The Hole

Consider these words by Henri Nouwen:

"There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes.

"Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay away from the wound you want to heal."

This reflection and other beautiful ones were written in Nouwen's secret journal during a period of great anguish, later published in his book "The Inner Voice of Love."

I know that laughter is not the appropriate response to this "spiritual imperative" (his term), but I couldn't stop howling as I read his description of the hole. Because it reminded me of a really bad poem--"American Idol" bad---I wrote when I was a freshman at Saint Mary's College, the year after I got sober.

I should have ripped it up long ago, but, as an information hoarder, I tucked it away in some box in the garage. Last night I found it.

The Hole

There exists a hole, somewhere inside.
I cannot find the place, where all is drained.

I know there's a filter, somewhere inside
Where my food is fed to the defects found there.

How do I fill the endless leak?
How do I block the vacant hole?

It's faith, My Dear (this is God talking), faith alone.
It's believing in goodness and removing the other.

If you have faith in My path for you,
The hole will be filled so to nourish the rest.

Boy, that's even worse the second time through.

When I submitted it to Saint Mary's literary magazine, the student editors roared.

"Way too sexual for this Catholic school, girl!"

Sexual? Oh.

So I was a tad sexually repressed back then (not much has changed, except that I no longer write about my hole).

"Why does Nouwen get to write about his hole, and I can't write about mine?" I asked Eric this morning, proud of locating a poem I wrote almost twenty years ago.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Nouwen would have been laughed at if he wrote about a lonely rod searching for a home."