There are two kinds of empty,
The first being the ordinary kind—
That simple state of having nothing inside.
It’s what we would expect of the new bucket
We select from the shelf at the hardware store,
Or of the new nail apron, still in the stack and neatly folded,
It’s strings tucked away inside the folds.
This kind of emptiness we expect,
And find it proper and fitting,
Thinking nothing of it.
And we pay our money,
And off we go with our empty things,
Thinking ourselves the better for having got them.
But then there’s the second kind of empty,
Where what’s supposed to be inside isn’t.
This kind of empty isn’t about
The quality of having nothing inside,
And the utility of all that,
But about the emergency of
Being without what we are supposed to have—
Or what we must have.
It’s the bare pantry
Or the empty gas tank
Or the forlorn heart.
And this second kind of empty
Is how so many live their inner lives,
Whether their pantries have food or not,
Or their gas tanks have gas.
They are empty inside,
Where certain things ought to go,
But are missing.
Principles.
Values.
Virtues.
Convictions.
Care.
Knowledge.
Love.
People who will buy gas and food
May simply do without
When it comes to these internal things—
Or they’ll make do with too little of them,
And will not go out to get more.
Oftentimes, it doesn’t even occur to them that
They could—or should—go get more.
They may well sense the emptiness
In some vague way,
But will not see clearly
What they ought to go get to fill it up.
They do not see because they do not know—
And their friends and families and preachers do not know—
What we are supposed to be like inside.
They have little idea what the complete human is like.
They do not know about the Image or the Way,
Whether they are the sort to use such terms or not.
This world is filled with Bibles,
But most of its people aren’t.
They have no idea how empty they are
Compared to the plan for us all.
They will buy their buckets and nail aprons
And food and gas,
But have no concept of equipping
Their hearts and minds in similar fashion.
No one taught them to think about such things—
Although it’s quite likely that someone did teach them
Not to think about such things,
For that is the going fashion of our society.
And there’s much money to be made from this,
In convincing them to try to fill the void they feel with
Possessions and pleasures.
And business is good, as they say.
But still they are empty in those inward ways,
Even when what could rightly fill them up
Is available to us who live here on Earth.
They could find it if they would try.
But many would say,
“There’s trying?”
They do not know how to try,
Nor how to search,
Nor how to wonder well at a thing,
Nor to examine it—
Not when it comes to the inward things.
Their parents taught them
Left from right,
And to tie their shoes
And zip their zippers,
And to say please and thank you,
And, perhaps, to say the blessing at dinner.
But many of the inward things were left empty,
And in those prime years when they
Were so ready to make such a great start of such learning.
And they have learned instead to do without—
To live in this inward poverty—
Dabbling at filling it here and there, perhaps,
But never determining to grow inwardly rich,
Adorning their inward selves with
The Wisdom of the Ages.
Indeed, they are barely even aware that
Such treasures exist.
Our garages are overflowing,
And our schedules are packed.
We have more online friends that we can manage,
And the world has beat a path to our door,
Flooding us daily with solicitations
For more things than we could buy or support
In a hundred lifetimes.
And even so, most of us are that second kind of empty—
The kind of empty that is no virtue,
But a deficit and a liability and a torment.
And we live this way,
Twistedly content never to discover
Whether there was more to be had
And experienced
And learned
And loved.
And there was.
But that lesson,
Learned too late,
Is of no use but
For sad closure
To an empty life.
And we, being gifted with sight—
As we are by our very nature
That was handed down to us—
And our sight being
Both outward and inward—
We can open our eyes
To the emptiness within
And see what might be done about it
Before it’s too late,
And grasp with our friends—
Or alone, if we must—
What treasures ought to fill our inward shelves—
And what deserves no place there.
This is the work of a lifetime,
This inner room of who we are.
We should start it young and
Work it even when we are old.
And someone new comes over,
Who loves good things,
And we let them in, and they say,
“I love what you’ve done with the place!”
And seeing that they love good things, too,
We have got ourselves a new friend.
And maybe they help us spruce it up a bit, too,
And help us fill an empty spot with something we needed.
And life is good.
And when we’re done,
We meet God, and he says,
“I love what you’ve done with the place!”,
Even though he knows full well that
We have decorated ourselves with the treasures
He himself brought into this world,
And that our treasures are not of our own invention,
But of discovery.
And we know we are yet imperfect,
And he knows it was just a matter of time
Until we weren’t.
And he grants us eternity,
The first eons of which it will take us
To grasp the blessings of it all
And to realize just how full we are, indeed.
And only then,
Being so utterly full,
Could we really grasp
The full import
Of this second kind of empty
In which this world seems
So determined to live.
“I came that you might have life
And have it to the full.”
