Friday night: “THE CONVERSION TO FORMS”
t happens one night that,
A
Cambridge professor engages a student
In a very
lively and absorbing philosophical discussion that lasts
Into the
wee hours of the morning.
Says the
professor at one point:
“A little
puppy dog suffering from rabies
Would
probably struggle for life as we were killing it . . .
But if we
were kind – we should kill the puppy.
Likewise
– a truly omniscient, all knowing God,
Would put
US out of our pain.
He would
simply strike us dead.”
Reflecting
a moment, the student asks his teacher:
“Why
doesn’t God strike us dead?”
“Because
- He is dead himself.” answers the philosopher,
“And THAT
is why God” is truly enviable,
“To
anyone who thinks deeply,
The
pleasures of this life, trivial and soon tasteless,
Are
simply bribes to bring us into the torture chamber.
We all
see that for any thinking man, mere extinction is actually . .
.
The
professor stops in mid sentence, his eyes widen; his jaw
drops.
The
student with whom he’s been engaging in philosophical debate
Has just
produced a gun and is pointing the gun – at him.
The
professor screams: “My God! What are you doing?”, lunges
backward,
Scrambles
over a chair toward the window and
Manages
to climb out, only to find himself a moment later
Perched
on top of a gargoyle unable to go any further.
Just
then, just at this moment, on the last morning of his life,
The sun
rises, bathing the world before him in an enchantment of
color.
All at
once, an amazing abundance of shapes and FORMS APPEAR,
Bathed in
the most exquisite nuances of pinks, and blues and violets, .
. .
A
thousand variegated FORMS blooming splendidly all around him,
In the
silence before dawn . . .
“Let me
come down off this place . . . PLEASE”
The
professor begs miserably,
“I can’t
bear this!”
“Do I
understand you to say,” says the man with the gun “That
You want
to come back to life?”
“I would
give anything, absolutely anything to come back.”
Says the
philosopher.
“Anything!”
says the student, “Really!”
“Then
I’ll have a song damn you. Sing
for me. I said sing!”
At which
point the professor eeks out a rather plantive song
Taught to
him when he was a little boy:
“I thank
the goodness and the grace,
That on
my birth have smiled,
And
perched me on this curious place,
A happy
English child!”
After
which, the student obliges his teacher
To
present to God an itemized thanksgiving list
Of all
the beautiful things he can see from his perch
On top of
that gargoyle outside the window:
For the
ducks on the pond,
For
houses just becoming visible
For light
shimmering on rain puddles,
For
sticks and rags and bones,
And for
spotted curtains glimpsed through framed windows.
Later
that day giving a deposition to the police,
The young
man charged with attempted murder,
Says to
his teacher:
“It was
absolutely necessary for me to know what you really believed
I trusted
you.”
And as
they’re parting, turning finally to the professor he says:
“What you
realized sitting on top of that stupid gargoyle
Was that
the world is a beautiful place:
I know
that because – I SAW IT at the same moment you did:
When the
sun came up and the grey clouds turned pink,
Then I
saw the little gilt clock in the space between the houses . .
.”
I saw the
little gilt clock in the space between the houses
And it
was THEN I realized . . .
IT WAS
THOSE THINGS
IT WAS
THOSE INDIVIDUAL VERY PARTICULAR THINGS
YOU HATED
TO LEAVE – NOT LIFE,
WHATEVER
THAT IS.”
This
story, fortunately, is not a true story,
It is
taken from the novel “Manalive” by G.K. Chesterton.
“It was
THINGS you hated to leave . . .
Not life,
whatever that is.”
What is
the student saying?
He is
saying: “life” as a topic for philosophical debate;
Something
we can contemplate as an abstraction,
Regard
with detachment; weigh in the balance and find wanting . . .
“Life” –
is NOT THE POINT:
It was
not “life” the professor was afraid to lose,
It was
THINGS – all those beautiful and manifold created THINGS!
The
ducks, the gilt clock, the sticks and rags and bones of this
world.
It was
things, CREATURES the professor loved
And
cleaved to with all his heart; so much so he was moved to say:
To his
would-be assassin,
“Please –
Oh, please let me come back!”
I took a
risk beginning a quiet contemplative retreat
With this
rather disconcerting story,
A story
in which you yourself have been, in a sense,
Forced
out a window and made to perch on top of a gargoyle.
Having
pushed you out the window on to that gargoyle,
I’m going
to take another risk,
And
recommend as your retreat director that – YOU STAY THERE.
I’m going
to suggest that imaginatively but really,
You spend
the whole of the next two days perched on that gargoyle.
I’m aware
it’s not a very comfortable place to sit,
But it
is, for all that, such a wonderful place to sit – isn’t it?
BECAUSE
OF THE VIEW IT AFFORDS of life; of the created world,
And of
the mystery of the human heart,
Awakening
to the reality of God – IN THINGS.
Stay
there, this weekend, brothers and sisters;
Stay
perched on top of that gargoyle as the sun comes up
Shedding
its kindly beams on the world,
And make
your own the vitally important lesson learned
By our
poor terrified Philosopher:
What did
he learn?
He
learned that THIS WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL PLACE
And that
what he loved; loved so much it made his heart ache,
Was the
very individual particular things
That make
up this world.
His
training as a philosopher led him to believe that
Because
creatures are finite, limited, and destined to pass away
They have
no value!
But this
was a monstrous conceit of his intellect – was it not?
Because
no matter what philosophy may conclude,
Life
teaches us that creatures; THINGS that are finite, limited,
and passing
Are
beautiful, precious . . .
They are
magic PRECISELY AS things that are finite and pass away.
Note
that!
They are
invaluable to us precisely because they are passing away.
That’s
why we love them!
As the
sun came up on what he believed was the last day of his life,
The
professor experienced a CONVERSION TO THINGS:
With that
gun pointed at the back of his head,
He had a
whole new perception and appreciation for
Ducks,
clocks, rags, sticks and bones . . .
Beautiful,
indescribably beautiful precious and desirable all of them,
So long
as they last and precisely because THEY WILL NOT LAST . . .
This is
what our HEART teaches us about the beauty of the world:
The heart
wrenching paradox that
The
Eternal God MANIFESTS HIMSELF TO US
In the
BEAUTY OF FINITE THINGS PASSING AWAY . . .
Our
particular object of contemplation this week-end
Is the
Song of Songs.
If you
are going to benefit from this meditation,
It will
be absolutely necessary
For you
to let your HEART tell you
As ONLY
YOUR HEART KNOWS, all about the beauty of things
The
finite, limited things of this world which are passing away.
Three
years ago, I gave this group a talk on asceticism
Which
just happened to be scheduled about a week before I went to Rome
To spend
three months studying.
In my
talk I proposed the life style of the Romans,
Which one
author has called the simple pursuit of pleasure
As the
opposite of the ascetical life.
And I
strongly recommended the latter.
This
week-end, I’m going to be pressing almost the opposite point,
And
encourage you, accompanied by the Lord and his Holy Spirit,
To
suspend somewhat your ascetical impulse to dismiss or devalue
The
passing and finite things of God’s creation,
And take
another look, a long contemplative look
At the
beauty of creatures:
Of
nature, of human love, of human bodies, touch, affections,
speech, song,
The task,
I propose for you this week-end is that
While
savoring A FEW BASIC TRUTHS OF CHRISTIAN REVELATION
And from
your seat on that gargoyle,
TO LOOK
AT THE WORLD WITH NEW EYES.
I’m going
to propose that revelation has the power to open your eyes
To the
truth of HOW THINGS REALLY LOOK;
To the
beauty of God’s creation whose whole purpose is to speak –
Rather to
sing of what has been revealed to us about God
In Jesus
Christ.
God’s
creation is haunted and shimmers with the light
That
burst on the world in Jesus’ passion death and resurrection.
Some of
you were curious to hear me report on my experience in Rome.
I will
simply say the experience changed my life.
At the
end of the program, I spent a week in Florence
And one
day, a little shell-shocked by the mobs converging on Florence
in the Spring,
I turned
down a quiet nearly abandoned street near the Duomo.
As I
walked, my nerves a little frazzled,
I felt a
space suddenly open up to my left,
A cool,
shady, dark space and I turned my face toward it.
I was
looking into a doorway beside which was a brass plaque
That read
simply: “Dante’s Church”.
I shortly
learned that I was standing in the original 13th
cent.
Parish
church where Dante and Beatrice went to church on Sunday as
children,
The
church, amazingly, is virtually intact in its original
condition,
And as I
seated myself on a very primitive looking wooden bench,
I
imagined Dante sitting on that bench, spotting Beatrice seated
A few
rows ahead of him and gazing at her.
Giving
myself to this reverie,
I glanced
at the wall to my left and saw, only inches away from
Where my
knee was resting against the wall a few stone plaques
Bearing
the name “Portinari”, and on one the name
Beatrice
Portinari.
Inside
that stone wall against which me knee was resting,
Dante’s
beloved Beatrice.
This
experience was a kind of culmination of my whole Italian
experience.
Dante is
one of the greatest poets of all time,
Whose
greatest work, by his own testimony,
Was
inspired by the beauty of a girl
A girl he
saw for the first time when he was nine years old.
Her name
was Beatrice.
