The blank page

Making the inside, out

Writing can be a mystical experience.

Something seemingly ordinary becomes a revelation.

A blank page to be filled - the inside becoming outer.

Why is a blank page a call, an invitation? From where does all this content, this manifestation, spring from?

There is no little controller in there, making it all flow forth. It is the blank page which calls it out. It is the absence which is asking to be filled.

We are a mystery, to others and even to ourselves. That’s because we stretch out in the dark within to depths unplumbed, perhaps unplumbable.

But true to the Night

And her daughter,

Creative Love,

Rests my innermost heart.

Novalis - Hymns to the Night

We are the meeting place of non-being and being. A threshold of infinity and the finite. Too often we get stuck in the finite, looping around and around in what has already been said, what has already been thought.

Photo by Prophsee Journals on Unsplash

But if we just let go of all that, if we become ourselves a blank page, then we can feel the blessing of the spontaneous, the new, coming forth within us. Our life can become a revelation, an unfolding flow, pouring out in fresh steams that taste so pure and clean, no longer the stagnant recycled pond water of that which has already flowed and congealed.

To become that blank page, then I can sing out praises! Then life becomes grand. The less I do the more I flow. For the blank page never stays empty for long - no, it calls out, it cries to its Beloved - the Night, the Depths. And the Beloved communes with it and fills it to overflowing, so long as the page stays blank.

So long as the blank page doesn’t try to hold on to what has been given, so long as the page doesn’t lose faith in its Beloved, the Night. So long as it doesn’t demand proof that the Beloved will continue to fill it, and trusts that it will. Then it stays open, stays blank, and the blessings continue.

The Spirit continues to blow, from where, no one knows.

But if the blank page holds on, fearful, to what has already been delivered to it, then it becomes full, stagnant, bloated. It reeks of age, routine, boredom, dissatisfaction, toil, effort.

Don’t hold on! Don’t doubt the Beloved, the innermost well, the dark infinite. Let go, keep saying Yes! I accept your gifts! And these gifts, and these too! Forever and ever, amen.