Emptiness and Loving

It turns out that I am capable of feeling overwhelmed even when I have essentially nothing to do. It’s a gift. In my twenties, I lived alone for a year or two on west 86th street around the corner from Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King. Every Sunday, waking up in the drafty brownstone studio apartment with the towering ceilings, I would confront the panic of facing an entire day with no plans, nowhere to go. Barney Greengrass alleviated my anxiety to some extent, providing me with a place where I could do the Times puzzle and eat lox and eggs in the company of other lonely West Siders. In the time-honored New York fashion, we did not speak to one another. But just knowing they were there, the various copy editors and refugees and impoverished poets, was a comfort. When I had gotten as far as I was going to get with the puzzle and had given the Book Review a whirl, I went back upstairs to face the day.

Now, I’m alone in my condo on the outskirts of Minneapolis until Frank joins me in another month. I have been rewarded with the opportunity to give spaciousness a second chance, to confront emptiness all over again, this time on the threshold of my eightieth birthday. I observe myself resisting the banquet of contemplative time and working hard to make a burden of it. This morning, I woke up at eight, late for me, and started right in worrying that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze in reading the grotesque news, meditating, exercising, speaking to Frank and doing some writing, before lunch which must be served, by me to me, at noon or else. Or else what? Or else, I might find myself expanding into a love affair with being alive. It’s all there is and it’s high time I got good at it.

Photo by Jayden Yoon ZK on Unsplash

If I slam the door in the face of this opportunity, my “one precious life” will pass me by in a blur of disquiet. I will not notice the spring’s stealth entrance from the wings. I will not stop to acknowledge the passing of the pope who gave us all reason to hope, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I have never celebrated Easter outside of dyed eggs and jelly beans, but this year, as Francis was dying in Rome, I had the great good fortune to spend the afternoon with my 19 year old grandson. Jonah was coming from church. Most Sundays, he goes by himself. I would have joined him, because sitting with him in any setting is a blessing, but I didn’t think to call him until he was just about to enter the sanctuary so we met for lunch. I had pancakes, jumping the gun on the end of Pesach by a few hours. He had something enormous. We talked and talked about his emerging business plans, about my health and finally about “the situation.” He listens to a lot of libertarian podcasts so his perspective is different. He wants to know why Harvard expects to maintain its status as a private institution and still take large sums of taxpayer money. I’m not really sure how to answer that question, but I am certain that bankrupting higher education is a death sentence for our country, for civilized life on the planet.

Jonah listens. He never interrupts and he expects me to listen, too. That in itself is a huge learning beyond the specifics of the subject matter. This potentially adversarial conversation becomes an enactment, almost a tableau vivant, of one of Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes that hung suspended over the head of Francis during his lifetime. In the famous “Creation of Adam,” God extends a finger to almost but not quite touch the finger of Adam. God gives life to Man and Man receives the gift. When you touch another human being and feel that person touching you, everything else falls away. There is a great emptiness and in that emptiness love flourishes.

I stare down the world every day, the bullying, the screeching, the assaultive grabbing of people off the street. But I know from watching the first flowers gently rising out of the leaf cover, from literature, from music and from the blessing of my own life, that alongside that degradation there is reaching out in love, pointing with amazement at the miracle of the Other, the miracle of being alive together.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from your local bookseller.