I was
sitting in the original parish church where on Sundays
Dante
would have met and gazed in awe at the young Beatrice.
Dante’s
experience of Beatrice
Has been
for many years, at the center of my reflection about God.
One
incident in particular.
One day
in May 1285, about nine years after D and seen B for the first
time,
He passed
her on a street in Florence
And the
18 year old Beatrice spoke to him for the first time,
Seeing
Dante, frozen in his spot as she passed by,
She
smiled – and, gave him a nod: a simple greeting,
Or, as
Dante will later write in the language of love:
“My lady
greeted me with ineffable courtesy such that
I then
seemed to see all the terms of beatitude . . .
Feeling
uniquely blessed by God, in B’s greeting,
Dante
returns home, falls asleep, and has a dream:
In the
dream, Love himself holds Beatrice in his arms,
Love
gives Beatrice Dante’s heart to eat
And then
Love begins to weep
And
slowly ascends with Beatrice up into heaven.
The
dream, as it turns out, is a prophecy
Revealing
that the world will not long know
The
beauty of this girl – she will die very young.
Awakening,
Dante
records the dream in a sonnet.
Copies of
which quickly circulate all over Florence.
Among the
written replies to his poem,
The most
important came from a young man D. called,
“The
first among his friends” – the poet and mentor
Guido
Cavalcanti.
Cavalcanti
replied with a sonnet of his own
Whose
opening words I read for the first time in college,
And which
have haunted me ever since:
“VEDESTE, AL MIO, PARERE, OMNE
VALORE.”
Referring
to Dante’s encounter with Beatrice he says:
“What you
saw, in my opinion, was a vision of all worth.”
A
stunning declaration. What is
Cavalcanti saying?
He is
saying:
EVERYTHING
GOOD AND WORTHY
THAT GOD
HAS EVER CREATED
EVERYTHING
THAT IS BEAUTIFUL
BE IT
PHYSICAL, MORAL, INTELLECTUAL OR SPIRITUAL
WAS MADE
VISIBLE TO YOU – IN THE FIGURE
OF THAT
BEAUTIFUL GIRL.
What you
saw – was a vision of ALL worth!
A short
time later, Dante passes Beatrice on the street again,
Walking
with a few girlfriends.
Seeing
his face blanche
And
evidence of the reverential awe with which he regarded her,
Beatrice
behaved the way one might expect most teenage girls to behave,
In
circumstances like that:
She
giggled, teased him a bit, and moved on.
The moment, was a turning point for
Dante.
He was,
of course, crushed – deeply, deeply distraught . . .
He had
been mocked . . . by Beatrice,
And lying
on his bed in agony, it all at once became clear to him,
It was
not his fate to be Beatrice’s lover or husband
Or to
possess or enjoy Beatrice as a man might wish who is in love.
His
vocation, he realized was what he would call:
“Praise
of my lady”.
He would
be a poet.
As a
poet, Dante would explore
The
insight given him that day in May 1283
On which
occasion he saw in Beatrice: “All the terms of Beatitude”.
The
result was The Divine Comedy,
One of
the greatest works of art ever created,
In which
Beatrice presides over Dante’s
Moral and
intellectual rehabilitation
Accompanying
him through Purgatory into Paradise,
Ushering
him finally into the Beatific vision itself.

Amalia Ciardi Duprè,
Beatrice and Dante
Bozzetto/Model for Statue, 'English' Cemetery, Florence
* * *
I am
fascinated by Dante’s experience of God and beatitude,
Because
it seems to have been made possible for him
In the
experience of the beauty of a girl.
He was,
able to, as it were, “read off” from Beatrice’s physical
image,
The
vision of God and Paradise
described in the Divine Comedy.
Dante is
proof that,
If you
are steeped in the truths of Christian revelation,
And look
with the proper disposition of faith and humility,
At the
beauty of just one of God’s creatures,
This
experience of your physical senses
Can
awaken your spiritual senses and lead you
To a
vision of the God revealed in
Jesus Christ.
This is a
radical proposition:
That
contemplation of the beauty of physical forms
Can be a
revelation of the God revealed to us
In the
man Jesus Christ.
I
remember sitting in my choir stall at Vigils one morning
As a
young novice who had come to the monastery
Without
having ever having read the bible,
And
hearing a monk get up to read:
“Ah, you
are beautiful, my beloved,
You are
beautiful!
Your EYES
are doves, behind your veil.
Your HAIR
is like a flock of goats
Streaming
down the mountains of Gilead.
Your
TEETH - are like a flock of ewes
to be shorn,
Which
come up from the washing,
All of
them big with twins, none of them thin and barren.
Your LIPS
are like a scarlet strand
Your
MOUTH is lovely,
Your
CHEEK is like a half pomegranate behind your veil.”
The
graphic descriptions continue of
The
bride’s neck, and her breasts . . .”
And I’m a
novice sitting there thinking
What on
earth are we listening to?
Is that
the bible?
Why is
the bible describing with undisguised delight
The
various parts of a beautiful woman’s body . . .
And why
are we reading this in church?
It would
be a long time
And only
with the help of Hans Urs Von Balthasar,
That I
would learn of the existence of: “THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
Theological
aesthetics is the study of beauty inspired
By
contemplation of God’s form given us in Christian revelation.
God is a
form – that is because at a moment long ago
When the
night was midway through its course
And the
whole world was still,
God’s
almighty Word leapt down from heaven to earth
And
became A FORM.
God
became a newborn child and on that night,
Theological
aesthetics was born.
Theological
aesthetics says:
All
reflection about aesthetics; all consideration of anything
That is
truly beautiful,
Takes as
it’s starting point THIS mystery:
That in
the person of Jesus Christ and most especially
In the
events of his passion, death, and glorious resurrection from
the dead,
GOD
HUMILIATED HIMSELF OUT OF LOVE FOR US . . .
And in God’s
humiliation, shown to human eyes, in Jesus Christ,
BEAUTY
WAS BORN.
God
became a form; a sensible form in the presence of witnesses;
A motley
little band of eye witnesses
To whose
eyes was shown the beauty of God.
Here,
brothers and sisters, is really the SCANDAL OF CHRISTIANITY,
Which I
offer as an object of reflection for you this week-end:
Imagine,
just imagine . . . we are a people who profess the belief
That by
becoming flesh
GOD IS
KNOWN MORE PERFECTLY
Than if
he had never become incarnate, and remained pure spirit.
Think
about that.
In flesh
and form, God is more perfectly and more fully known
Than the
angels knew him as pure spirit in heaven.
The
garment of human flesh actually uncovers God;
Sensible
form exposes the depths of God’s mystery to human eyes,
And makes
pure transcendence a relatively superficial experience of God.
Imagine!
Gregory
of Nyssa, ventures this amazing opinion - that
The
angels in heaven know God better now after having seen Him
Visible
in the person of Jesus Christ
And in
the church
of Jesus Christ
In us! Amazing!
* * *
So – what
I propose for you this week-end
Is that
you stay perched on top of that stone gargoyle
And with
our friend the philosopher, look around you with new eyes
At the
splendor of God’s creation as if you were
Enjoying
the sight for the very last time.
Having
disposed yourself to be receptive to the beauty of God’s
creation
I hope to
help you to a deeper appreciation and understanding
Of what
you are actually looking at in the beauty of the world around
you.
The
secret to this understanding is offered you in the Song of
Songs.
In what
follows, I’m going to draw on the writings of
Hans Urs
Von Balthasar and of the Mystic Denys the Areopagite
To
illumine for us how meditating on the Song of Songs
Can be a
path to contemplation of not just human
But
divine Beauty.
Contemplation
on the poetry of The Song of Songs
Is going
to draw you into the mystery of all mysteries:
That the
eternal God, creator of the world and of the starry heavens
Walked
among us as a man, and he was beautiful.
This
weekend I invite you to look at his beauty,
Beauty
not the beauty of an angel or a Platonic idea
Or
artistic imagining;
But the
beauty of a human being percieved by human senses,
And to
celebrate his beauty with the Bride of the Song of Songs
Who sees
him too and sings:
“His arms
are rods of gold, adorned with Chrysolites.
His body
is a work of ivory covered with sapphires.
His legs
are columns of marble resting on golden bases.
His
stature is like the trees of Lebanon,
Imposing
as cedars.
His mouth
is sweetness itself; he is all delight.
Such is
my lover, and such my friend.”
Saturday a.m. VISION OF SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE.
Wedding of GRACE and NATURE .
. .
ast night, by way of ushering you into this weekend
Contemplative
retreat, I pushed you out a window
And left
you perched on top of a stone carved gargoyle,
And I
recommended that you stay there for the duration of the
retreat,
Because
that uncomfortable perch is where our Cambridge professor
Realized,
that sensible things like ducks and sticks and rags and
clocks,
Are
revelations of the infinite mystery of God.
Our
professor experienced what I am going to call
A
CONVERSION TO FORMS,
By which
we mean, that poignant and sudden, heart stopping awareness
that
Forms,
the sensible forms of creatures destined to pass away
Are
precious, precious things, of inestimable value –
And that,
precisely AS sensible forms that are finite,
imperfect,
and destined to pass away,
They are
revelations of the eternal God.
