Consider the jack-o’-lantern.
It’s not a pumpkin anymore — not really. That way of life is no longer available to it. The jack-o’-lantern doesn’t get to sit quietly in a patch, watching as tractors roll by and hay bales pile high and the sun rises and sets day after day in the autumnal sky. Our orange squash will not decompose slowly, patiently, the inevitable result of ticking clocks and critters and cold.
No. The jack-o’-lantern gave up any hope of such a life when the carving began: when the knife cut out eyes and a mouth and when a human hand plunged into its core to scoop out all the seeds and slime and stringy orange residue. A pumpkin became a jack-o’-lantern. There was no going back.
This new orange creation is given a specific place — the porch, perhaps? — and a specific purpose — the neighborhood kids can’t help but grin along with that toothy smile! — and a specific time. After all, Halloween is nearly upon us, and a hollowed-out squash sitting amidst the elements outdoors will not last long. The jack-o’-lantern’s moment is now, and it will seize the crisp day and even more so the dark, frigid night.
The jack-o’-lantern is cold, we can only imagine, void of its slimy guts and nesting seeds. It’s emptied and hollowed and left with a vacancy. Wind cuts through its sinking teeth and sagging eyes. What to do? Place a candle within that already-decaying husk of a sun-colored fruit and watch the light flicker from deep inside! Watch it dance and delight and dazzle passersby. This jack-o’-lantern is alive and not so easily missed. This is no common pumpkin.
It’s empty and hollow and cold but if not for that space there would be no room for the flame, no chance at the light, no opportunity to catch the eyes of curious children from the other side of the street. If the jack-o’-lantern was still a pumpkin — or, put another way, if the jack-o’-lantern was still entirely whole — none of this would be possible. The pumpkin would still sit idly in a patch.
The late British mystic, Caryll Houselander, invites us to a disposition of emptiness in her classic text, “The Reed of God.” She invites us to consider the reed growing near the stream. “It is the simplest of things, but must be cut by the sharp knife, hollowed out, and the stops must be cut in it,” she says. It is a narrow emptiness, “but the little reed utters infinite music.”
Houselander draws our attention to what is ultimately not there. Because the reed has been hollowed out, because the space exists and something else does not, there is room for music. She says, “Whatever we are gives form to the emptiness in us which can only be filled by God and which God is even now waiting to fill.”
The emptiness of the reed becomes a pipe that permits music to flow; the emptiness of the pumpkin becomes a jack-o’-lantern that allows light and delight. But ultimately, there is no going back. The necessary wounds inflicted upon the reed, upon the pumpkin, allow for a transformation, for a new experience of God. But the wounds are there to stay, though we may learn to call them something else. We may learn to treasure them and the space they’ve opened in our souls for God and for God’s people.
Consider again the jack-o’-lantern. It could have had a simpler life and a longer one if it had remained a pumpkin. But consider, too, those passersby who enjoyed the dance of the flickering flame winking out from behind those carved features. Consider the delight that making space for the light made possible.
What form does your emptiness take? How does it allow God to break through to our world in a unique, specific way? What might be taking up that space now — and how is the Spirit inviting you to make room, to let go, to welcome God’s Spirit anew?
