The Open Cup

It is a little embarrassing to talk about, this problem we have at our house. Our coffee maker uses one of those stainless thermal carafes to collect the brewed coffee. You heard me say it is “stainless”, which is also to say you can’t see through it. The problem is that both of us have a tendency in the morning to grind the beans, prepare the filter, add the water and press the power button, and forget to check the pot.

More times than I care to admit, we discover the “hard way” that the pot still held some of the previous day’s fill. It isn’t a matter of taste or temperature; it is simply a matter of mess. What can’t drip into the pot spills over the sides and floods the counter and floor. It is a fairly elementary principle that two often intelligent people should be able to understand, but are still having to rehearse: when the pot is full, it can’t hold anything new.

Throughout this Lenten season, we are using together Joyce Rupp’s book, The Cup of Our Life, as a guide which reflects on the cup as a symbol of our spiritual life – cups as vessels that are filled and emptied; vessels with the capacity to hold that which warms us and quenches our thirst. But sometimes the same thing happens with our spiritual cup as happens with our coffee pot: nothing new can be added to that which is already full.

Of course sometimes the “fullness” is a matter of perspective. Listening to Morning Edition late this week on National Public Radio, host Steve Inskeep was talking with sports commentator John Feinstein about the National Basketball Association’s mid-season standings, and the higher number of foreign players showing up on the NBA All-Star team this year. Players, for example, from China and Eastern Europe.

Feinstein observed, "These guys come into college basketball and the pro's so much sounder fundamentally than our kids growing up because they are willing to accept coaching. They don't think they are superstars at 14 & 15 because they aren't told they are superstars. And as a result, you watch the way they shoot, you watch the way they pass -- they are much sounder fundamentally than the American players are." (broadcast 2/18/05).

Because, he says, “they are willing to accept coaching”; willing to operate out of the assumption that they don’t already know it all – that they aren’t already full. We create boxes for ourselves sometimes; airtight little enclosures that we willingly climb into and close above us the lid. We do it not only athletically, but professionally, intellectually, politically, relationally. Inside there, in our fullness, we are secure and protected from anything that might stretch or enlarge us; anything that might threaten our rigidly held conviction.

It is a form of intellectual and spiritual suffocation that provoked one observer to recommend that we should “fear more the unquestioned answer than the unanswered question.” If we have nothing left to learn, no part of us left to grow, the only thing left is to die.

Sometimes, in other words, receiving a fresh infilling requires an intentional emptying of the old; other times it means recognizing and even honoring the emptiness we already have. Sometimes the blockage has to do with ego; other times simple habit.

Several years ago, I worked with an Associate Minister who had recently joined that church staff and was taking his first turn behind the pulpit. I was sitting across the chancel, helping with other parts of the service, but he was “in charge” for the day. The next day, he observed that even when I wasn’t “leading the service,” I was leading the service.

During the unison prayers, for example, he could hear me reading loudly and steadily from my chair across the chancel– leading from the seated position. I’ve appreciated his observation. He wasn’t being critical. What he was calling attention to, looking back on it, was my fullness that didn’t respond well to emptiness. So accustomed to pouring, I wasn’t much practiced in being filled.

But if we are constantly full, there is no room to add anything new. You probably know folks like that – who suggest by their manner and the tone of their conversation that they needn’t bother with learning anything new; they already know it all. Like placing a hand over your coffee cup to deflect a restaurant waiter’s ministrations, they signal they already have enough. They aren’t interested in any fresh pour.

But I’m reminded that the reason the “Dead Sea” is “dead” is because it enjoys none of this revitalizing circle. It has no outlet to remove the dense saltiness already there, and the fresh water that flows from the Jordan into it is quickly evaporated away.

For an environment in which life can meaningfully be sustained, emptying and receiving are both required. Every now and then it’s worth stepping back – as individuals and as a church – and reflecting on both pieces of that action:

· What lesson do I need to teach? What lesson do I need to learn?

· What word do I need to speak? What word do I need to hear?

· What practice do I need to model? What practice do I need to hone?

Filling, but also emptying. One obstacle is that emptiness has come to have a negative connotation. It feels like poverty; inadequacy; something to be avoided and protected against. And certainly there are experiences of absence – chronic hunger and persistent deprivation – we would not seek.

But emptiness is also readiness. It is a willingness to receive, coupled with an openness that permits its entrance. I encouraged us last week to take Joyce Rupp’s suggestion and choose a cup to be our teacher this Lenten season. If you’ve already done so, then the next time you hold it, trace with your fingers the smooth expanse of its rim. Feel your way completely around the full circumference, noting the wide space between and all the capacity for filling. Imagine what all could be poured into that openness. Imagine, then, that the cup is yourself. Perhaps, then, the first lesson the “cup of life” can teach us is to respect openness, and to be open.

The Chinese philosopher Lao-Tsu observed that…

Clay is molded into vessels,

and because of the space where there is nothing,

you can carry water.

Space is carved out from a wall,

And because of the place where there is nothing,

you can receive light.

Be empty, and you will remain full….

Traditionally, the season of Lent is a time of fasting – a protected series of weeks in which the faithful intentionally empty themselves, physically but also spiritually; not simply to feel the pangs of hunger, but also to empty the stagnant waters of the soul, purify the glutted spaces of the body, in order to ready themselves, open themselves, for the infilling of God’s fresh Spirit.

· It is to greet the day of possibilities with trust, moreso than fear – trust that there flows within it the cool water of grace to ease a thirst of which I may not have even been aware; trust that God is in its moments, calling, stretching, pouring that I, in fresh ways, might be filled.

· It is to hunger for the day as a baby bird awaits its mother: with an outstretched neck and beak open wide.

· It is to long for the words from heaven to which the Psalmist gave witness:

I am the LORD your God,

who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

Today my cup was filled with yesterday’s coffee – cold and stale and fetid. If I was to be satisfied, first I would have to empty it, rinse it, and hold it open for the pouring.

Something, it turns out, like myself.