This
conversion to forms; I believe, is required of anyone
Calling
himself a Christian: a follower of Jesus Christ
In whom
the eternal God appeared in a sensible form.
By way of
helping you toward this conversion to forms,
I invited
you to reflect on Dante’s experience of Beatrice . . .
A
Florentine girl in whose beauty Dante is said to have seen
A vision
of all worth – of everything good, worthy, and beautiful.
In the
Divine Comedy, fidelity to this experience
And years
spent contemplating the beauty of Beatrice
Will lead
Dante to the beatific vision,
A face to
face encounter with God.
This
brings us to an interesting question.
If, at
the end of the Divine Comedy,
Dante
stands in Paradise;
ecstatically joyful
Because
is soul is inundated with the fullness of the light of God’s
glory
Pouring
into it . . . – why is Beatrice
still there?
Why is
Beatrice still standing next to Dante
On the
threshold of the beatific vision itself?
Should
not the memory of a pretty girl
Have been
somehow left behind, dispensed with at this point,
Superseded
or - dissolved in the light of beatitude?
For me,
the question became very personal and urgent
That
morning at Vigils as a novice
Believing
that, having entered the monastery,
I had
left all that behind; come to the threshold of the absolute,
Only to
hear an elderly monk at 4:00 in the morning
Intone in
the darkness:
“Your
lips . . .”
And I
said to myself . . . it’s Beatrice. She’s
back!
How did
Beatrice get in here?
* * *
I invite
you to reflect on that question this week-end.
Why, as
Dante approaches the ultimate fulfillment of all human desire,
In the
enjoyment of the Beatific Vision,
Why – is
Beatrice still standing beside him?”
It is a
question that will prepare you to deal with
Another
question; perplexing in the very same way:
What is a
poem like the “Song of Songs” doing in the Bible?
The Song
is the last of the five books traditionally grouped together
As
“Wisdom” books – in the O.T. – note that:
Ancient Israel
regarded the Song of Songs as a book of “wisdom” . . .
But it is
quite unlike any book of Wisdom
Or any
other book in the whole bible – why?
Because
it is the only book in the entire bible whose expression
Is
entirely secular.
There is
here not a single mention of Yahweh,
Or Israel,
or even of religious belief.
The poem
is a straightforward very explicit celebration of physical
love
Between a
man and a woman.
What is
this book doing in the bible?
This was
precisely the question I asked myself as a novice,
And I
asked the question with a certain urgency.
I needed
an answer and quickly because the simple fact is
The
poetry of the Song of Songs was awakening in me
Deep
feelings – of the sort a newcomer to monastic life
Is apt to
regard with some anxiety.
The Song
of Songs, almost in spite of myself,
Was
calling forth from me a response,
It was
awakening and stirring my heart certain feelings,
Feelings
that have potential to carry a man away,
Carry him
outside himself toward an uncharted destiny.
“Let him
kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
More
delightful is your love than wine!
Your name
spoken is a spreading perfume – that is why all the maidens
love
you!
Draw me! We will follow you eagerly!
Bring me
O King to your chambers!”
So opens
the Song of Songs.
It is the
song of a woman in love
In love
with a man who is at moments elusive
And at
other moments appears quite suddenly and unbidden.
Her
lover’s tendency to appear unexpectedly
And just
as unexpectedly, disappear,
Has the
effect of intensifying the woman’s desire,
Filling
her with longing and moving her to sing a song
That is
an unabashed and expansive celebration of desire.
The
Bridegroom likewise lends his voice to this song of desire:
“Arise,
my beloved, my beautiful one, and come . . .
Oh my
dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the
secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me
see you,
Let me
hear your voice,
For your
voice is sweet – and you are lovely.”
On this
one point – all commentators on the Song of Songs
are in
agreement:
Jewish,
Christian, all pre-modern scriptural exegesis,
The
ancient rabbis; later Jewish commentators,
The
Fathers of the Church, medieval mystics,
The
Reformation commentators – all of them maintained
THIS POEM
BELONGS IN THE BIBLE
BECAUSE .
. . . THE LOVERS SPOKEN OF HERE
ARE ISRAEL
AND YAWHEH
Later:
CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH,
OR CHRIST AND THE BELIEVING SOUL . . .
Well
that’s nice. That’s - good to know . . . really, that’s
quite helpful!
That
helps guide us in interpreting the symbols in the poem . . .
It
probably will NOT help us much with the task
Of
integrating into our prayer life
The
powerful FEELINGS; the erotic feelings awakened in us
By the
poem.
Having
identified God as the Bridegroom and Israel as the Bride . . .
We have
not yet addressed the real challenge posed by this poem have
we?
The
challenge is not that it is symbolic,
But that
the symbols it employs are explicitly EROTIC.
The Song
of Songs is a celebration of erotic desire
And
succeeds so well at this, that it actually awakens
In you
and I an erotic response.
The
challenge, the real challenge,
Of the
Song of Songs for that novice sitting in choir
At 4:00 in the
morning was not keeping straight
The
meaning of the symbols in the poem
It was
that the symbols given such lively rendering awakened in him
The
memory of that girl in his Chaucer class at Hunter
College,
He hadn’t
thought about her in years – suddenly there she was!
That
beautiful girl who came to class one morning
Adorned
in that little wisp of a gold necklace
With the
tiny pendant that contrasted so exquisitely with the black
hair
Falling
all over her shoulders; that pendant bouncing and shimmering
Amidst
that ineffable fuzz of her lavender colored angora sweater,
From
which a sweet scent arose that wafted all around me,
The
effect of the whole making her look at that moment just
slightly prettier
Than
Christ coming in glory.
The
erotic poetry was awakening in the novice
An erotic
response.
It is the
power of the Song of Songs as poetry
To elicit
from us actual erotic feelings
That
makes this book of the bible a challenge
For most
of us – a challenge especially if we seek
As our
Cistercian fathers did to read the Song of Songs
As a
pathway to contemplation.
How can
erotic poetry this effective,
Poetry
that awakens THESE kind of feelings in us . . .
Be a
pathway to contemplation?
“You -
are a garden enclosed, my sister, my bride,
A
fountain sealed
Like a
park that puts forth pomegranates and all choice fruits
Nard and
saffron and calamus and cinnamon,
With all
kinds of incense Myrrh and Aloes
And all
the finest spices!
Arise,
north wind! Come south wind!
Blow upon
my garden
That it’s
perfumes may spread abroad.
Let my
lover come to his garden
And eat
its choice fruits.”
Oh my.
You and I
believe that God has summoned us
Together
with all His holy people
To enjoy
with Him a relationship of covenantal intimacy – forever . . .
Our
destiny is to be in covenant and to be intimate with God.
If every
other book in the bible helps you to know and think about
This
mystery of God summoning you to intimacy,
The Song
of Songs makes you FEEL that mystery;
You feel
God summoning you; feel it viscerally . . .
Listening
to this poem, We feel God’s summons
Welling
up from inside us; from the deepest darkest recesses
Of our
sexually differentiated human bodies.
The Song
of Songs is an invitation to respond to God
With your
intelligence, your feelings, your spirit, and your body . . .
WITH YOUR
WHOLE HUMANITY.
Now, I
have a hunch some of you might be feeling tempted, at this
point,
To draw
back a bit, from this somewhat provocative discussion. . .
Tempted
to run up those back stairs; up into your brain,
Into that
warm, quiet and secure study: your intellect.
Listening
to me talk, you may be tempted to relocate from the heart,
Back up
into your head where you can regard this whole erotic
experience,
With a
bit more detachment.
Having
gone “upstairs”, into your head, you may, if you like,
Begin to
reason with yourself:
“Yes, yes
of course Alberic – the divine “Ms. Angora . . .”
She was
the beatific vision twenty five years ago,
What do
you suppose she looks like now?
Surely,
you are aware Alberic, a woman’s beauty is fleeting –
And
changes . . . Oh so quickly – think about that . . .”
If, as
you read and meditate on the Song of Songs this week-end,
You hear
this voice begin to speak to you . . .
Remember
– who you are.
You are a
Cambridge
professor sitting on a gargoyle.
That’s
what we agreed – right?
We were
all going to spend the weekend sitting on that gargoyle.
You have
just been forced out a window at gunpoint
And are
watching the sun come up over the Cambridge campus
A world
of beautiful forms just beginning to be defined
Before
your wonderstruck eyes.
Be that Cambridge
professor sitting on a gargoyle,
And when
Reason says:
“Oh -
Pomegranates – schmomogranates!
Nard,
saffron, calamus, cinammon, myhrr and aloes . .
Oh
brother! What are all these, a
bunch of – weeds!
Here for
a while and gone – gone . . . Alberic
All
destined to wither and die and pass away,
And so
too the goddess in the angora sweater”
Be the Cambridge
professor, and
You will
know how to answer this voice:
“Oh yes,
yes - I know her beauty will pass away,
And it is
precisely that thought which here and now
Makes the
sight of her so enchanting as to be almost unbearable,
So that
in defiance of reason; in defiance of time itself
My heart
cries out to her cherished image before me:
“Oh stay
a while – please . . . please . . . you are so beautiful!”
I’m going
to encourage you this weekend to be receptive
And
welcoming to the feelings awakened in you by the Song of Songs
And to
peacefully and joyfully savor those feelings
Even if
at moments it allures you with a beauty
That is
actually painful.
