Kenosis Happens

In Christian theology Kenosis is the concept of the 'self-emptying' of one's own will and becoming entirely receptive to God and his perfect will.

In literature it describes a feeling of being swept away by lyrical poetry or something that takes you to higher places, as opposed to catharsis which is more a feeling or release from reading something like drama.

To me, the following passage from Byron’s Childe Harold seems to describe a kenotic experience he had and also his poem evokes one in me.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Lord Byron, (George Gordon)
from Childe Harold, Canto iv, Verse 178

Perhaps Kenosis happens when you sneak away from your ego (all you may be or have been before) become exposed/empty enough to be taken away by an Awesome Wonder which holds you as if in a state of mingling with the universe, and it cannot ever be adequately explained nor can it ever be adequately concealed once you have experienced it.

In Christianity, Philipians 2 1-11, verse 7 is the key verse, pointed to as the Kenosis verse. To me it seems that Jesus’s time spent in the dessert is also an example of an emptying experience, or maybe that was when he “emptied himself in the first place.

Monday morning ponderings.

Have a Great Week
Peace
Keren