Life’s Moments

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Ancient Songs Sung Anew, hold me up, listen, Lynn Bauman, optimism, poet, prize of life, psalm 16, speak, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There are many beautiful lines in Psalm 16 and many songs written from its contents. It speaks of a poet who finds confidence in relationship with God, regardless of outer circumstances. Here are a few lines from the translation by Lynn Bauman:

I am here to listen to your counsel, Lord, your inner teachings of the heart. Day after day, night after night, you speak through everything. You are the prize of life, the goal, the hidden good. You take my hand in yours and hold me up, and fill my heart to overflowing. This body-mind, this spirit, all are yours and each part finds a place to rest in you…From birth to death you are the path I walk upon, and you’re the guide who leads me through and far beyond, into your Presence, Lord, right next to you, which fills me full, my highest joy, my purest good.

Bauman’s commentary on the psalm offers an interesting challenge. In part, he says, “In this psalm the poet is living life to the full and has a deep sense of optimism. It is God’s presence, filling the cup of life, that makes reality like it is for the psalmist…What moments of your life have been like this for you?  If, in this moment you are not experiencing this same kind of deep, satisfying delight, then express the reality of your heart to God as honestly and as beautifully as you possibly can. Does telling God this make a difference?” (Ancient Songs Sung Anew, p.36)

Let us think on these things…

 

 

 

 

 

Of Words and Voice

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desire, God, Kahlil Gibran, love, mystic, Mystic of the Month, poet, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, understanding, voice, winged heart

Last evening, at our Mystic of the Month gathering, I – and some of the attendees – reconnected with Kahlil Gibran, a mystical poet and “old friend” who lived from 1883 to 1931 and whose work was quite popular in the 1960s and ’70s. The most well-known of his books is The Prophet which contains 26 short, poetic essays on aspects and issues of life. It was a very meaningful text for those of us who grew up in the ’60s and I was happy to have a conversation about Gibran and his work.

The most meaningful part of the presentation, however, for me and the participants was the reading aloud of some key passages in a few of the essays. The process reminded me of how voice adds meaning to words. One of the women present spoke of the different interpretation she noted from her own previous understanding when I read a section. Hearing it aloud with my inflection made all the difference. So now I will copy a few lines of the essay on love and hope that in some places in the world there will be voices raised in praise of Love, bringing beauty and peace to this day.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.” And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: to melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night, to know the pain of too much tenderness, to be wounded by your own understanding of love; and to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving…

John of the Cross

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asceticism, being of light, Carmelite, light, Mark, mystic, mysticism, paschal mystery, poet, reformer, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theologian, Thomas Merton

The biography of St. John of the Cross reads with more twists and turns than a complex novel. It would be foolish of me to try to capsulize it here. Suffice it for me to say that the play of light and darkness was the constant of his years as I yield to other sources for comment.

Americancatholic.org summarizes his life in the following way: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (MK 8:34b) is the story of John’s life. The Paschal Mystery – through death to life – strongly marks John as reformer, mystic-poet, and theologian priest. Thomas Merton said of John: “Just as we can never separate asceticism from mysticism, so in St. John of the Cross we find darkness and light, suffering and joy, sacrifice and love united together so closely that they seem at times to be identified.” As John himself expressed it: “Never was a fount so clear, undimmed and bright; from it alone I know proceeds all light although ’tis night.”

Only one note would I add to these intimations of the seamlessness of seeming opposites in his life, that being the value of feminine influence, most visibly of St. Teresa of Avila, for his spiritual development and understanding of the unity of all things in God. The contribution to the mystical stream and religious life of Christianity by these two saints is vast, something to celebrate with all Carmelite monks and nuns in the world on this feast of John of the Cross.