This pain
isn’t going to hurt you and, accompanied by faith,
It can be
an incentive to surrender – surrender to God.
Surrender,
I would suggest, is where erotic feelings
Are
supposed to take you.
And so,
having invited you to enter deeply
Into the
feelings expressed in this erotic poem from the bible,
I’m going
to invite you to surrender to these feelings
Inwardly,
in contemplative wonder and with faith
That God
will guide you in this sweet darkness.
* * *
A human
guide that God has sent us
For
precisely this dark passage in our journey
Is the
mystic Denys the Areopagite,
A name
you may not be familiar with.
Von B
suggests he may be the most inspired aesthetic theologian
In the
history of Christianity,
The
Doctor of divine beauty par excellence.
From his
writing, I now offer you an insight
I would
go so far as to say that in the context of our week end
together
This is
THE KEY INSIGHT; the key to the mystery of the Song of Songs,
And the
guarantee of your efforts to make the Song of Songs,
A pathway
to contemplation.
If you
remember nothing else I say this week-end
Remember
this insight of Denys Areopagite
Who now
joins us on our retreat,
Who will
accompany you in your reading and prayer
And
addresses you now very personally.
Listen to
a spiritual master who understands so well
Better
than just about anyone, the depth and intensity of the erotic
feelings
Awakened
in you by this poetry and as a friend and guide
Says to
you across the ages:
HAVE YOU
EVER CONSIDERED THE POSSIBILITY THAT
THE
DEEPEST DESIRES OF YOUR HEART
HAVE
THEIR SOURCE IN THE HEART OF ANOTHER.
Listen to
what the master of divine beauty is saying:
HAVE YOU
EVER CONSIDERED THE POSSIBILITY THAT
THE
DEEPEST DESIRES OF YOUR HEART
HAVE
THEIR SOURCE IN THE HEART OF ANOTHER?
These
erotic feelings of yours; so very deep, so secret,
So
intensely personal as to seem unutterable
You are
sure they must be entirely your own – actually
Nothing
seems more your own than these erotic stirrings in your flesh;
So that
paradoxically, you never feel so alone as when experiencing
These
obscure erotic movements and you feel certain
These
feelings as nothing else ever could be
Are
completely YOUR OWN. . .
What if
they were not?
That is
what Denys is asking you to consider.
Doubtless
these erotic feelings are yours as EXPERIENCED by you . . .
But what
if you were to discover that these erotic feelings
Had their
source in the heart of One who is not you?
Denys is
pointing to the possibility of a new ending
A
completely new ending to the story of the Cambridge Professor,
An ending
much better than the one Chesterton wrote.
Close
your eyes and imagine this new ending to the story:
You are
perched on that gargoyle watching the sun come up
You say
to the man holding the gun “Let me come down. I can’t bear
this:”
He is
just about to accommodate you when
A
powerful wind rises up out of nowhere and buffets you
On your
precarious little perch; you wobble – oh no!
You’ve
lost your balance and you begin to fall . . .
And as
the story ends, you are falling
Falling
not to your death but into a new kind of life
Which you
were swept down into by that sudden rush of wind.
The wind
that just knocked you off your perch
And sends
you plummeting into an abyss of beauty and desire
Is this
amazing insight of Denys.
And I
invite you now to be still and let this wind
Buffet
you; Let that wind beat against you,
Until it
beats down all your powers of resistance:
Denys has
just revealed to you how to make the Song of Songs,
This poem
of erotic desire, a pathway to contemplation.
Only
consider the possibility, that:
THESE
DEEPEST DESIRES OF YOUR HEART
EVEN
THESE EROTIC DESIRES AWAKENED IN YOU
BY THE
POEM
HAVE
THEIR SOURCE IN THE HEART OF ANOTHER.
* * *
To
appreciate fully what Denys is saying
We need
to stop and consider that the word “Eros”,
Long
before that term was appropriated by our culture
To
designate a cheap thrill,
Was a
term used by philosophers and had a very precise meaning.
For Plato
and his followers, “Eros”
Was that
power inside us that draws us upward and out of ourselves
Toward
God.
Eros was
the name of our distinctively human capacity to be
transported;
Transported
outside ourselves toward another – ultimately, toward God.
With the
coming of Christ into the world
And the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit working in the saints,
A new
possibility emerges and Denys is a spokesman for it.
With
Christianity is introduced the notion of “Divine Eros.”
God’s
desire for us.
God’s
capacity to be transported OUT OF HIMSELF
TOWARD
US!
Denys
writes:
“The
divine eros brings rapture,
not
allowing them who are touched by it to belong to themselves,
but only
to the objects of their love . . .
and
hence, the great Paul, constrained by divine eros
and
having received a share in its ecstatic power,
says with
inspired utterance: “I live – and yet no longer I,
but
Christ lives in me.”
These are
the words of a true lover,
Of one
who, (as he himself states), WAS BESIDE HIMSELF
Out of
his senses and unto God;
Not
possessing a life of his own
But the
life of this Beloved;
As life
surrounded on all sides by ardent love.
For we
must dare to affirm, (for it is true),
That the
creator of the universe himself,
In his
beautiful and good eros towards the universe is
Through
his excessive erotic goodness,
TRANSPORTED
OUTSIDE HIMSELF,
In his
providential activities towards all things that have being,
And is
overcome, (God is overcome!)
By the
sweet spell of goodness and love and eros.
In this
manner God is DRAWN FROM his transcendent throne
Above all
things, in accordance with his super-essential
And his
ecstatic power whereby he nonetheless does not
Leave
himself behind.
Here, I
believe is the revelation of what is going on in the Song of
Songs:
GOD
TRANSPORTED OUT OF HIMSELF TOWARD US
BY HIS
SWEET EROTIC LOVE
AWAKENS
IN US THE RESPONSE OF EROTIC LOVE
AND MOVES
US TO BE TRANSPORTED OUT OF OURSELVES
TOWARD
ANOTHER AND ULTIMATELY TOWARD GOD.
We have
all, at some time in our lives
Been
“transported outside ourselves”.
We have
seen a beauty that caused us for a moment
Or a day
to be “away from ourselves”
So
absorbed in the beauty and attractiveness of another
That we
failed to take any thought of ourselves
Our
self-interest or even well-being,
And were
happy to repose completely in our
Enchantment
with the beloved other.
It is the
experience we call in our culture “falling in love”.
It is
easy enough to recognize it in the poetry of the Song of
Songs.
We feel
this man and this woman falling
Succumbing
each of them to the mysterious power
Which we
remember on a day took us away from ourselves
In a
sweet intoxication in every minute detail of
The
physical presence of a beautiful human being.
The Song
of Songs speaks to us, because the experience
Of erotic
love, of being transported outside oneself
Is a
universal human experience.
This
makes the Song of Songs a place where we can meet other human
beings
From
other places and epochs,
And all
of that is wonderful . . .
But we
are still, at this point, talking about a human mystery.
It is not
yet clear how this savoring of the power of erotic love
To hurl
us out of ourselves toward another,
Is
absorbtion in anything more than human experience.
And it is
not yet clear how immersion in the intoxication
Of this
distinctive human way of loving,
Given
expression in the Song of Songs,
Could be
a pathway to contemplation of divine reality.
Here, the
contribution of Denys is indispensable,
Because
Denys, inspired by something more than human insight,
Has just
suggested that GOD’S LOVE IS EROTIC.
GOD IS
TRANSPORTED outside himself by erotic love,
BY DESIRE
FOR US.
Do you
realize what that means?
That
means God, as the source of our very being,
Is
himself the origin of all OUR erotic feelings.
In our
erotic attractions; in those seismic shifts deep in our human
nature
IT IS
GOD’S going out of himself, and returning through us to
himself,
Moving
through our very being like energy waves through matter,
God’s
erotic LOVE making its way into the world
Passing
through our sexually differentiated bodies,
And
returning to God.
Now -
look again at the erotic feelings awakened in you
With a
new understanding.
Denys is
suggesting these erotic feelings which seem to arise
From the
depths of your being,
Actually
have their source in the heart of another.
Your
erotic feelings, though experienced by you,
Are not
finally your own.
Note –
our methodology here:
Denys is
communicating to us the content of divine revelelation:
God
transported out of himself in the incarnation
Erotic
love “drawing God down” from his throne
To show
himself in human flesh . . . to show us his body.
Enlightened
by revelation, we then revisit our own erotic experience
Those
erotic responses awakened in us by the Song of Songs.
We begin
with revelation – and THEN reflect on our erotic experience.
We do not
begin with erotic experience
We do not
commence our search for God by promoting
Savoring
and pursuing a more intense erotic experience
In the
hopes that by this means we will somehow “ascend” to
Prayer
and an experience of the transcendent God.
It has
been said addiction is actually the desperate and misguided
Search
for a spiritual experience an experience of the absolute . . .
Cultivating
erotic experience as a path to God
Is
probably what the sex addict is doing.
We are
doing theological aesthetics:
Taking
first the consideration of Christian revelation
And
inviting God to shed new light and meaning
On our
erotic experience.
