Absence has meaning to us as an appearance or feeling of emptiness, of nothing where there was once something. Perhaps a space opened before us has the appearance of emptiness, yet this does not mean it is nothing – we spend every day with an entire universe before our eyes, air is not empty, it is filled with what is unseen, sometimes experienced like a force on a breeze or a wind.
Absence as the space between things is not absent to meaning, it is the finitude of things, the discreteness of a beginning and an end, a pause that comes between or before a new thing. Presence, as its opposite, gives meaning to absence in these places as a moment to reflect, to feel, to notice, to listen.
There are different forms of absence or emptiness, a stone is empty of life – it moves not by its own will, and kenosis or ‘self-emptying’ opens a space within for the Divine will to be heard whispering gently to our soul. Yet, the meaning of the stone or dust from which it is made comes not from itself, but from its existence within a causal chain from the beginning to now – its relatedness not just to the place that it is, but as a link in the chain that has established a foundation for life as we know it.
A universe set in motion creates these moments of absence and presence, and we unlike the dust but like the angels are free to turn – toward or away from God, and our neighbour – it is this movement that gives birth to our morality, love, and preferences.
Though the animals are not free, they move. Meaning for the animal comes by way of interdependence through their relations; feeding relations, predator-prey relations, reproductive relations, spatio-temporal relations – meaning is derived from the living, from what lives belonging to these relations.
Meaning is significance; we ask what matters between this and that – hence no meaning comes from a thing alone. Meaning derived as the inferences and evaluations that come by way of our relations. Our relation with the inanimate is whatever we choose to give it, unless we ask a question. What does this or that mean – is a time-dependent cause and effect relation to a memory or event. What does this rumbling sound mean? We know, by learning, that a storm is coming or passing by. How might we experience that storm? We might wonder what positive or negative effect will happen next, as the future exists as a distribution of probabilities for certain outcomes. To say the universe cannot contain the future is like saying we know everything about space-time and there is no room for anything new until it emerges into the now. Therefore, the future is held within us, in our hearts and minds.
Thus, the perception of these probable outcomes depends on our knowledge, experience, investigation – of understanding the patterns and rhythms of the natural world around us. Yet, what will happen in the lightning storm has nothing to do with us; God was not in the earthquake; God was not in the fire. (1 Kings 19:11). We are observers to the effect at every point that it can be seen, felt, or heard, and participators in the effect if it rains on us, but we did not cause the rain ourselves.
When we are talking about the actions of freely willed individuals, meaning can be ascribed. Meaning links causes by relation to effects. The cause has presence or absence of intention, particularly if we are speaking of an individual in the habit of thoughtless, or impulsive behaviour. Intention gives meaning to an individual when there is a dynamic flow between peoples, therefore meaning between two or more persons is worked out in relationship, for otherwise it will become subject to cognitive distortions such as mind-reading. Derived meaning, whether true or false, may elicit an emotional response, emotion being a powerful signal to act (or not). Thought and emotion are similar in that they are internal movements – therefore as Aquinas says, practical reason is directed to action, (ST I-II 94).
Through our words and deeds, we are known, and come to rely on and depend upon the understanding of the meaning through which we have worked out a prediction or expectation, and an intention to act is always about what will be, what will or is likely to happen next. Meaning is therefore a desire for certainty – it is a predictive tool – without meaning by way of relations we have no way to anticipate future events. If this, then that; the relation by our perception is equal to meaning.
No meaning means the future is an abyss – a darkness, a staring at nothingness because the question is, ‘what does life mean in relation to us and our movement through time?’ of which there is no satisfactory answer for an individual who searches alone. The stronger our relations, or movement with and for God and our neighbour, the deeper the sense of meaning we have. Love and belonging in the places we are, is the primary good upon which to build.
If we have lived outwardly desiring only the appearance of success, the material hopes for possession and gain, the noise of this life drowns out the gentle whisper in the soul. A person misses the things deeply felt in the heart that give us meaning and comfort in the times of difficulty or pleasure. Relations that are not superficial or fleeting – the relations that last – reside in family bonds. Belonging, laughter, joy, the look of love in the eyes of another soul, these are our treasures, the jewels that sparkle in an ethereal light that comes in these moments of presence, or touch us deeply when a memory drifts into conscious reflection during absence, or the spaces between.
That being the case, by the absence of a thing we can still derive its meaning, whether we learn by experience or by observation, we can pause, be still, reflect and know.
The from where we are to the edge of now is presence, and the future, though absent, is waiting to burst out of our imaginations, out of our hearts and minds into the real. The universe contains the future, and the Divine will whispers it softly to us, have we found the space or made room within ourselves to listen?
The true beauty we hold in our senses and carry within our hearts lay in the recognition of our connectedness, in realising the continuation of all things – the echoes of the patterns within, correlating with those beyond our bounds; the atoms in our bodies and in the dust were made in the stars – the echoes of all times held together as one in the now. With our feet on the ground and our hearts in the sky, everything that we are and might become was made to be beautiful, real, and present with and for the deepest meaning found in love.
Amen.