A few weeks ago, we arrived home from taking our youngest
daughter to university. We have for the first time in 26 years come home to an
empty nest. The house is full of reminders of recent presence – a newly vacant
bedroom, old shoes, cat sprawled in her usual place, a half pack of favourite breakfast
cereal, odd socks in the airing cupboard, photo on the sideboard, the piano (and
the television) silent. It is very still, very quiet … and we are aware of the felt-sense
of vacuum and absence.
It would be easy to shift our focus and to fill up the place
with people, to fill the diary with activity. Whilst that is an option, it
feels to me that it is also to turn away from being at the unfurling edge of being
present in this place; this is a recurring invitation to attend to the
felt-absence, spoken of by poets and mystics alike as painful and raw, a
searing ache, a numbing sense of lack, a gaping vacuum. Despite what others
might say, I have found that this feeling of absence is an invitation to go
deeper in silence and solitude, in loving attention, waiting on God. Allowed to
be present and heard, it speaks of the heart’s desire, bringing its wisdom and
gift of emptiness into place and time.
The Absence
It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that compels
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just
gone, the vestibule for the arrival
of one who has not yet come.
I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here
than before. Genes and molecules
have no more power to call
him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fail
as my words do. What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?
R.S.Thomas
yup. I know Christians call such/this "absence" God ... but, I don't understand why that is.
ReplyDeleteGood question - and books have been written about it all. In a nutshell, such language is employed to try to express something about the Divine that cannot be said in other ways. God is beyond our descriptions and concepts, so a 'language of unsaying' is used by some, describing God in negative terms - such as being like absence, as if hidden, like darkness in order to express something more than positive language can.
DeleteAlso, the use of such language is found in other traditions too, not only Christian.
Without being long-winded, I hope that helps.
What is noticeable about this poem (and in other of his poems) is the very deliberate absence of the word God although the implication is present. Mary Oliver does this implication by absence very well and neither of them use language which employees negativity or leaves me anyway feeling anything IS absent. The feeling is every thing IS
ReplyDeletepresent but the word God and this is the absence which makes the fullness present in the poem work.
Back again. Thank you. It did help. Just thought, it's good to have different ways of approach to Mystery, what ever the faith tradition might be. And, like your quiet garden sketch. Have sent off for quiet garden material to check this out as there is a garden close by which might be interested in joining. That's it!
ReplyDelete