Only with
revelation guiding our way, is eroticism
a gate to
contemplative experience;
Only as
believers sounding the depths of revealed truth
Can we
hope to “repose” or come to “rest” in erotic experience,
As
contemplatives.
We do not
put erotic experience first as something to be sought
As a good
in itself, that would be to
Attempt
to manipulate and force God’s free revelation of himself
To
anticipate God’s eros before it were actually revealed to us
in his Son.
Rather,
in theological aesthetics, we dispose ourselves to receive the
Son,
To wait
in reverence before the unfathomable mystery
Of our
divine lover and allow ourselves to be allured; drawn into
God’s
shadow; into God’s embrace where at last we rest serene,
As does
the Bride beneath the apple tree in the poem:
“As an
apple tree among the trees of the wood
So is my
lover among men.
I delight
to rest in his shadow,
And his
fruit is sweet to my mouth.
He brings
me into the banquet hall
And his
emblem over me is love.
Oh . .
strengthen me with raisin cakes,
Refresh
me with apples – for I am faint with love.
His left
hand is under my head
And his
right arm embraces me.
I adjure
you daughters of Jerusalem,
By the
gazelles and hinds of the field,
Do not
arouse, do not stir up love - before
its own time.”
Saturday afternoon: THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD’S
HIDDENESS,
IN
SONG OF SONGS – IN OUR CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER . . .
“
n my
bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves
I sought
him but I did not find him.
I will
rise then and go about the city;
In the
streets and crossings I will seek
Him whom
my heart loves.
I sought
him but I did not find him.
The
watchmen came upon me
As they
made their rounds of the city:
“Have you
seen him whom my heart loves?”
The Song
of Songs is not a poem about unrequited love . . .
It’s love
story with a happy ending – but like any good love story
There is
an anxious moment or two when the happy ending
Appears
to be in doubt . . .
Where as,
in most of the poem, the Bride is singing ecstatically
Of the
joy in possessing and physically enjoying the beloved of her
heart,
One night
– she loses him, and we need to attend very thoughtfully
To what
exactly is happening here;
In just
what precise sense does the Bride “lose” the Bridegroom . . .
?
“The
watchmen came upon me
As they
made their rounds of the city:
“Have you
seen him whom my heart loves?”
I had
hardly left them when – I FOUND HIM whom my heart loves.
I took
hold of him and would not let him go .
. .
Interestingly,
this scene parallels a much more famous scene
From the
gospel of St. John:
Mary
Magdalen on Easter morning; stands weeping outside Jesus’ tomb
Two
angels appear to her and ask her why she is crying:
“Because
they have taken away my Lord,
And I
don’t know where they have laid him.”
When she
had said this – she turned around
AND SHE
BEHELD JESUS STANDING THERE
BUT SHE
DID NOT KNOW IT WAS JESUS.
Again she
is asked; “Woman, why are you weeping”.
Mary
replies to a man she thinks is the gardener,
“Sir, if
you have removed him, tell me where you have laid him
And I
will take him away.”
“Mary”
“Rabboni!”
Mary was
looking for someone who had gone away . . .
But he
was THERE – he was standing right there beside her!
It seems
HER BELOVED WAS NOT AWAY but somehow
Concealed
from her sight . . . . HE WAS . . . HIDDEN.
So with
the Bride in the Song of Songs:
The
Bridegroom, it seems, is “HIDDEN” from her at moments.
When
suddenly she sees him again,
There is
not word about where he was – where he went off too . . .
Because .
. . he didn’t go anywhere – he was there . . .
He was
with her – and somehow hidden from her sight.
Taking
the Song of Songs as a whole,
This
difficulty of the Bride in finding the Bridegroom at moments,
Seems to
belong to the ESSENCE OF THIS ROMANCE.
And, as
people entering into this poem as a path to contemplation,
We have
to come to terms with this disconcerting aspect of the poem:
NOT THE
BRIDEGROOM’S ABSENCE,
But the
fact that, at moments, the Bride can’t see him –
And then,
a moment later, she sees him.
This is
no minor matter.
In the
context of an erotic and romantic relationship
The LOSS
OF THE SIGHT of the beloved is a crisis – am I right?
It’s
about the worse thing that can happen.
So - why,
in this otherwise blissfully happy poem of fulfillment . . .
Why is
there introduced into the poem this curious business
Of the
Bridegroom’s periodic invisibility?
The
question is related to one of the deepest questions any human
being
Can put
to God – a question as old as religion itself:
“My God –
where were you?”
It is one
of the deepest most anguishing questions of the human heart:
WHERE
DOES GOD GO WHEN WE DON’T SEE HIM.
AND IF HE
IS THERE – IF HE WAS RIGHT THERE ALL ALONG,
WHY DID
IT SEEM HE HAD DISAPPEARED?
Where
does God go, for days, for weeks, for months sometimes . . .
Where
does God go, when we can’t find him?
Faith
assures us God does not go away,
But
experience teaches us again and again that
His
presence is quite concealed from us.
I propose
beginning our reflection on this question,
Of the
Bridegroom’s concealment with a simple affirmation:
The God
we believe in, IS a hidden God.
God does
not only seem to us hidden –
The God
we worship IS hidden from us,
He is
eternally transcendent; ever greater; ever more mysterious;
The
horizon ever receding before us.
“Have you
seen Him whom my heart loves?”
The
mystery of God’s hiddenness, brothers and sisters, is a
mystery I believe,
Only a
baptized and believing Christian can fully enter into.
This is a
mystery whose fullness is realized with God’s incarnation in
flesh.
To enter
wholly into the mystery of God’s hiddenness,
You have
to believe; really believe fervently in the incarnation;
And then
you will begin to understand that
It is IN
THE INCARNATION ITSELF: God’s coming in the flesh,
That His
absolute hiddeness is given final, unsurpassable confirmation,
And in
the most astonishing and unexpected way:
GOD’S
HIDDENESS IS REVEALED ULTIMATELY
BY HIS
APPEARING TO US.
There is
a concealment darker than the darkest darkness:
It is
that darkness experienced in the discovery that God is
Standing
right in front of you – in the person of a gardener
It is the
darkness entered into when
God,
having come in the flesh, suffered our human death,
And then,
having been raised bodily from the dead,
Stands
visible before Mary’s eyes on Easter morning as a gardener.
God is
NEVER MORE HIDDEN, brothers and sisters;
Never
more hidden or more a mystery
Than at
that precise moment Mary will refer to later when she says:
“I have
seen Him – I have SEEN the Lord.”
Mary SAW
HIM . . . saw God standing in the garden,
And
seeing him there knew as she had never known before
That God
she worships IS A HIDDEN GOD.
This is a
mystery that can be fully grasped only by a believing
Christian.
V. B.
writes: “Every other religious project
Is
certain that one has to leave all forms behind
In order
to experience infinite light . . .
Christianity
is the ONLY RELIGION
IN WHICH
PERCEPTION OF FORM
IS NOT
OPPOSED TO THE EXPERIENCE OF INFINITE LIGHT
THAT IS
BECAUSE WE BELIEVE GOD, WHO IS INFINITE LIGHT
FREELY
SHOWED HIMSELF TO US IN A FORM.
What are
the implications of all this?
What
consequences does it have for our understanding
Of God’s
hiddeness in the Song of Songs
And in
the practice of contemplative prayer?
It means
that, we might need to revise or expand our notion
Of
contemplative prayer only as an experience of formlessness.
We need
to consider the possibility that, like the Bride of the Song,
We are
called to respond to our Beloved
With our
body and our senses as well as our intelligence;
With our
WHOLE HUMANITY.
The Song
of Songs does not begin as a story of Platonic love,
And it
will not end as one.
The Bride
is not interested in communing with her lover
In a
Cloud of Unknowing,
It is
true, she spends a few anxious moments in that cloud,
With
nothing but her desire driving her madly through the darkness
. . .
But there
is not the slightest suggestion in the poem that she ever
considered
Abiding
in the darkness, resting there;
Savoring
sightlessness as compensation for his absence.
On her
bed at night she seeks him whom her heart loves
She seeks
– and does not find him . . . .
Does she
turn over in bed and embrace the darkness?
Is the
darkness to be her lover?
She’ll
have none of that.
“I will
rise”, she says, and walk all over the city;
In the
streets and in the crossings I WILL SEEK HIM whom my heart
loves.
There is
no ambiguity here, she is only passing through the darkness
In an
effort to find someone; to enjoy again the sight of him
Whom her
heart loves,
And she
doesn’t look very long when she finds him
And cries
triumphantly:
“I TOOK
HOLD OF HIM AND WOULD NOT LET HIM GO.”
* * *
The
challenge of the Song of Songs for us as contemplatives, then,
Is it’s
celebration of God’s hiddeness in a form.
GOD’S
HIDDENESS IS REVEALED TO US ULTIMATELY
NOT IN
FORMLESSNESS AND EMPTINESS … BUT IN A FORM.
For many
spiritual seekers living in North
America today
This idea
is a novelty.
That is
because of a widespread belief arising from various
influences,
That a “pure” experience of God;
A
“direct”, “true”, ultimate” experience of God
Must be
one unmediated by sensible forms;
For one
seeking direct experience of God, sensible forms
Must be
“transcended” and finally, dispensed with.
