I haven’t posted a Sunday poem in awhile because I was ill in December and ended up in the hospital followed by surgery. Here we go again with a poem by Meister Eckhart.
When you are empty
When you are empty,
feeling bereft,
or not feeling much at all,
hesitate before trying
to fix your situation,
because this happens
to be just what
you are: a vessel
awaiting the fill
of heavenly
fullness beyond any
this-worldly feeling.
Marco Ritzki | Shutterstock
Fr. Michael Rennier – published on 02/16/25
Acknowledging that we haven’t yet reached our destination can be frustrating but should also be a source of hope in our lives.
Back in the halcyon days of my childhood, each summer our family would pile into our baby-blue minivan and drive to Florida. During the entirety of the 12-hour drive, my brothers and I would go wild, arguing over who got to sit in which seat, quibbling over who was invading the sovereign territorial space already claimed by a brother, and begging our parents for gas station snacks.
This was in the days before laptops and DVD players, so our only entertainment was the books we brought, travel versions of board games, and whatever music we could listen to before the batteries in the Walkman died. The trip felt like an eternity.
I’m sure my parents felt the dilation of time into infinity at least as acutely as we did. One year, my dad got so desperate that he picked us up out of our beds and piled us into the car at 3 a.m. so we would sleep through the first half of the drive and leave him alone. He may have been starting his vacation sleep deprived but at least we weren’t driving him crazy.
You can read the rest here.
“Hope and hopelessness are themes that Tolkien returns to again and again throughout The Lord of the Rings.”
Witnesses to Hope 