Force of Emptiness

May 31, 2026 brings forward a spectrum of features: 

* Heather Cox Richardson recounts a tragic event from this date in 1889 when over 2,200 lives were swept away in the Johnstown flood caused through the greed of materialism. 

* Richard Rohr’s meditation for today:
“The dualistic mind cannot deal with the biggies: love, death, suffering, God, infinity, and the very notion of grace.”  

* From Jim Palmer’s Week in Review

“The weakening of religion did not eliminate humanity’s need for meaning, belonging, or transcendence. Technological progress did not solve loneliness, mortality, grief, or purpose. Information abundance did not produce wisdom. Instead, many people now find themselves carrying enormous responsibility for constructing identity, meaning, and coherence under increasingly destabilizing conditions.”

* Reading in the wee hours:

Beneath an empty autumn sky stretch stretch endless wastes where no one goes. Who is that horseman riding from the west? These lines are by Wang Ch’angling, a Chinese poet of the eighth century. Using them to depict the realm of total emptiness and the marvelous activity of enlightenment that emerges from within it, Hakuin calls on students to affirm the sutra’s negations for themselves. (p. 43, Zen Words for the Heart: Hakuin’s Commentary on the Heart Sutra, Translated by Norman Waddell)

     Going yet further back, we note that these all are echos from the opening of Wisdom “all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

And yet, still, the day begins with glory of a setting full moon and rosy hues from a rising sun.