This
investment in super sensible experience has been attested to
By our
mutual friend Fr. Michael Casey,
Who, in
recent years, has spoken of the importance indeed
The
central importance of that experience of God
Unmediated
by any sensible form: which he calls: “META-EXPERIENCE”.
Meta-experience
is experience of reality, of ultimate reality – of God,
Unmediated
by sensible forms or thoughts about forms,
In what
follows I’d like to examine this concept of “meta-experience”.
The term
is useful, and I think this is why he has hit on it,
Because
it is a very general term that can designate
A very
wide range of super sensible experiences:
Anything
from that of the seasoned Asian mystic
To that
of a person sitting outside on her deck one evening
Watching
the sunlight filter through the leaves overhead
And
having an experience of totality and goodness . . .
A
conviction that “meta-experience” is the purest, most direct
Experience
of God
Is going
to put you in a bind in your efforts to make the Song of Songs
A pathway
to contemplative prayer.
It will
not do to say: “Oh – but, meditating on the
Beautiful
images in the poem could be a PREPARATION
For the
more direct experience of God in the prayer of emptiness . . .
This is
to succumb to a fundamentally un-Christian idea:
That
God’s manifestion of himself in the humanity of Christ
Is only A
PRELIMINARY MOVEMENT toward a more mystical and direct
Contact
with God which finally dispenses with Christ’s humanity.
That will
not do.
As
Christians we believe that Christ HAS ASCENDED BODILY to
heaven
And sits
at the right hand of the Father adorned with his glorified
body,
With
which he will remain for all eternity.
Furthermore,
it is hard to see how, in preparation for prayer without
images,
One would
want to feed one’s imagination with
Exceedingly
vivid and erotic images of love between a man and woman.
Basil
Pennington one of the best known teachers of C.P.
Was my
abbot for two years and I watched him direct C.P. workshops.
Frequently,
a participant would propose doing Lectio Divina
As
preparation for C.P.
Basil
consistently discouraged people from doing this.
He
insisted that Lectio and C.P. are two distinctly different
Ways of
praying and you need to make up your mind to do one or the
other.
Lectio is
prayer with images, C.P. prayer that lets go of all images.
C.P. is a
meditative practice which cultivates metaexperience
Lectio
has as its aim not meta experience,
But what
I am going to call “ARCHETYPAL EXPERIENCE”.
I’m going
to propose that if we are to make the Song of Songs
A path to
contemplation we need to think of contemplative prayer
As a
quest not of “meta-experiencne”
But of
“ARCHETYPAL EXPERIENCE”.
This is a
concept I’ve taken from the writing of Von Balthasar.
What is
the difference between the two?
In both
meta experience and archetypal experience GOD IS HIDDEN.
That is
because the God we worship is a hidden God.
In
meta-experience God is hidden in formlessness.
In
archetypal experience, God is hidden in a form.
What do
we mean by “archetypal?”
Archetypal
is that which is first, seminal and primary,
That
which determines everything that comes after it.
What is
archetypal is so good, so true, so beautiful, so ultimate,
That the
only valid response to it is imitation.
The
supreme archetypal experience
The
supreme experience of God’s hiddeness in a form,
Is Jesus’
Christ THE MAN’S experience of God,
Jesus
Christ’s HUMAN experience of God.
Take a
moment and reflect about this:
You can
think of all BIBLICAL EXPERIENCE as
As
governed by the fact that the essentially invisible
And
unapproachable God enters the sphere of visible creatures
And NOT
by means of any intermediary being:
He enters
HIMSELF.
GOD
BECOMES VISIBLE.
The
entire bible, Old and New Testaments, proclaims that
Ours is a
Hidden God – and yet, a God, who has freely and lovingly
Elected
to show himself to us.
That’s
the good news of the Old And New Testament taken together.
God has
shown himself to us – first in signs
And
finally in shown us his very self unmediated
In the
person of his Son: Jesus Christ who will say to Phillip:
“He who
has seen me has seen the Father.”
What does
all this mean: it means -
God does
not become flesh so that we can become divine
In some
SECOND PROCESS that follows afterward.
God’s
incarnation is not merely preliminary to a second
More
“mystical” and direct encounter with God.
You and I
SHARE GOD’S DIVINE LIFE precisely IN
This one
only process of God becoming flesh.
It is
clear then that the world – THIS WORLD
The world
unfolding before the eyes of our astonished Cambridge
professor
On the
last morning of his life;
THIS
WORLD is the stage on which God has ordained
An
encounter between the whole God and the whole human person.
Jesus
Christ, our beloved Bridegroom, IS THE FORM;
THE
SENSIBLE FORM . . .
Of the
encounter between God and human beings in THIS world;
Precisely
as an individual human being living in the flesh.
The man
Jesus, then, a human being like you and I,
IS THE
ARCHETYPE and makes possible for you and I
A direct
encounter with God in his ARCHETYPAL EXPERIENCE
Of God as
a man;
His
experience of God’s hiddenness in a form.
Jesus’
archetypal experience of God has been made accessible to you
and I
Through
the testimony of EYE WITNESSES,
Men and
women who saw him, touched him, ate with him,
Heard him
preach; saw him heal; work miracles and raise the dead.
These EYE
witnesses’s SENSIBLE EXPERIENCE
Of the
incarnate word of God; their archetypal experience
Is
communicated to us in the life of the church
In the
sacraments in her doctrine and preaching
In
christian fellowship and in good works;
You and I
share in “archetypal experience” of the Apostles;
The
original human experience of God in sensible form.
Carol
Houselander, an English-born mystic of the last century
Said:
“The characteristic repression of our time,
Is the
repression of Christ in the hearts of men and women.”
What
Houselander is suggesting is that we today are people
Who tend
to “REPRESS” archetypal experience:
The
experience of God become visible in the person of Jesus
Christ.
The
appearance of Jesus in the world, changed everything
And most
of our contemporaries live as though the Christ event
Never
took place.
Banished
from polite conversation, Jesus Christ begins to fade
In
people’s consciousness and “disappears” –
He does
not go away – HE IS THERE, but we don’t see him.
When we
repress a reality, we do not eliminate it,
We simply
block it from consciousness and in so doing,
Make it
ten times more powerful influence in our life.
If you
are a man repressing your sexuality,
Nothing
in this world will so unglue you
As the
sight of a pretty girl walking by in a summer dress.
When
modern people repressed the Christ event,
They
become “Christ haunted” – like sleepwalkers
Wandering
the streets at night asking every passing stranger:
Have you
seen him whom my heart loves?
But he
has not gone away, He is there.
Brothers
and sisters, the God we worship IS a hidden God,
But that
does not mean we are banished to a life lived in darkness.
I would
like to suggest that contemplative prayer
Nurtured
by the poetry and images of the Song of Songs,
Is to the
prayer of emptiness what Spring is to Winter.
In the
Song of Songs, our lover’s voice becomes audible:
The
Bridegroom of the poem is calling us not to meta-experience,
And
experience of God in formlessness and emptiness,
But to
archetypal experience; to that original moment in history in
which
God made
himself visible in the humanity and life circumstances
Of Jesus
Christ and his apostles.
Here, in
the first appearances of God on earth,
Archetypal
experience opens up to the contemplative
A lovely
and flowering garden full of fascinating forms and textures,
Sounds,
colors, and sensations,
Like the
world unfolding before the eyes of our Cambridge professor
Perched
on his gargoyle.
The poem
is calling you to a renewed sense of wonder in
The life
of forms and their capacity to reveal to you the living God.
All of
this richly celebrated in the life of the church in her
doctrine
Her
liturgy and her sacraments.
Let the
voice of the Bridegroom enter your heart and allure you
Guide you
back to the richness of an experience of contemplation that
Engages
your whole humanity in an erotic encounter with the whole God
That you
may sing with the Bride:
“Hark my
lover, here he comes springing across the mountains,
Leaping
across the hills
My lover
is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Here he
stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows
Peering
through the lattices,
My lover
speaks; he says to me,
“Arise my
beloved, my beautiful one and come!
For see,
the winter is passed; the rains are over and gone
The
flowers appear on the earth,
The time
of pruning the vines has come,
And the
song of the dove is heard in our land.
The fig
tree puts forth its figs,
And the
vines in bloom give forth fragrance.
Arise, my
beloved, my beautiful one, and come!”
Sunday Morning: The Song
of Songs and the Ordinary.
he
talks you’ve had this weekend
Have been
presented at a fairly high EMOTIONAL PITCH:
We began
with a dramatic story of a Cambridge professor’s
“Conversion
to forms” as he watched the sun come up
Over the
Cambridge
campus sitting on a gargoyle
With a
gun pointed at his head.
We moved
from this reflection on the beauty of sensible forms in
general,
To the
unique beauty of a Florentine girl; Dante’s Beatrice
In whose
beauty he beheld a “vision of all worth.”
We
reflected on how Dante’s passion for Beatrice ultimately
Transformed
him and turned him into a poet . . .
All this
by way of entering into the passionate and erotic world
Of the
Song of Songs which we undertook to read
As a path
to contemplation of divine mysteries.
I have
invited you repeatedly to allow yourself to be touched and
stirred
By the
erotic poetry of the Song of Songs;
To let
yourself revisit images and experiences from your past
In which
were awakened your own capacity for erotic experience . . .
