As I was thinking about pieces I’ve written in the past that might have something to do with the second week of advent’s theme of peace, this short little essay that was originally published by Brevity came to mind. It’s included in my latest essay collection, Ordinary Time: Meditations from the In-Between, which you can find on Amazon if you are looking for some last minute wish-list gifts.
The Empty Spaces
The lion pride puzzle was a Christmas present that, at age eight, I must have insisted we begin assembling the second I opened it. Scattered on our dining room table for months, it was hard, and big, but I was up for the challenge. I sorted its hundreds of pieces into color-specific piles and negotiated our cereal bowls and spaghetti plates around its border, which you always finished first, of course, those flat edges framing in the future grassy savanna and blocking out our dinners. Each night and at every meal and every time I passed it, I would pause to push around the piled pieces until one surfaced, maybe, yes, that one, it goes right there!
Some nights after he smoothed and flattened the earth or dug a space for someone’s new basement, my dad would hover, still in muddied jeans and a Carhartt. Some nights after she dried the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, my mom would wipe her hands on a towel and come over. Together we leaned toward the center, silent, sorting, sorting, then, Here’s one! and we’d grin as the world came closer into focus, the sky above the lions filled with empty space, a pile of blue puzzle pieces, and possibility.
There will be two puzzles under our tree this year for my seven-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter, maybe a little harder, maybe a little bigger than they can handle alone. But that is why I am here. We’ll lean toward the center of the table together and fill in the empty spaces.
We often think of peace as this sense of quiet or stillness, or space where none of the feathers are ruffled, somewhere there’s no tension. Instead, I heard someone recently describe peace as a sense of wholeness, or fullness.
Peace for me would not be just the quiet of an empty house. It’s quiet in my house right now. No one is home. I can hear the buzz of the furnace and the electronics and the wind outside. It’s an empty kind of peace.
But a shalom peace is about the sense of wholeness that we get when our lives are filled with the richness of love and of hope and of joy. That coming promise of salvation and Christ is the seasoning of peace. It’s this sense that no matter what our circumstances are, we are whole, we are solid, we are fully connected to who we are and whose we are. We’re connected to the creator of the universe. We’re connected to all of creation. We are connected to our loved ones. Those sources of connection are what give us that sense of wholeness and that sense of peace.
That image of my mom and dad around the dining room table, who knows if it was weeks or days or months that they tolerated that puzzle. I loved the togetherness, the opportunity for us to come around and fill in the empty spaces of the puzzle, of each other. I love the carrying on of that tradition with my family at the time.
Those seven and eight year olds are now 17 and 18 years old and they aren’t really interested in doing puzzles with me. But I tell you what, I have a puzzle on my dining room table almost all of the time. There’s ever an opportunity for someone to gather around with me and work on a puzzle.
Hopefully, we are able to find those moments of peace, moments of wholeness in our lives, in everyday tasks like putting together a puzzle, or sitting down with a daughter around a cup of coffee at a coffee shop, where we’re not talking about anything in particular, just being together and connecting in those really lovely ways.
I hope that this week of Advent is one in which you are able to find lots of sources of peace and wholeness during this season.
May all of your empty spaces be filled.
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