Assignment: Half-Empty/Half-Full
"All of life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life" (from Sabbath by Wayne Mueller)

I used to have a postcard with a figure drawn on the front, sitting at a desk her head down on the surface of the desk. Underneath was written: "When you come down to it, I'm just not up to it." I remember and sometimes still feell the sense of myself faced by pressures insisting that enoughis not enough. I kept that card as emblematic of myself until it seemed senselessly depressing.

The half empty stare at the drain not seeing its solidity but the way the water can be sucked to an unknown bottom. They are stingy not out of hatefulness, but out of survival of the least. For if this money is given away, or this idea passed along, this possession shared ot this love offered then there will be even less and inevitable loss of heart or mind or life. Sometimes mistaken for meanness, instead their meagerness hides the deathly certainty of the half empty to being depeleted, destitute and desolate. Living in a world of fear, anxiety and restless agitation their search for rest is elusive because rst demands a loosening of the grip, a letting go, an opening of the hands and heart and mind to possibilites beyond the half empty glasses.

When they took the bandages and cast off of my leg, I stepped into a half emptytub of water after months of not bathing and it seemed so full, with water all around me, more than half full, full to overflowing. I felt an odd fuzzy fear as I settled my body into the warm water wondering if this half full tub was just too much. But I never forgot the way my body settled into the water's depth and relaxed into its warm, comforting surrounding presence.

The half full who have seen the bottom have no need for defensiveness because there is nothing left ot defend. out of what is seen and unseen comes gerosity without demand, plety without singeness, exuberance without temperance, fulfillment without envy. Not fearing rest, the half full relax into laughter and love--the joie de vivre of blessing. The truly half full may still fear emptiness but choose to embrace its presence not as threat but unexpected spaciousness--enough and more. Emptiness now not a tomb of sorrow, but emptiness reborn into the ein sof of God Everlasting--a place completely full and yet utterly empty.