Hole in My Soul

“The Dark Night of the Soul” is a phrase that describes the vacuum that many people experience in the depths of their intentional journey to God. When our expectations of God’s presence or performance are dashed, the silence is deafening. This is not the place where I want to tackle the question of whether God is ever really absent. My experience is that, as human beings, we are not capable of distinguishing between the perception of God’s absence and the reality of it. For us, then, the perception of God’s absence is as real and effective as God’s absence itself.

When we perceive God’s absence, or even the dislocation of God from the center of our beings, we become aware that something essential is either missing or askew. Franciscan Richard Rohr describes the recognition of this dislocation from God as, “the hole in the soul.” We are well-trained by our culture and our economy to fill the hole with lots of things, and to fill it as early and as often as possible. Never mind that the other-than-God things we pour into it have no hope of filling it. Never mind that it is a God-shaped and God-sized hole that only stops gaping when it is filled with the very self of God.

Some time ago, while thinking about this hole and our attempts to fill it, I wrote this song:

There’s a Hole
(Sung to the tune of “Give Me Oil in My Lamp”)

There’s a hole in my soul, and it’s burning.
There’s a hole in my soul that’s deep.
There’s a hole in my soul and it’s burning;
tried to fill it but it just won’t keep.

There’s a hole in my soul and it’s empty.
There’s a hole in my soul that’s dry.
There’s a hole in my soul and it’s empty;
stuff I’ve filled it with just makes me cry.

There’s a hole in my soul and it’s God-shaped.
There’s a hole in my soul that shows.
There’s a hole in my soul and it’s God-shaped;
fills up only when my spirit overflows.

There’s a hole in my soul but it’s filled.
There’s a hole in my soul no more.
There’s a hole in my soul but it’s filled;
gift of grace from God’s own store.

Filling this void with other things and steadily pouring in stuff, in an attempt to avoid the emptiness, only increases the chances that the experience of God’s presence will become more remote. While there is no mystical formula or ritual that can conjure up God’s presence, living with the discomfort of God’s absence is precisely the way that we can prepare ourselves to recognize and eventually receive the very self of God. Focusing on the empty hole, instead of what we can fill it with, is the path that eventually leads to being filled.

© 2008 Todd Jenkins