When we talk about fullness and emptiness, we are using the language of containers. In order for something to be full (or empty!), it must have definition, edges, limits. We readily picture a cup (half-full? half-empty?) or perhaps our cupped hands; a home, an auditorium, a freeway, a nest. These are all containers, and it is a very different picture, with different accompanying feelings, when they are full versus when they are empty. As we’ve been talking this week, we’ve been leaning more metaphorically—to the “seasons” of our lives as full, or our days, our schedules. These, too, are containers, defined and limited—although we tend not to treat them that way, attempting to fill them fuller than possible, and finding ourselves frustrated with how things seem to leak out around the edges. What would it look like to choose to honor the edges of the containers we live in every day? To allow our schedule to contain only 24 hours each day, without trying to poke holes in it to find space for more productivity? To honor all our bodies contain—the emotions and energy, the sense experience and interoceptive awareness, the muscles and the memories and the breath—all with an understanding of our edges, the beautiful limitations of this human container? Pause for a moment this morning, and wonder about the various containers that hold your experience. Open a few drawers; notice what they are holding. This may be attending to your schedule (the days and weeks and hours as containers of the things that make up your life); your home (how do you feel about what fills it?)...or perhaps your own body. What does it contain this morning? Where do you sense fullness and emptiness in your body? Do you notice the regular filling and emptying of breath? Of eating or drinking? Of a particular emotion or sensation that seems to be activating in some part (or every part) of your body? What is it like to think that you are full, too, of God in that space—a container for the infinite?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2023-08-17 13:47:18 UTC