Sacred Empty Space
“You want some breakfast, Mom?”
“Oh no, I’m not planning to eat until 11 o’clock.”
“No breakfast? Mom, that can’t be healthy.”
I recalled this conversation during a quiet midnight moment a year later, months after my mom had passed. I was overweight and often felt sluggish. I could barely keep up with my kids who were one and three years old at the time. I was browsing the internet for the latest fad diets. Then, something clicked.
“Oh, THAT’S what she was up to!” I said aloud to myself.
I had stumbled upon “intermittent fasting,” a lifestyle that restricts eating to specific “windows” of time. In a desire to encounter my mom in any way possible, I began my “intermittent fasting” journey. I read as much as I could about it. It worked for me.
Fasting was initially something I did for my physical health. What surprised me was the space that it created in my life. I worked through my lunch breaks at work because in this new lifestyle, I didn’t eat lunch anymore. My productivity soared.
It took me another two years to realize what I was really missing with fasting: empty space.
When we fast, not just from food, but from all things in our life that hold space (especially things that maybe aren’t so life-giving), empty space is made.
There’s something sacred about empty space.
I can think of one particular empty space a woman named Mary discovered on Easter morning.
What was I doing with my sacred space?
…I was “being productive” …
In today’s first reading, fasting for its own sake is discouraged. Fasting would seem to be a means to an end. Maybe this is how we can find the time in our busy lives for “…sharing bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.”
Or maybe this sacred space isn’t supposed to be filled with anything at all? Maybe it’s an invitation to enter into our inner room (Mt 6:6), a place we can encounter God’s loving gaze, especially when we find ourselves in desolation and God seems far away – like the “days when the bridegroom has been taken away” as alluded to in today’s Gospel.
I’ve recently started to reclaim my lunch breaks at work. For lunch, I pack a journal and a book for spiritual reading. I close my office door and allow myself to be “unavailable”. On my best days, when I could really manage to quiet my mind and listen to my heart (I’ve found the Examen a helpful way to do this), my office becomes a monastery. On my best days, the sacred space that fasting creates allows me 30 precious minutes in my inner room.
Lord, help me to recognize the sacred empty spaces in my life as places that I can encounter you.
Kevin Izquierdo