Thomas Merton speaks of Le Pointe Verge as that tiny inmost point within all of us that is precisely pure poverty. This is the point within all of us that is emptiness in completion, as it is the very seat of God in our soul, and conversely our seat within God. In saying this, Merton makes it clear that it is not accessible to us, or as he would say, at our “disposal.” Yet it is the very point that God disposes of our lives. In this way it can be seen as a source or context within which we exist at all.
It may seem curious that it is considered a pure point of poverty. Rather than just a philosophical explanation of how the only way we can experience “being” in under the guise of “non-being” or emptiness, it could help to consider this more from a phenomenological perspective. What is this emptiness that we practice into presence through centering prayer and other contemplative events? Is it somehow related to this Le Pointe Verge, this virgin point? Could it be that part of the inner experience of “dryness” or emptiness is somehow an experience of Le Pointe Verge, the center point of not so much our access to God, but God’s access to us? Perhaps it is one and the same thing.
Do we “feel” empty because God is “disposing” us? It is not even that we are striving for emptiness in order to be full? The empty/full dualism seems to break down in this virgin point within each of us. It is a connection of “emptiness,” perhaps only called such because it is a poverty point – a point of experience wherein we “feel” or at least draw close to our deepest need? It is perhaps when we are closest to that which we ultimately need and depend upon the most that we actually “feel” the most distant or empty? The practice of presence cannot so much alleviate the sense of emptiness, but rather grant it a more dynamic context, that demands that we “still” there, so to speak. There is the paradoxical fullness of poverty.
Perhaps we call it a “virgin” point because, in the apophatic tradition (coming to “know” God through dark indirectness and insensibility), which this topic naturally lends itself to, we can only try to express it in a “dark” or roundabout way. It is a virgin point, yes because it is un-sullied and un-touched as Merton says by our false self or ego-driven manias but this doesn’t even begin to really describe it.
It is like a “clearing” or the compassionate action of “clearing” for a “sitting” or “dwelling.” The poverty point that is such a concentrated pinpoint of luminosity that it blinds us from direct contact, is the tiniest atom of pure compassion Whose touch both creates and destroys simultaneously. It is the divine brilliance of the Chesed, or loving kindness, sourced out to, but more appropriately sourced into us as a “seating” area or clearing. But the seat is not for us – at least not for us alone. Like a spotlight that expands out from its compacted origin, the point burns out the senses and energizes the infinite space contained in the utterly peculiar poverty that is infinitely unique as it is inhabitable by its self-giving source!
So God seeks constantly to dwell in this space lit by the virgin point of entry. And we are in this space. WE cannot leave this space, yet we don’t allow our hearts so many times to KNOW that they (our hearts) do dwell here in the lap of our God, or perhaps even more appropriate metaphorically, we are the “chair” or the “seat” of our God, Who desires nothing more than to look out and live into our lives. Still in the space, the blind heart “feels” abandoned because it cannot “cherish” the sitting presence of Compassion in its own flesh.
We must be poor to be the inhabitable seat of God!
2/7/17 tpt