Starting from a blank canvas

Starting from a blank canvas

Of course, in reality this cannot be done. From the moment we are born, we start to accumulate the sum total of our life’s activity. Nevertheless, we understand the idea. A person comes to the realisation – either that they have gone terribly wrong, or simply that they could have done better – and they want to live a new life. However, if you are truly radical about this, you realise that everything needs to be changed. It is not simply a matter of correcting a few faults, avoiding a few of your “favourite sins” or adopting particular new behaviours that you regard as praiseworthy. Instead, you understand that the very way you think is inadequate. You have adopted values which, on reflection, you now realise are substandard – and this even applies to your good values. Added to the difficulty of amending a way of life affected by the huge weight of habit, is the realisation that even your good and noble traits are falling short of your new aim of being completely true to God.

It is a difficulty that perhaps the via negativa can help with: rather than saying what God is like, recognise what he is not like. You start by eliminating things that are unworthy of God, but then you realise that even good things do not do justice to the goodness of God, and so you remove them too. Imagine a truly beautiful scene: let’s say a hillside covered in wild flowers, a glorious oak tree to one side, all covered by an intense blue sky, with the sun just emerging from behind fluffy white clouds. In your mind, the scene expresses the goodness of God – but then you realise that nothing can truly do justice to his goodness. So, let’s successively remove item after item. The oak tree is wonderful, and you thought of it as an analogy of God’s majestic presence – but on further reflection, you realise that it comes nowhere near expressing his majesty, so, in your mind’s eye, just remove it from your picture. Then keep going, removing item after item until, ultimately, you end up with an empty picture. But not quite empty, because you realise that it is now as though you were looking at a blank canvas in an art gallery, and there is one last thing which you haven’t switched off – and so you switch off the light, and, in your imagination, you are suddenly in darkness. Now, you have succeeded in removing everything that falls short of the reality of God – but you are also sitting in empty darkness. Complete nothingness. Yet it is the experience of mystics through the ages that in that empty darkness, God is experienced, and there is a fullness in the emptiness beyond anything that could be expressed even in the most idyllic image with which you may have started. It is an act of supreme trust and faith to – in your mind – switch off that light, in the hope that – beyond all reasonable expectation – the reality of God will be experienced. Not communicated by anything, but just himself, as he truly is.

Yet – even if you could experience this fullness in emptiness, seeing God, as it were, in the darkness – surely you have to start to rebuild your life? You can’t just always sit in the darkness – though perhaps you can return to it from time to time and allow the darkness to enfold you, embracing again the emptiness in order to know how to live when you re-emerge into the light. For life is lived in the light, and we have to decide what to do with our lives. How then do you begin again?

I think there are two acts of faith that are required.

The first is to believe that – having touched base with God and committed yourself to a new start – it is possible to live in tune with God. The second is to accept that you will fail – almost as soon as you begin, and, certainly, very regularly – but not count that as fatal to your goal.

So, your new start is not in the manner of: “I will try really hard this time!”. Instead, you understand that you will always be dependent on the forgiving grace of God. Trust in his grace as being more important than the power of your own failure. You have set yourself the task of living with the God who is beyond all that life can express – so much so that he is only ultimately known – and not known – in the awesome still, empty darkness where, when you have taken everything away, all that is left is God. It is quite a journey to set out on! I think we are allowed to go one step at a time, and not despair if we trip up now and then.