In praise of nothingness
St Paul of the Cross seems to find a childlike freedom in having nothing to prove.
Part 6 of our series with David Benjamin Blower: Notes on Poverty, Death and Nothingness, exploring the writings of St Paul of the Cross
Mystics tend to use familiar old words in strange new ways, with very little explanation as to what they mean by them. We have to feel our way along the rope of context. St Paul of the Cross talks so often about nothingness that the subject can’t be avoided, however perturbing it sounds to present sensibilities.
“Whoever wishes to find the true all, which is God, must sink down into his nothingness.”
“Whoever discovers the truth of his own nothingness has found the way we must go.”
“He who knows his own nothingness and remains in it knows the truth.”
It's hard to think of a sentiment more diametrically opposed to our strongly held conviction that we should believe in ourselves. What does Paul mean when he talks about nothingness? And what is to be gained by it?
In the accumulative spell of St Paul's writings, nothingness actually begins to sound quite wonderful. His peace with his own nothingness, his happiness even, reads quite authentically. He’s not pretending to love his own nothingness. He's not being stoic. I think he really does love it. But more still, his love of his own nothingness appeals to me, the reader, the more I read about it. However strange it sounds, something in me resonates and desires this nothingness.
For St Paul, his own nothingness is never a bad thing. It's not failing or a shortcoming, or a wretchedness. It's not a thing to be pitied or reviled. He distinguishes it from the “horrible nothingness” of sin, which is something entirely different to the simple creaturely nothingness of being human.
He sometimes describes it as childlikeness, in contrast to “those who want to make something of themselves.” Here, the virtue of nothingness begins to sound like a way of being in the world as an arrival, receiving everything as gift, and taking no interest in the levers of power and the pedestals of greatness that characterise the world of the grown-ups.
Though he uses the word “nothingness”, he doesn’t seem to mean literally nothingness. Is it a superlative? Does he just mean small? Perhaps it is a contrast between his own nothingness and the somethingness of God:
“God, by essence, is he who is: ‘I am who I am.’ We, on the other hand, are they who are not; for no matter how much we search into the depths of our being, the only thing we discover there is our own nothingness…”
I find this somewhat perturbing. Of course we are. Of course we exist. Our somethingness, doesn’t exist in competition with God's somethingness. This isn't a zero sum game. There is no piety in erasing ourselves from the world in which God has placed us.
I’ll confess that I’m not sure, but I don't think this is what St Paul means. I think he's finding language for an experience of smallness, and awe, before an oceanic reality. This awe at the scale of everything, this awareness of one's tiny part in such a measureless whole, doesn't terrify or embarrass St Paul. He seems to find it somehow wonderful. He delights in losing himself in it. There is a childlike joy in running into this vast wonder. There’s a freedom in feeling no need to assert himself against anything. In becoming almost nothing, he receives everything as gift.
He returns often to the metaphor of the drop in the ocean:
“Cast a drop of sweet water into the sea: it will be so absorbed that we can no longer distinguish it.”
“Now, I ask you, is it not true that this drop of water is in the Sea? Certainly it is there; but go and seek it now that it is lost in the ocean, its centre. If it had a tongue, what would it say?”
This reminds me of that vision of Julien of Norwich, in which she saw everything that was ever made. When she sees it she laughs out loud. Why? Because it is so small: a ball the size of a hazelnut in the palm of someone’s hand. It looks, she says, as though it might disappear altogether. But it remains because God loves it and keeps it. This vision has a strange power, because the smallness of everything—just shy of disappearing altogether—isn't cause for terror or self-doubt or wretchedness, but for laughter; the kind of laughter that comes freely round the table when one feels very loved.
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