And
having encouraged you to revisit these powerful emotions,
I
introduced you to the prophetic utterances of
Denys the
Areopagite – the great mystic and theologian of God’s beauty.
Finally,
I offered you the notion of “archetypal experience”
As an
alternative to “meta-experience” so that
Reading
the Song of Songs, you might enter deeply
Into
contemplative prayer without necessarily turning away
From the
world of forms, which would basically negate
The whole
intent of the author of the Song of Songs.
I ended
by sounding in your ears the voice of the divine lover
himself,
So
evocative and alluring – beckoning to you: “Come my beloved .
.
The dark
winter now has ended,
Spring is
here and it is time for love.
I hope
this exercise of revisiting deep intense feelings;
Of
opening ourselves to the erotic language of the Song of Songs
And to
the possibility of a deeply contemplative and yet
Fully
human even sensual experience of God in contemplative prayer,
Has been
fruitful for you . . .
But I can
imagine one of you saying at this point:
“The
poetry is gorgeous, Fr. Alberic, the eroticism is all very
stimulating,
The
prospect of our being romanced by the incarnate Word
And
reveling in “Gods’ desire for us” as with a lover in the
Spring time . . .
All this
is quite thrilling as a possibility that might be realized in
our prayer,
But
frankly, the life most of us are leading, simply isn’t lived
At that
pitch of emotional intensity.
Life,
real life in the real world, lived out day by day,
Is for
most of us, not exactly what you would call an erotic
adventure.
We are
plodding along, doing the best we can to perform well in our
careers,
Raise
children, deal with aging, and health issues . . .
In
general, trying to make a decent life for ourselves and our
families
In the
time remaining to us in this world.
It’s all
very fine to spend a week-end delving into
The
stirring erotic imagery of the Song of Songs,
But it’s
not clear to us how the rapturous adventure imagined in the
poem
Is to be
realized for ordinary people living ordinary lives.
It is a
challenge worth addressing on our last day together,
And what
I propose is to look at one way in which
GOD’S
EROTIC passion for you and yours for God
Might
actually be realized, and was in fact realized
In the
context of a very regular and outwardly uneventful life.
I’m
talking about the life of St. Anthony the hermit,
The
granddaddy of Christian monasticism.
Now, you
may say, St. Anthony was an altogether extraordinary man
Who led
an extraordinary life – and it’s true his heroic witness has
inspired
Disciples
and imitators for many centuries . . .
And yet,
I would venture to say, Anthony’s actual daily life,
The
manner in which he lived alone in the desert over the course
Of so
many long years, was quite routine, undramatic and mundane.
There was
most certainly passion in Anthony’s life,
But what
was Anthony’s singular overriding passion?
It was
his almost superhuman commitment to and passion for
What he
called: “THE DISCIPLINE.”
Anthony
was in love with “the discipline”,
By which
he meant the discipline of the monastic way of life.
Actually,
we are told, in the early pages of St. Athanasius’
“Life of
St. Anthony” that:
Following
Anthony’s conversion and retreat to the desert:
“ALL THE
DESIRE AND ALL THE ENERGY HE POSSESSED
CONCERNED
THE EXERTION OF THE DISCIPLINE.”
Hear that
– hear what Athanasius is saying:
We’ve
talked a lot this week-end about DESIRE,
Anthony’s
desire, “all the desire he possessed” was for the discipline.
In light
of everything we’ve said this week-end concerning
The
power, and depth and intensity of erotic desire in us
And more
important GOD’s overflowing erotic desire for us . . .
This is
an amazing statement by Athanasius:
“ALL the
desire Anthony possessed was devoted to
the
exertion of the discipline.
Something
has happened to Anthony’s human and erotic desire;
Something
radical and transforming has taken place in this man.
What
happened to Anthony?
As you
may know, Anthony was orphaned as a young man.
We are
not told the exact circumstances but, it seems
He lost
both parents at once and quite suddenly
And,
though this may not have happened to us
We can
empathize with what must have been
His
feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty
Concerning
his future well-being.
We can
likewise imagine what it might have been like
For this
young man, recently orphaned whose world
Had
suddenly become so dark and uncertain,
To hear
the words of scripture read in church one morning:
“DO NOT
BE ANXIOUS ABOUT TOMORROW”,
Words
from the gospel of Matthew that, according to Athanasius,
Set in
motion Anthony’s conversion.
Is it
possible that this devout young man
Already
steeped in the practice of his faith,
Recently
devastated by the loss of both his parents
With
responsibility for a younger sister suddenly thrust upon him .
. .
Is it
possible that when Anthony heard these words, they
ADDRESSED
VERY POINTEDLY THE EXISTENTIAL FEAR
GRIPPING
HIM AT THAT CRUCIAL MOMENT IN HIS LIFE?
“Do not
be anxious about tomorrow – Anthony. . .”
May
Anthony have seen in these words
A VISION;
a vision of God’s beauty in a super-abundant mercy
Being
offered to him very personally?
This is a
little speculative – but also supported by the text . . .
What if,
hearing this scripture passage read,
ANTHONY
SUDDENLY BEHELD A VISION OF GOD’S BEAUTY
THE
BEAUTY OF A GRACIOUS GOD
WHO
PROVIDES FOR ALL ONE’S TOMORROWS
RIDDING
ONE’S HEART ONCE AN FOR ALL OF ANXIETY?
Would
Anthony at such a moment have not been quite ‘POSSESSED”
By an
experience of God’s SWEET EROS communicated to him
In the
midst of this personal crisis?
We have
heard Denys the Areopagite say that
God is
TRANSPORTED out of Himself by His erotic love and desire for
us.
Might the
reading of this scripture passage from Matthew
Have been
the occasion for Anthony’s being
TOUCHED,
DRAWN UP AND POSSESSED BY GOD’S DIVINE EROS;
Was this
the moment ANTHONY WAS VISITED
BY THE
DIVINE BRIDEGROOM
PEERING
IN THROUGH THE LATTICE AND SAYING:
“Arise my
beloved – arise and come!
The
winter is ended. It is
Springtime!?”
If I am
right about interpreting Anthony’s experience this way;
If his
famous hearing of Matthew’s gospel: “Do not be anxious about .
. .”
Really
was the moment when he was siezed by the awareness,
That God,
transported out of himself by his good eros
Was, that
moment, passing through him – then,
On the
basis of all we’ve said about erotic love,
God’s
eros should have caused Anthony to be likewise
Eroticized
- transported out of himself
In an
intense erotic response of his own.
Anthony,
at that moment, would have “fallen in love with God”
And
falling in love with God would ache with all his being
To give
expression to his own erotic desire for God . . .
And so –
what does Anthony do
Having
been possessed by God’s erotic love?
Does he
seek out the company of a woman?
Does he,
like Dante, become an inspired poet?
HE DOES
NONE OF THESE THINGS.
ANTHONY
BEGINS THE PRACTICE OF THE MONASTIC DISCIPLINE.
Athanasius’
narrative is really striking at this point:
Immediately
following the narration of his conversion
Following
the reading of St. Matthew’s gospel
Athanasius
writes: “He devoted himself from then on to the discipline . .
.”
And
again: “He disciplined himself in isolation . . .”
And
finally: “All the desire and all the energy he possessed
concerned
The
exertion of the discipline.”
Suddenly,
without further adieu
The basic
foundation stones of the monastic way of life
As we
know it today begin to appear one after the other in the
narrative,
All at
once, like the birth of a child the monastic way of life
arrives,
As almost
a finished product: we read:
“He
worked with his hands
He spent
what he made partly for bread and partly on those in need.
He prayed
constantly.
He paid
close attention to what he read in scripture.”
Note
what’s being narrated here:
ANTHONY
SIEZED BY THE SWEETNESS OF GOD’S EROTIC LOVE
RESPONDS
BY THE COMMENCING THE PRACTICE
OF THE
MONASTIC DISCIPLINE.
Here is
the point I want to stress,
That, for
the Grand-daddy of all Christian monks,
The
expression of an intense, overpowering experience
Of God’s
erotic love took the form of
A
commitment to a regular, disciplined life of
Manual
labor, almsgiving, regular prayer and lectio divina.
THE WHOLE
WEIGHT OF ANTHONY’S EROTIC RESPONSE
TO GOD
TAKES FORM IN HIS COMMITMENT TO A
RATHER
MUNDANE REGULAR MONASTIC LIFESTYLE.
In light
of all this,
We might
return to the image of our traumatized Cambridge philosopher
And
imagine him climbing down from his gargoyle,
Coming
back in the window,
Calling
the police; making his report;
Seeing
his assailant taken away in handcuffs;
Deciding
to take a shower, have some breakfast,
And
sitting there quietly sipping coffee afterward . . .
Reflecting
on how he will live from now on?
His life
has been changed in a moment,
What life
will he make for himself in light of what has happened?
Maybe,
he’ll decide to become a monk!
His
decision would be a shock to everyone who knew him,
But, in
light of our reflections this weekend
Would it
be such a big surprise to us?
Think
about it.
Due to
the trauma he suffered; the terrifying and rude awakening,
Our
professor was quite truthfully, beside himself on that
gargoyle,
Transcending
his old self, he became a new man.
