THE HOLE IN THE BUCKET, by Mary Grigolia

October 1, 2000

READINGS

1. Intergenerational Story: Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson

2. I Kings 19: 11-12: “Go forth and stand upon the mount before the Creative Source. And behold, the creative source passed by, and a great strong wind rent the mountains and broke I pieces the rocks before the Creative Source; but the Creative Source was not in the wind; and after the wind was an earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Creative Source was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice” (literally, “a voice of silence”).

3. From “America the Blue,” by Kalle Lasn and Bruce Grierson, in The Utne Reader, Sept-Oct 2000. “Victor Frankl believed that there is an existential dimension to much mental illness. He identified people in what he called the “existential vacuum.” It’s not a mental affliction, but a spiritual one: Your life seems utterly devoid of purpose. No path beckons. Eventually, a kind of paralytic cynicism sets in. You believe in nothing. You accept nothing as truthful, useful, or significant. You don’t value anything you’re currently doing and can’t imagine doing anything of value in the future. Frankl believed the existential vacuum was a modern condition. Carl Jung identified it in about a third of his patients… We pump for meaning. We hope to find it in malls. Americans shop not to get what they want, but to discover what they want. This may tie into modernity’s new, heroic explanation about the meaning of life, which has swept aside older spiritual teachings and cosmologies. We now place our faith in a grand narrative of consumer choice, of never-ending economic growth and technological progress. This largely excludes the spiritual dimension of human existence.”

4. From Seng Ts’an: “For the mind in harmony with the Tao, all selfishness disappears. With not even a trace of self-doubt, you can trust the universe completely. All at once you are free, with nothing left to hold on to. All is empty, brilliant, perfect in its own being. In the world of things as they are, there is no self, no non-self. If you want to describe its essence, the best you can say is Not-two. In this Not-two, nothing is separate and nothing in the world is excluded. The enlightened of all times and places have entered into this truth.”

SERMON

LOUISE, CHRIS, AND JOAN

When Louise was in her twenties she experienced a deep sense of emptiness. It didn’t make sense to her, because her life seemed to be fine: She was working at a job that she had spent years preparing for: living in Manhattan, a city she had always wanted to live in. She wasn’t isolated socially. She had friends and a dynamic partner. She was terrified to meditate or do any kind of deep inner work, because she was afraid that she would stumble into emptiness, and that it would overwhelm and engulf her. At first, alcohol was how she avoided it; later she embraced the New Thought movement, which encouraged her to deny the emptiness. The more she ran from it and denied it, the more powerful it became.

Chris went to school to become a journalist. He landed what seemed to be a perfect job, traveling around the country, reporting on interesting and up-beat news stories. He was married to a woman he loved, bought a house, had a pleasant home life. He had everything necessary for happiness. Yet he too experienced a deep sense of emptiness that wouldn’t let him go.

Joan was overcome by a feeling of deep emptiness while she was raising her family. She and her husband were ardently involved in the civil rights movement. They left their suburban Protestant congregation for a UUcongregation that shared their need to work for social justice for all people. She yearned for a spiritual life, but was afraid that if she turned inside, emptiness would engulf her.

FILL ALL HOLES

Like Louise, Chris, and Joan, every one of us experiences a sense of emptiness many times throughout our lives. It can be quite confusing, appearing right when we think everything is going just right. Emptiness takes our sense of meaning and turns it upside down.

This sermon is a response to these questions: “Why do I feel a sense of emptiness, in spite of having a job I like, presenting a competent façade to the world, a happy and loving family? Is there something wrong with me or with my life? Why do I feel empty? What’s the emptiness about?”

Emptiness has a bad reputation in our culture. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not necessary to fill it up or over-come or deny or run away from it. We can’t avoid emptiness. It’s as much a part of us as a sound board is part of the piano. It’s how we gauge how we’re doing on our life’s path.

We are conditioned by society to think of emptiness as BAD. If one of our inner voices says, “There’s a hole in this bucket,” most of us respond the way Liza did in the old American folksong: “Well FIX it, dear Henry.” Or buy another bucket, and while you’re there, buy a whole bunch of other stuff that’s on sale, too. In our society, not only is empty = bad; the whole economy (so to speak) is geared to fill all holes.

MANY KINDS OF EMPTINESS

There are many life situations that lead to an experience of emptiness and there are many ways of interpreting and responding to emptiness. As an example, let’s look at that old American folk song, where Henry sings, “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.”

If Liza were a Calvinist, which is to say, a Presbyterian, she might say:

Relax, Henry. This bucket was preordained to have a hole; nothing we do could possibly fix it.

