The Empty Casefile

The Shape of Silence: Spirituality and Stillness

The case began in quiet—not silence, but that hum beneath the chaos, like something waiting to be noticed. I’d been trying to meditate. Sitting still, letting thoughts scatter like leaves on pavement. And somewhere between breaths, I caught a whisper. Maybe mine. Maybe not.

Spiritual insight doesn’t always arrive with trumpets. Sometimes, it slips you a matchbook with no name. You’ve got to read it backwards, upside down, and sideways.

I followed hunches. Echoes. The kind of clues that disappear if you look too hard.

A Taoist might call it flowing with the current. I just felt a pull. An ache. A stillness with teeth.

And the more I leaned in, the more I noticed: the universe speaks in static, broken clocks, and the offhand comments of strangers that land like prophecies.

It made me wonder—
Maybe truth doesn’t live in the noise.
Maybe it hides in what the noise is trying to drown out.

Easter, Evolution, and Being Made Willing

Easter came and went. Some folks dressed up for church. Others tossed candy in the yard and called it a resurrection hunt. Me? I wrote a Substack about what happens when you strip away the lilies and the liturgy.

Spoiler: resurrection might not be a literal play-by-play, but a tapestry of old stories—weeping women, tombs left open, angels stirring the silence. Maybe the power isn’t in the facts… but in the meaning we draw from them when the facts go quiet.

That trail didn’t end there. Nearly a year ago, my wife and I spent our anniversary at Chicago’s Field Museum. One exhibit pulled me in: early man. Evolution. The old forbidden fruit.

I’d been raised with young-earth creationism as gospel. But by then, the floorboards had started to creak. I needed to see it with my own eyes.

Staring at ancient skulls and timelines older than Eden, something shifted—not a lightning bolt, but a soft surrender. Not trading dogmas, but being made willing. Willing to imagine a cosmos older, wilder, and more mysterious than any flannelgraph.

And in that letting go, I didn’t find fear. I found wonder.

Creationists often ask, “But how did it begin?” I don’t need the answer. Because the Tao Te Ching whispers this:

Turns out, the Big Bang and the Tao might just be old friends.

Sometimes you don’t crack the case. Sometimes you get cracked open—and what spills out isn’t what you expected. But it fits. It clicks.

Red Lipstick and Restraint – The Seduction of Suggestion

In my first novel, I wrote a couple of scenes that could fog up your glasses if you weren’t careful. 18+, high heat, no apologies. I figured if Spillane scandalised the '50s with a raised eyebrow and a loaded pistol, I had to go further—turn the dial to eleven and see who flinched.

I released it. No backlash, no pitchforks. But something still tugged at me. Quiet. Persistent. Like perfume on a letter you shouldn’t have opened. I knew I'd crossed a line—not morally, but artistically. The fire was there, sure... but it burned too hot, too fast. No mystery left in the ashes.

So this time, I did something different. I put the match down and lit a candle instead. Low light. Slow burn. A little peek-a-boo with the prose. A coy glance, not a full confession.

Over the weekend, I wrapped a scene between Nick and Sal Moretti’s daughter. It didn’t shout. It smouldered. Suggestive, not explicit. Elegant. Dangerous. It felt right.

Think of it like this: a striptease tells you what you're getting. But burlesque? Burlesque tells you a story. It draws you in, spins you round, makes you laugh, blush, ache—and then it leaves you wanting.

That’s the line I’m walking now. Seduction, not surrender. The imagination’s the real temptress. The thrill isn’t in the taking—it’s in the chase.

Turns out, the power isn’t in the climax.

It’s in the tension.

The space between.

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

The outrage machine marches on—louder than a Bluetooth speaker on a subway, blaring some god-awful tune nobody asked for. Some say common sense is making a comeback. If that were true, we’d hear a bit less noise.

This week’s headline? Trump's checkmate on Harvard. Or Harvard’s last stand against Trump. Depends who you ask. And no, you’re not a sap for wanting the facts—every shemas needs a little intel. But these days, the facts are buried under a mountain of narrative. Everyone’s selling a story.