Did his
experience not remind you very much
Of that
described by Denys the Areopagite
In the
text we looked at yesterday?
Go back
to the image of our friend sitting on the gargoyle,
Watching
the sun come up
His heart
aching with wonder at the newly discovered splendor
Of the
world all around him,
And
recall these words of Denys:
“THE
DIVINE EROS BRINGS RAPTURE
NOT
ALLOWING THEM WHO ARE TOUCHED BY IT
TO BELONG
TO THEMSELVES
BUT ONLY
TO THE OBJECTS OF THEIR LOVE . . .”
Erotic
love, God’s erotic desire for us - transports US out of
ourselves
So that,
we belong no longer to ourselves but to THE OBJECTS of our
love,
And here
I want you to note especially Deny’s use
Of the
PLURAL “Objects” – touched by God’s erotic love,
We feel
ourselves drawn powerfully to many, many diverse objects:
To gray
clouds turning pink;
To ducks,
to shimmering rain puddles, to rags and sticks and bones,
To the
gilt clock glimpsed in the space between the houses.
The Cambridge philosopher is becoming more
like St.
Paul
At this
moment of whom Denys has said:
“He was
beside himself – out of his senses,
And unto
God; not possessing a life of his own,
But the
life of the Beloved;
A LIFE
SURROUNDED ON ALL SIDES BY ARDENT LOVE.”
Now, in
Chesterton’s narrative, the philosopher
Does not
profess belief in the Christian God,
But it is
clear, he was overwhelmingly drawn to the beauty
Of many
objects as though suddenly aware that
His life
was surrounded on all sides by ardent love.
The point
here, is that, the experience of Divine Eros touching his
heart,
Had the
effect of
TRANSFORMING
THE PHILOSOPHER’S EXPERIENCE
OF THE
WHOLE CREATED ORDER
His
relationship with the student was transformed,
Because
his relationship with everything in existence had changed.
Imagine
for a moment how changed is the philosopher’s experience
From that
morning afterward
Of every
lamp and pencil and spoon he picks up.
He will
come to every object with a renewed reverence and wonder
And
seeing objects this way will use them differently
And
relating to every object and every person he meets
With
these new eyes and heart full of wonder,
He will
in subtle ways begin to transform those objects
And
transform those people he is meeting.
Divine
Eros having transformed him, will begin
Discreetly
and gently to transform everything and everyone
He comes
in contact with.
And so –
why should he not become a monk?
I am
going to suggest that the question of
How the
philosopher will live following his transforming
Experience
of God’s divine eros sitting on the gargoyle,
Is the
same question Anthony had to address
Following
his encounter with Divine Eros
In
Matthew’s text: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow”.
How would
Anthony order his life following such
A
transforming experience?
THE
ANSWER WAS – WITH THE DISCIPLINE.
Anthony’s
life, from that moment forward,
Was
concerned with the exertion of the monastic discipline,
And
having committed himself to this path,
Something
really extraordinary begins to happen:
Everything
Anthony picks up and everyone Anthony meets
Are
subtly transformed by their encounter with him.
The
transforming power of Divine Eros
Has
found, in Anthony, an outlet and is now seeping into the world
Transfiguring
everything it comes in contact with.
And so,
working with his hands, praying regularly,
Giving
alms to the poor,
Quietly
reading and meditating on sacred scripture –
The great
transformation begins,
And we
read a few lines later in Athanasius’ narrative:
“ALL
THOSE, THEN, WHO WERE FROM HIS VILLAGE
AND THOSE
GOOD PEOPLE WITH WHOM HE ASSOCIATED
SEEING
HIM LIVING THUS,
BEGAN TO
CALL HIM “GOD LOVED”
AND SOME
HAILED HIM AS “SON”
AND SOME
AS “BROTHER”.
Do you
hear what his neighbors are calling Anthony?
They are
calling him the very same names given to JESUS CHRIST.
Anthony
is becoming before their eyes another Christ,
And
everyone he comes in contact with him is being drawn
Into
discipleship and new life in Christ.
And so –
why should the Cambridge philosopher not become a
monk,
And being
a monk – become a tributary
Where
people come to drink the sweet transforming waters
Of Divine
Eros?
And if
him – then . . . why not you?
You gave
up the opportunity to spend this weekend
Enjoying
yourselves with various diversions in the world
To make a
contemplative retreat spent sitting on top of a gargoyle.
By God’s
grace, this was not a pointless exercise,
But will
help open your eyes to the realization that
The Song
of Songs is a beautiful poem,
Because
this world truly is a beautiful place – indescribably
beautiful,
As the
place where God’s desire for us
Is seen,
actually seen, taking form in countless objects
All
beckoning to us to draw nearer to the Bridegroom
Who
approaches us from all sides with ardent love.
I want to
say in conclusion that
Long
before this week-end, your eyes were already opened
To this
mystery.
What
makes Cistercian Associates distinctive,
What
makes you very special people; people graced in a unique way
Is this
instinct all of you share;
This
intuition that God has spoken to you intimately
And moved
you emotionally, even erotically to draw nearer to Him,
And that,
an effective and loving way to do this
Is to
embrace greater discipline in your life;
To order
your life more deliberately according to
Insights
and practices developed by monks over the centuries.
You are,
in other words, already living the romance.
Entering
into the mystery of the Song of Songs
As a path
to contemplation does not mean your life
Has to
become a dramatic erotic adventure,
Or your
days filled with intense emotion.
The
romance is playing itself out in your life already,
And has
been for some time.
Thanks be
to God for his good gifts to each of you!
Take what
I have shared this week-end as encouragement
As
quickening you along the way you have already chosen,
Relish
the sweet company of your Beloved
And know
that by these intimacies experienced
In the
most secret recesses of your heart
You are
affecting and changing the world around you
Giving
delight to God
And
winning the admiration of your Cistercian brothers and sisters
In the
monastery
May God
bless each of you!
QUESTIONS
FOR
REFLECTION
ON
THE
MYSTERY
OF
GOD’S BEAUTY.
ans Urs Von Balthasar has
said that the three traditional “transcendentals” of
Scholastic Theology: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, might
be thought of as three sisters. During
the past two hundred years or so, in the Catholic church,
these three sisters have been journeying together toward
Christ, but,– alas . . . one of them has been left behind. Beauty, somehow got left behind by
Catholic theology and she is screaming. Why?
Because, Von Balthasar says, “SHE WILL NOT BE
SEPARATED FROM HER SISTERS!” Truth,
Goodness, and Beauty are SISTERS. They
are intimately, permanently, irrevocably related. Sisters belong together, and if you try to
separate them – you will be sorry. There’s
going to be a scene.
In light of this evocative parable, and by way of disposing
yourselves for a deep encounter with the poetry of
the “Song of Songs”, reflect on the following questions:
What is
MY OWN RELATIONSHIP with the “third sister”?
When and
how do I ACKNOWLEDGE HER role:
In my
reflection about my faith?
In the
living of my life as a Christian and Associate Cistercian?
When was
the last time I SEATED MYSELF AT HER FEET in all humility
and
with rapt attention and invited her to teach me her secrets?
Is Beauty
a WELCOME COMPANION on my journey?
Do I view
Beauty as a TRUSTWORTHY GUIDE, as I most assuredly do her
sisters Goodness and Truth?
Do I
TRUST Beauty?
DENYS THE
AREOPAGITE
he Divine Eros brings
rapture, not allowing them who are touched by it to belong to
themselves, but only to the objects of their love, and hence
the great Paul, constrained by Divine Eros, and having
received a share in its ecstatic power, says with inspired
utterance: “I live – and yet, no longer I, but Christ lives in
me. These are the words of a true lover, of one who, (as he
himself states), was beside himself – out of his senses and
unto God; not possessing a life of his own, but the life of
the Beloved; a life surrounded on all sides by ardent love.”
For we must dare to affirm, (for it is true), that the
Creator of the universe himself, in his beautiful and good
eros towards the universe is, through his excessive erotic
goodness, transported outside himself, in his providential
activities towards all things that have being, and is overcome
by the sweet spell of goodness and love and eros. In this
manner, God is drawn from His transcendent throne above all
things in accordance with his super-essential and his ecstatic
power whereby he nonetheless does not leave Himself behind.”

Mount Grace Priory,
Yorkshire
JULIAN OF NORWICH,
HER SHOWING OF LOVE AND ITS CONTEXTS ©1997-2019 JULIA BOLTON
HOLLOWAY || JULIAN OF NORWICH
|| SHOWING
OF LOVE || HER TEXTS
|| HER SELF || ABOUT HER TEXTS || BEFORE JULIAN || HER CONTEMPORARIES || AFTER JULIAN || JULIAN IN OUR TIME || ST BIRGITTA OF
SWEDEN || BIBLE AND WOMEN || EQUALLY IN GOD'S IMAGE || MIRROR OF SAINTS || BENEDICTINISM || THE CLOISTER || ITS SCRIPTORIUM || AMHERST
MANUSCRIPT || PRAYER||
CATALOGUE AND
PORTFOLIO (HANDCRAFTS, BOOKS ) || BOOK REVIEWS || BIBLIOGRAPHY || BENEDICTINISM
PORTAL