wait for Morning: Psalm 130
Episode 7, We are Still Here; Psalm 118
Peace,
Julene