Fullness and Emptiness
- by Brother David Steindl-Rast

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“And” is the decisive word in give-and-take. Mere giving is as lifeless as mere taking. If you merely take a breath and stop there, you are dead. And when you merely breathe out and stop there, you are also dead. Life is not giving or taking, but give-and-take. Breathing is an obvious example, but the same give-and-take can be found wherever there is life. It is the dynamic expression of universal belonging.

We speak of a given moment, of given facts, of all reality as given.  The appropriate response to a given world is thanksgiving.  This has weighty implications.  To understand it and to draw the consequences leads to grateful living.  And this, in turn, is the key to finding joy.

The Ibo in Nigeria have a proverb that says, “It is the heart that gives; the fingers just let go.”  Giving is something only the heart can do.  And this is true not only of gift-giving, but of all forms of giving.  There are three preeminent forms:  giving up, thanksgiving, and forgiving.  The heart knows that all belongs to all.  And so, when we live from the heart, we are free to give up without fearful clinging.  The heart is at home in belonging.  And so, when we live from the heart, we celebrate the bond of mutual give-and-take through thanksgiving in all we do.  The heart fully affirms that all belong to all. And so, when we live from the heart, we forgive from the heart, from that center where offender and offended are one, where healing has its roots.  Forgiving is the perfection of giving.

God comes in as basic to everyone’s experience, and only under this aspect.  “Restless is our heart.”  This is a basic fact of human experience.  St. Augustine continues the sentence:  “Restless is our heart until it rests in God.”  But this does not mean that we first know God, so that our thirst for God is one among various things worth mentioning.  Rather, all we know at first is the restlessness of our heart.  And to the direction of our restless yearning, we give the name God.  By pooling insights gained by the heart, we can come to know a little bit about God, especially when we listen to great explorers into God.  Yet, what matters is never knowledge about God, but knowledge of God – as the magnetic North of the human heart.

The universe may
Be as great as they say.             
But it wouldn’t be missed             
If it didn’t exist.

With a disarming smile, this little jingle by Piet Hein lays bare the gratuitousness of absolutely everything.  The universe is gratis.  It cannot be earned, nor need it be earned.  From this simple fact of experience springs grateful living, grace-filled living.  Gratefulness is the heart’s full response to the gratuitousness of all that exists.  And gratefulness makes us graceful in a double sense.  In gratefulness we open ourselves to this gratuitous universe and so we become fully graced with it.  And in doing so we learn to move gracefully with its flow, as in a universal dance.

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From Brother David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness (New York, Mahwah, New Jersey:  Paulist Press, 1984).