‘God wants no more from you than that you should in creaturely fashion go out of yourself and let God be God in you.’
Eckhart continues: ‘Go completely out of yourself for God’s love, and God comes completely out of himself for love of you.’
Eckhart was hugely intelligent – a professor, for a while, in the highly-esteemed University of Paris. And, from the age if fifteen, a Dominican monk, who, as an Order, placed study above all things.
Yet more than anyone, he knew the limited value of study; and the deep value of emptiness – as if God, by her very nature, must rush in and fill it.
Maybe desperation brings us to a place of emptiness; or maybe there is intentional creation of inner space with us, a setting aside of our plans and opinions, hopes and schemes.
We leave them, even the best of them; we walk out the door and close it behind us. And allow the space.
For, as Eckhart says, ‘God must act and pour himself into us when we are ready; when we are totally empty of self and creatures. So stand still and do not waver from your emptiness.’
We are asked to walk into emptiness, (just the place we’ve been trying to avoid) where we are promised an epiphany.
