Holy Emptiness

So very quickly, we have come around again to the season of Advent. Like Mary at the annunciation, I want to ask, how can this be? This southern California weather makes it feel to me like summer, not time for the countdown to Christmas. It really wasn’t that long ago we were actually in summer, with long days and less on our minds. And yet here we are. Houses are covered with lights and inflatable decorations, our waistlines are filling out with pie and cookies, and our credit card balances are rising high with gifts and airline tickets. Retailers are predicting a ‘strong’ holiday season, even though most Americans are nervous about the economy, worried over tariffs and higher prices, and anxious about the job market. Who cares! Let’s go shopping anyway! Ah, the wonderful season of excess, the most wonderful time of the year, is upon us.

And every year at this time around the beginning of December, the church tries to play a different tune: it’s not Christmas yet, it’s Advent, it’s the season where we wait and prepare for Christ’s coming again, not just buy presents. It’s a time of darkness and quiet, time to keep watch in stillness, hello? hello? And the world rushes by, racing the Prime delivery trucks as they head to the mall, humming Christmas carols as they go.

But in the true heroic tradition of the martyrs, I’m going to try again this year to sing the song of Advent. I love Christmas as much as anyone, mind you. But it must be said: underneath all of that excess of the season, there is emptiness too, in ourselves as individuals and as a culture. And at some point in the night, when we’ve come home from the party or the store and we’re sprawled exhausted next to the twinkly lights of the tree, that emptiness might just make itself known. Everything wants to distract us from it – but what if instead we saw that emptiness as holy?

We usually think of emptiness as a negative thing – an absence, something missing, something to fend off and avoid. Empty wallets, empty stomachs, an empty feeling in our hearts, empty time on our hands, all are problems to be solved. And we have ways of solving them: get a new credit card, eat some fast food, break up and date somebody else, keep scrolling through reels. If you have a need, meet it; if you are missing something, get it. Those who can’t are to be pitied, because their emptiness is chronic. And no one wants to be around an empty, needy person. So round and round we go. Collectively, we Americans have become a people of too many possessions, too much credit card debt, too little savings, too much obesity. And, of course, a people of loneliness and isolation, hostility toward those who differ from us, and belligerent support of whatever tactics will keep us safe from supposed harm. Emptiness is lonely; emptiness is hungry; emptiness is vulnerable. We just don’t want to go there.

When the world gets too much with me, I have often fled to the mountains. Hiking and backpacking makes time when I can just be in the present moment. Whether I’m alone or with family or friends, there is always somehow silence, doing only the things that are necessary for existence: setting up the tent, cooking dinner, filtering water. And in between, just existing. Nothing more. There is a Buddhist teaching that to achieve enlightenment, we should ‘do one thing.’ One thing at a time, fully; one thing only. In the wilderness, doing one thing is just about all you can do. It is, I think, a kind of emptiness. It calms my heart and mind like little else.

But it’s often hard to sustain that quietness once I return to ‘normal life.’ I can fill up my time and space as much as anybody with stupid and useless things that I won’t even tell you about, because they’re embarrassing. And yet underneath it all I still crave the silence and quiet, wishing I could just sit in peace, could just feel the sun on my face and relish it, could just be companionable and easy with God in prayer. I think in our heart of hearts, all of us crave that – but it makes us uneasy as well. So it’s not surprising that at this time of year we go overboard, filling up all the emptiness as fast as possible. The holidays throw us out of routine and back to our primal self, the child that we once were and are still deep down, the self that longs most of all to love and be loved, know and be known. We long for togetherness and community, so we fill up on sentimentality and parties and consumer spending: let’s pretend it’s like Grandma’s house in the old days, let’s see as many people as possible, let’s show them how much we love them with expensive gifts. And if that won’t work, let’s eat as many cookies and drink as many cocktails as it takes to feel better. Christmas has become the pinnacle of consumption for a culture that is sick with hyperconsumption.

But meanwhile, in the church, Advent is happening.  We light one candle each Sunday – just one candle.  We pray for mercy and sing quieter hymns and chants in a minor key.  We hear scriptures of longing for the coming of God’s kingdom, the time of peace for all people. We do one thing: hold the space for our longing because we know we need it.

The priest and writer Barbara Brown Taylor said in one of her sermons that every one of us has a hole that cannot be filled. It is a hole that is meant for God to fill, but it is a hole that we too often try to fill with other things – like a baby choosing the pacifier instead of the milk. None of those other things can fill the hole, because none of those things were made to do that – and yet perversely, we keep trying, adding more and more in the hopes that the empty feeling will go away. But it doesn’t – it can’t, until God fills it. It is a longing and a restlessness we were made to have; an emptiness to be filled by God alone.

Every season in the church year offers an invitation: a chance to interrupt our usual routines and reacquaint ourselves with the rhythms of God. Advent, I believe, is an invitation to emptiness, to remember our deepest need and to wait for God to fill it. It may be too late to radically change how we go about the holiday season this year – we’re in it. But it is still possible to take some thought to Advent this year. The quiet emptiness may be with us anyway: some wilderness we’re in the midst of, or some dark and lonely times in the middle of the night where we can’t escape our longing. Or we may need to put those times into our lives, to build in some small practice for these few weeks where we step aside for a moment and recognize our emptiness. Where even for just five minutes in the morning, we simply exist – without planning the next moment, without filling ourselves with something to stop up the hole. But however it happens, I invite you this year to give yourself the space to feel the emptiness – to recognize the one you are truly longing for – to resist the busy busy of the culture around us. I invite you to the observance of the holy emptiness in all of us. Welcome to Advent.