Via Negativa

Via Negativa
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.
R.S. Thomas (1913–2000)

I’m listening to a book by Eugene Peterson as I drive. Appropriately, after yesterday’s meditation by Richard Rohr on the benefits of saying “I don’t know,” I heard this poem today. My favorite part is “the darkness between the stars.” Imagine! I learned that more than a title to this poem, via negativa is a term which means looking for answers about God and existence in "what is not" rather than saying “God is this, and God is this”. It’s a realization that you can’t use normal terms related to everyday life to try to define and describe the Holy, it’s too limiting. Artists use negative space to provide a place for the eyes to rest and it is considered as integral to the design as the focal point. Negative space in art “is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. One day I will go see the paintings at the Rothko Chapel. The paintings, even as thumbnail images, have a way of pulling you into their blackness. I’m as quick as anyone to roll my eyes at a lot of modern art, but somehow he has applied layers and textures in the darkness that begins to explore the things for which we have no words.

My prayer for the congregation?

Oh Holy Spirit, You are in all and through all. You exist in areas where we don’t have enough imagination to behold nor words to explain. We take photos of the stars and marvel at their beauty as we are able to hold them in our hands, but the vast darkness between the stars is beyond our limitations. It becomes a background we often pass with quick, wide strokes of paint on canvas so that we can turn our focus on the detailed things we do know. Let us stare into the darkness between the stars, crane our ears towards the echoes of your centuries-old conversations, and place our feet in the footsteps left for our discovery and direction. You are not at all ordinary, nor definable. Let us walk via negativa to a new understanding of what we can never understand. Amen.