It’s noise. It’s chaos.

Everyone’s shouting. No one’s listening.

Enter the political nomad. You’ve seen him before. He’s not outraged. He’s not impressed. He’s the guy who sidesteps the tribal war cries and walks the fogged-up tightrope right down the middle.

The political nomad doesn’t pledge allegiance to red or blue. He’s not uninformed—he’s just unclaimed. He doesn’t need to shout to be heard. He speaks in pauses. In the breath between a lie and the truth.

He knows his two cents won’t buy much in today’s market. So he spends his silence wisely.

Clarity lives in the undefined.
In the space between sentences.
In what’s left unsaid.

Athenry – Sacrifice, Survival, and Something Sacred

The truth doesn’t always come with headlines. Sometimes she’s tucked inside a book you didn’t expect to change you.

Athenry by Cahal Dunne was one of those books. More than a novel—it’s an Irish lament wrapped in quiet fire. Set during the famine, it follows the McDonagh family as they claw through grief, hunger, and hope. The story doesn’t preach. It just lives—and stays with you.

The father aches in silence. The mother sings strength into lullabies. A boy learns to navigate ghosts and grief, while the Church stands as both shelter and shadow.

There are no easy villains. Just crumbling systems and people holding on. Priests with scuffed shoes and soft hearts. Villagers who pray and gossip in the same breath. Children far too strong for their age.

For someone like me—who once saw the Catholic Church more as hazard than haven—Athenry shifted something. I didn’t see dogma. I saw dignity. Not cultists, but quiet saints. The kind who give away their last potato.

The sacred in this story doesn’t shout. It hums. It grieves and comforts. It reminds you—religion can kill, but it can also keep people alive. Not by creed, but by love.

If you’re looking for history steeped in pain, poetry, and purpose—Athenry will break your heart beautifully.

The Centre That Isn’t There – Wuji

They say a case is closed when you’ve got answers. But this one? This one cracked open the silence.
What I found wasn’t noise. Wasn’t even meaning.
It was the still point.
The origin.
The thing before the thing.

They call it Wuji.

Wuji (無極) is a Taoist idea—older than empires, older than thought. It means “nothing,” but not the bleak kind. It’s the fertile nothing. The silent womb of all things. The stillness before movement. The space before yin and yang take the floor. Not emptiness—potential.

No extremes. No edges. Just pure, undivided possibility.

And suddenly, it all clicked. That’s what I’d been chasing.

Clue One led me into silence—mysticism that whispered rather than preached.
That was Wuji.

Clue Two brought me to the Easter tomb—not the trumpet-blaring kind, but the hush after hope collapses. The breathless pause before something new takes root.

Then, the Field Museum: fossils, stardust, and evolution. The sacred in science. Not forced deconstruction, but willing surrender. Wonder in the letting go. A cosmos that cradles both Genesis and genetics.

That, too, was Wuji.

Not the God I defended. The vastness I could trust.

Clue Three? Restraint. Seduction. The power of what’s left unsaid.
Wuji wears lipstick—and never quite kisses.

Clue Four? The Political Nomad. Not the zealot, but the one who stands in the fog, soft-eyed, unshaken. That pause before the world reacts.
That was Wuji.

Clue Five? Athenry. Irish famine. Catholic faith. Quiet suffering with no clean explanation—only endurance. Not answers. Not dogma. Just something deeper.

Wuji in human skin.

See, the case was never about finding a killer. It was about what’s left when everything else falls away.
I didn’t find a centre. I found the absence of one.
And somehow, that’s where everything began.

Wuji is the silence beneath music. The blank canvas behind the masterpiece. Tao before the Tao. God before the Word.

You don’t solve it.
You yield to it.

So here I am—case closed, not with answers, but with awe. With the kind of quiet that fills the room more than any sound ever could.
Wuji.
The centre that isn’t there.
The mystery solved by surrender.

And speaking of mysteries… I’ve written a short eBook on Taoism called The Harmonious Dance. I’ll be offering it free for download in the next month or two—so keep your eyes peeled.

Peace, and keep asking the big questions,

The Sage Wanderer