Interstice

Sometimes I'm afraid to leave an empty space. 

Teaching piano, I'm very aware of the 30-minute space I get, once a week, with each student.  Minutes of silence don't feel productive, then.  They feel like wasted space. 


Sometimes I find myself asking a question, and a minute goes by while the student thinks.  Inside, my mind is reeling with the answer.  My tongue is full of the temptation to fill the empty space with the solution.


Recently, I've started becoming aware that when I fill those empty spaces with my own answers, my students walk away with empty spaces where thinking has not happened. 


We are a "doing" culture, a culture primed on coffee and long workdays.  And sometimes too many empty spaces are being filled by doing that ought to be left empty by waiting, by listening, by thinking.


A baby reaches out his hands in the empty space as he tries to reach my hands.  But it is the empty space, not my hands saving him from the empty space, which prompts the first step.


A teacher presents a student with an assignment that needs to be done in the next week.  In this empty space of a week, there is a challenge - will the student do the assignment and learn from it, or not?


I struggle in prayer for an answer - why won't God tell me what to do? But in the silence of the empty space, I begin seeking, asking, discovering.


I ask my friend a question - does she want to meet me for coffee? And in the empty space I wait for her to say yes or no.  I have no control over the response, which comes freely from her.  I realize that there is an empty space in me, a need for the friendship of others, which I am unable to fill on my own.


I have an hour of free time, an empty space which makes me uncomfortable.  I want to turn on the tv, the internet, the radio, iTunes, rather than experience the silence. 


I am sensing an invitation in my life to make more room for those empty spaces, to recognize the gift inherent in them, to stop filling them in when it gets uncomfortable.   To stop filling them in for other people.  To take the risk of asking the question.  To take a step without knowing what the second step will be.