BEYOND EMPTINESS IS DESIRE
Anthony Gormley ‘Mothers Pride’ Picture taken by author: London 2019
This Anthony Gormley artwork I recently visited in London, spoke to me of our human condition. I experienced it as a call to action. The everyday sliced loaf representing to me ‘the bread of life’ — reflecting both our most basic physical and our spiritual needs. Neither of these needs can be taken for granted. So many go hungry without their ‘daily bread’ and many more unable to find their spiritual food. The homeless in our cities are just one visible sign of our incapacity to bring the two together. If we managed to digest our spiritual food and collectively engage our human spirit, feeding the hungry would automatically follow. The human shaped hole framed by the teeth marked bread, also resonated powerfully. This foetal shaped hole reminded me of our fragility and particularly of the emptiness that many clients reveal to me when working with them as a therapist and coach. This existential hole is something we all experience as it is part of our human condition. We experience it acutely after a trauma, or when we suffer the loss of a job/relationship or the death…
