Kenosis {emptied}

Olive branches shiver overhead. 

Sit here, 

Jesus tells his friends. 

We are often the empty things. 

The tired things. 

The disappointed things. 

Like stunned mothers after delivery, once full with child,

hollowed now by birth, 

we stare into eternity, that great distance between now 

and God. 

Take this cup of suffering, 

Jesus prays.

Empty things cannot give. 

Friends fail us, 

lovers leave us, 

bodies trouble us 

piece by piece. 

Father! If you are willing!

Jesus cries.

Depleted by the act of simply being awake, drawn towards sleep,

aren’t we impossibly fragile? 

We are vast and then we are nothing, 

rolling in and out like the tide, 

rushing high up on the shore then creeping back down, exposing waterlogged secrets 

and wet sand. 

Pray with me, 

Jesus pleads. 

This is the rhythm of humanity, of creation, of all that we call home and friend and foe,

to be full with the sea, then empty as the waters recede,

A soggy metaphor of our

Lenten existence.

Are you still asleep? 

Jesus asks.

Here we are in Lent. 

Here we are in our empty season, watching for higher tides, 

Binoculars pressed

to the horizon of hope. 

We say “I am filled with grief,”

And yet it is not the filling but the thing that left us, the lack, 

this is our sorrow.

We are the bare tree, stripped by winter, 

yawning creek beds, dry and waiting, 

We are the hardened earth. 

Father! Take this cup!

Jesus weeps. 

Lent is a season of Becoming Empty. 

We sit shiva, stark nights alone in Gethsemane 

avoiding temptation 

as we listen for the Father’s voice.