If she were Catholic, she might utter:

You don’t have proper authority to fix it, Henry. We don’t need all that water anyway. And remember, we’re still number one.

If she were an ancient Hebrew, she might say:

Oy, Henry! You’d better fix that bucket, Henry, we have guests and it’s a sin to send them away without full water vessels.

If she were a medieval Spanish Kabbalist, she might exclaim:

Behold, Henry! The ineffable, unnamable source of all being and non-being has withdrawn itself from part of the bucket!

Liza, the Free-will Baptist might say:

The hole is the work of the devil.

Li-tse the Taoist might write:

The hole and the bucket are an expression of the Eternal Way, being and non-being dancing among us.

And Liza the Buddhist would correct him:

No, Henry -- The bucket is in the hole!

Which all goes to prove that Liza, in the song, was a Lutheran. Her full response might be:

Well, fix it, dear Henry. The work we do to repair the hole will make us worthy of divine salvation. Because of our work, the bucket will have no hole and we ourselves will be made whole.

Liza the Puritan would have said:

Buckets are good; holes are bad. A hole in the bucket is a sign of your disfavor with God, Henry.

And finally, Liza, contemporary secular American would look up from her computer and say,:

Throw it away, Henry and buy another plastic bucket!

FILL ‘ER UP!

Fear of emptiness frequently is the motive force behind all kinds of addictions. There is enormous conflict between the cultural fear of emptiness and the need of the evolving soul to learn from emptiness, to learn how to dialogue with the inner self in emptiness. In order to escape the tension, many people turn to alcohol, to numb the senses, to make one less inhibited.

Over-eating is another way of filling up the hole. Motivation to fill it up comes from assuming that we are supposed to be full and that we’re defective if we feel empty. But food isn’t the only way to fill the hole. We try to fill it with myriad diversions. I have a good friend who never turns off the television. She’s afraid of the emptiness of silence. I know many people who use novels, cross-word puzzles, and hobbies of all sorts. Workaholism is my own favorite, next to chocolate. Hobbies and novels and chocolate and working hard aren’t inherently bad or spiritual cop-outs. For all of us the challenge is to examine our motivations for what we do. Am I answering my e-mail to be in communication with friends and colleagues or as a way of escaping emptiness?

THE LET DOWN

There are many forms of emptiness; perhaps most common is the Let Down. Whenever there’s a long awaited event: Like Christmas or your birthday, a competition, test or recital, a wedding or graduation. You spend weeks maybe years preparing for it. Anticipating. And then it comes, and goes like any other day. There’s always a sense of emptiness afterwards. It has nothing to do with whether or not our expectations and needs were met. Or whether we entered into the moment or not. That which has been our focus is gone; there is nothing to look forward to. We spin our gears. We may feel flat, bored. This let down is a normal and necessary state that leads to changing gears. But it’s not all about focus.

There, between the focus point of our old plan and a new one, is the vast, unstructured, infinite, what the medieval Spanish Kabbalists, called the EIN SOF and what the Buddhists call non-duality or primordial nothingness, spacious mind.

The Kabbalists told students to look for God in emptiness. In the emptiness within yourself you will hear God’s voice, that still small voice within: The voice of all there is, speaking through you, to you, as you. There at the edges, in the space holding the letters of the Torah, in the silence between the stanzas, during the period of rest between the great endeavors, in the stillness, one experiences the Ein Sof.

EXPERIENCING EMPTINESS IN A NEW WAY

In the Buddhist traditions of mindfulness, students are encouraged to watch the different waves of thought, feeling, desire, judgment, aversions that move across the surface of the mind. In the process of watching, one discovers an underlying spaciousness that is often referred to as emptiness. Beneath the fluttery waves of thought are the slower waves of identity and attachment. And beneath these waves is the deep sea of consciousness or mind, beyond the little self or what we call the ego. The sea of the Great Self. Resting in that sea, whether in intentional meditation or a moment of grace initiated by whatever experience, one experiences a profound sense of peace and joy permeating the emptiness.

CREATION STORY a la Kabbalah / Buddhism

According to the Kabbalist creation myth, the great undifferentiated Oneness exists before and after, within, around and outside of the space/time continuum. We can call this non-duality God or Is-ness, both being and nothingness, absolute emptiness and absolute presence. The Kabbalists wondered why such a force or being would create the world. This great non-duality withdrew a tiny portion of itself (if something without form can have portions), so that form, time and space, duality could arise, within its great emptiness which is also fullness. It was out of compassion and perhaps curiosity and maybe boredom that the world was created. This story is mirrored in the Taoist Yin/Yang symbol, where there’s a touch of black in the white swirl, and a touch of white in the black. Going back to buckets, It’s the nature of buckets to have holes and of holes to have buckets.

