The Selfless, Self-Forgetting God

Fr. Seraphim Rose once wrote that "nothingness," in the meaning that Lao Tzu gives it, is the "point of convergence" or axis of the universe. This recalls Lao Tzu's words:

"Thirty spokes join in a single hub;
It is the center hole (the space where there is nothing) that makes the wheel useful."

If nothingness or self-emptying is the axis of the universe, then the Cross of Christ, the greatest sign to man of the self-empyting of God, now becomes that axis. Christ the Tao/Logos stands at the axis; and there, in the "space where there is nothing," we find not an impersonal void, but the personal heart of the selfless, self-forgetting God.'

Hieromonk Damascene, Christ the Eternal Tao