"Kenotic Interchange"

 

I used this phrase in an email correspondence with one of my God-friends. It keeps coming back to me. I was talking about  ways  of conceiving of ‘service’ and I said this: 

“I had managed to somehow get wound up in thinking of service only in terms of "things one does to help people," and not in terms of the kenotic interchange between the human and the divine.”

(I believe this might be the first time that I have applied the method of Lectio Divina to something that I myself wrote. This is weird.)

Anyhow, the phrase ‘kenotic interchange’ just keeps on echoing in my mind. The problem is that it’s extraordinarily resistant to my attempts at interpretation or exposition. It’s so layered— both dense and attenuated— that not only can I not find an end to begin untangling it, I suspect that untangling it would unravel all its meaning and leave me bereft.

Kenosis— self-emptying— is the core of my understanding of God. It has nothing to do with self-denial, though. In order to abrogate the self, the ‘self’ must remain firmly ensconced in the psyche, offering itself up to be starved.

No, self-emptying is a movement of affection, wonder, generosity, warm-heartedness, and delight. It’s a response to a direct perception of the Divine, and it resembles much more a kind of self-forgetfulness; a spontaneous and reliable opening of the heart.

Self-emptying is a reply to the limitlessness of the Source of All, in which the only working principle is that of freedom.

Now, back to the “interchange” part of “ kenotic interchange”—   I’d always thought of kenosis in terms of emptying myself into God, pouring out whatever I’d decided, on any given day, to put into my little cup of person-hood. It had never occurred to me that the impetus for me to do such a thing arose from the way that the universe is made. Suddenly, it seemed to me that this “pouring out” must be integral to the shape of reality itself.  I remembered the noumenal shiver I felt when reading about quantum physics, strange mechanics, and string theory. I remembered Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea about “interbeing.” I remembered Philippians 2:6-8 (Complete Jewish Bible) “Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be possessed by force. On the contrary, he emptied himself, in that he took the form of a slave by becoming like human beings are.”

I wondered why I had never, up till now, considered the direction in which this pouring out might flow. I was stunned by just how much sense it made to conceive of a mutual “pouring-out” between God and human beings— these mortal ‘earth creatures’ made out of dust and fire and wind.

 

I envisioned it in my heart’s eye— spilling, streaming, tumbling end-over-end—

Vastness into vastness; love into love; realm into realm, always and endlessly emptying into each other, turning and returning in the dance of Grace.