EMPTINESS IS

The spiritual challenge is to step out of our cultural assumption that preconditions us to run away from emptiness at any cost. Emptiness is neither inherently bad or inherently redemptive. It is a way of checking in with yourself. It’s like a tuning device. When I am living in tune with myself, to rest in the great emptiness in meditation is a pleasant experience. When I’m not in tune with myself, it’s uncomfortable to be present to the lack of fit between how I’ve constructed my life, what I’m doing and what life calls me to do or be.

FINDING OUR WAY:

When Chris started experiencing emptiness, at first he tried to deny it. But it wouldn’t let him escape. Eventually, he realized that for all the outer trappings of happiness, what was missing from his life was himself. That who he was, what he yearned to be and to do, was no longer in the life he had created for himself. Chris started asking himself questions. The process led him to leaving his job and selling his house. He and his wife pulled up stakes and went on the road to follow his dream, which is bringing philosophy and the Socratic method to the people in what he calls Socratic Cafes. Like young Harold with his purple crayon, when he was faced with emptiness, Chris Phillips started a dialogue and took action. The dialogue was with himself, what some people might call the higher self, or perhaps what the ancient Hebrews referred to as that still, small voice within. The indwelling essence, the Shekhinah.

When meditation brought Joan face to face with her long-suppressed emptiness, Joan took a different course from Chris. She found that she needed the experience of an inner guide, whom she identifies as a Jesus. She left her UU congregation which is pretty solidly humanist in theology and joined a liberal Christian church in her community. Once again, she has a rich inner life. She still experiences the emptiness, but feels the presence of Jesus there with her, so that she is not afraid.

The journey through emptiness was a long and terrifying one for Louise. It included a career change that took ten years to complete. She spent six years in a prestigious position in which she enjoyed the accolades of many people, which is what she thought she needed to be OK. Eventually, through a tumultuous inner process, with the help of a spiritual partner, a spiritual director, a supportive life partner, she was able to be honest with herself, and to face the emptiness. She decided she no longer needed constant adoration; she left her profession and is now she’s doing what she always wanted to do: writing plays and working in non-demanding clerical jobs to support her passion.

GLOBAL CONNOTATIONS

It’s not easy to step out of our cultural assumptions that emptiness is bad and must be medicated or filled with more and more stuff. Although we experience the emptiness individually, this way of thinking, responding, and consuming is part of a global sickness tied in with the extraordinary growth of international capitalism. As capitalism expands, it destabilizes traditional religious and philosophical systems that guide individuals through emptiness to meaning and action. The battle we fight now with emptiness and lack of meaning affects the whole world family.

FINDING OUR WAY

How do we find our way through the emptiness? Joan had the support of an inner guide. Louise had a remarkable support circle. Chris had a supportive partner. I had a meditation teacher. I was in a large meditation class, lying on the floor in the yoga corpse pose. The teacher was guiding us. Great emptiness opened before me or within me. It was wonderfully spacious and peaceful. When it was time to return, I couldn’t figure out how. I became afraid. Then I heard the teacher’s voice, suggesting that if you found yourself trapped in the void, to remember to open your heart to the possibility that it was a friendly place. I did so, and like Harold, found my way back.

EMPTINESS IS A SIGN TO CHANGE DIRECTION

Most of us experience a spiritual crisis like the one Chris or Louise or Joan went through. What is meaningful and the right direction at one time of life doesn’t necessarily stay that way at another time of life. And how do we know, how do we monitor how we’re doing spiritually? For most of us, it’s an elusive process, staying in balance with our deepest, innermost yearnings and values. Emptiness helps us monitor how we’re doing, by checking in with that still, small voice.

Like Chris, it’s easy to go through life missing ourselves. Like Louise, it’s easy to get addicted to getting your affirmation from other people. Like my experience with my teacher or Joan’s experience of Jesus, it’s important to remember that we’re not alone.

So what’s the prescription? As Sylvia Boorstein would say, “Don’t just do something. Sit there!” Like Harold, ask yourself what you need to be whole, to be vital. Ask yourself what you’re missing, so that life can flow through you. The purpose is not to plug up the hole. But to let life flow through us. We need to ask, to cultivate inner space to listen, and then, when we’ve heard what’s true for THIS stage of life, we take action. We pick up the purple crayon and draw.