DAY 4
Day 4: Becoming the Vessel: A Contemplative Practice of Emptying and Filling
February 4 @ 8:00 AM PST
Faith Traditions: Interfaith
Presenters: Margaret Somerville & Steve Kramer
Host: Steve Kramer
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What does it mean to become a vessel—open, receptive, and attentive to the sacred presence that lives within us and moves through the world around us?
Inspired by Margaret Somerville’s book When Prayer Doesn’t Work, and particularly the chapter “Emptied Space,” this interfaith contemplative session invites participants into a gentle and spacious exploration of letting go and receiving. Rather than striving for answers or outcomes, we are invited to create conditions where meaning, insight, and renewal can arise naturally.
Through quiet reflection, guided imagery, and simple embodied practices, participants will explore the rhythm of emptying and filling—recognizing where our inner vessels may feel cluttered, depleted, or closed, and how intentional spaciousness can make room for clarity, creativity, and connection. We will reflect on how emptiness is not absence, but possibility—a sacred openness from which something new may emerge.
Together, we will practice noticing the sacred woven into ordinary moments, becoming more aware of what truly nourishes us, and cultivating the capacity to receive—wisdom, compassion, insight, and grace. This session offers a quiet, restorative pause in which participants are invited to listen deeply to what is stirring within them and to honor what is ready to be released or welcomed.
Open to people of all faiths and spiritual paths, this contemplative practice offers a shared space of presence, reflection, and renewal—supporting the awakening of the heart through attentiveness, humility, and trust in what seeks to be born within us.
