Without support yet with support, Living without Light, in Darkness, I am wholly being consumed by Love...
I have said an eternal goodbye
To the world (what extreme happiness)!......Lifted higher than myself,
I have no other Support than my God.
And now I proclaim:
What I value near Him
Is to see and feel my soul
Supported without any support!...
Though I suffer without Light
In this life which lasts but a day,
At least on earth I possess
The heavenly life of Love...
In the way I have to walk,
Lies more than one danger,
But for Love I am willing to live
In exile's Shadows.
Love, I have experienced it,
Knows how to use (what power!)
The good and the bad it finds in me.
It transforms my soul into itself.
This Fire burning in my soul
Penetrates my heart forever.
Thus in its delightful flame
I am being wholly consumed by Love!...
A Gloss on the Divine, Spiritual Poems, St. John of the Cross
Can I get an "Amen"?
Read it here, a much more lovely translation. You have to scroll down about three quarters of the way to "A Gloss with Spiritual Meaning," but this pdf link looks to be all his poetry.
Very interesting; I have never seen this before, probably because I was not ready for it and therefore overlooked it. Previously I devoured all the Ascent and Night writings because they helped me suffer joyfully. Living Flame of Love was the happy, light-filled account I shared in Timid Step Into Dawn. This is different. A dark God beyond the Night: a dark union.
Very providential, as all things are, are they not? For those of you who want to keep up with this line of posts, the ? darkness of union, I am compiling them under the "union" tag/label at the bottom right of the page. I will continue to return to this thread periodically as God adds "light" to the discussion.
Posts
14 comments:
AMEN!
So beautiful and so full of hope!
I had eskimos and baseball on the mind this weekend...now there's a crazy combo for you. I'll add it to your Union thread if I can steal a few minutes later today/tonight.
Love, Dave
(a grateful soldier in your Legion of 52)
Can't wait to hear...Hurry!
Please bear with me for a moment with a little background note: I’m a visual learner, and, I’ll confess to you and to our 51 compatriots: it’s not always a good thing...just ask my wife. She can give me the same instructions 20 times, and it will not have made any more impact on the 20th time than it did on the first. However, if she can somehow equate it to the Amazonian fresh water jelly fish (no matter if such a creature exists), then I’ve got it! ...right down to the minutia. Hence my reliance on metaphors and parables (btw: thank you, Jesus, for those).
This weekend, while my son and I began renovations to our front porch, and after I prayed for the required confidence from a certain Carpenter friend of ours, I got to thinking about faith, specifically our faith journey…and this led me to the Inuit (yes, that’s pretty random, I know).
The Inuit have at least a dozen terms for snow, and, I love that, because we in the New England know that snow comes in many flavors, but here the English language fail us. It’s truly inadequate at times, i.e. “snow” and likewise “faith.” Like snow, faith has flavors as well, and we use this one term wantonly to describe so many different types of faith.
Faith type #1: infants and babies (another round of applause to my kids for teaching me this) – talk about “utter abandonment.” Their life is pure faith and their faith is pure; faith that they will be loved, fed, bathed…with no expectations other than for those true necessities.
Faith type #2: pre-schoolers. My 3 year old (Elijah) was out looking for 4-leaf clovers while his big brother and I were banging nails. Now, we wise adults know better than to put hope in such a task, and we will smile and exchange sidewise winks to each other. But the thing is…it’s Eli who’s right; for somewhere out there, maybe even in our own yard, there IS, in fact, a 4-leaf clover, and he’s enthralled merely by the hunt.
Then it starts to get messy.
Faith type #3: teenagers. At this point they’re smart. They’ve layered over their faith with “knowledge,” and, often, with an overly abundant sense of self-confidence. Enough said…we were there.
Faith type #4: early adulthood: It’s an obstacle course and life begins to throw a few curve balls. It’s time to pull out the faith that had been stored in the back of the closet behind yearbooks and 10 year old soccer cleats.
Faith type #5: stagnation. After surviving the afore-blogged-about dark night, I thought I had enough God. I went to church regularly and prayed regularly. I was doing fine…in good shape really…standing on 3rd base, so proud to have run that far (yes, I confess: pride!)…standing…standing…woohoo! …taunting the competition. Look at me, I’m on 3rd! What I didn’t realize at the time was that the “competition” had convinced me that 3rd base was far enough, all the while, our Coach had been trying to tell me to run to home plate: “There’s a lot more to the game. Steal home and get back at bat!”
Now it gets interesting.
Faith types #6, 7 & 8: faith that once again becomes knowledge; faith that can inebriate (that was utterly sublime!), & faith as Union.
Faith sub-categories: here’s the crux of this overly rambling essay, and here’s where I most need your help and that of the rest of our Legion of 52. You mentioned the difference between St. John’s darkness and that of yours and Mother Theresa’s. Could it be that men and women yearn for faith in slightly different ways? I don’t know…just conjecture here, and please, please pardon the generalizations: women have such profound and, yes, even enviable yearning, but men experience yearning and expectations differently…something that’s generally true in the profane world. Could this be similar in the sacred? And, if it is true…I’m sure He has a really, really good reason for it.
Faith types #9, 10 & 11: I don’t have a clue, but I'm looking forward to the hunt!
Looking for a 4-leaf clover for you,
Dave
There are only a couple days during the week when I can manage to sneak out of the office for a bona fide lunch hour. And often, upon stepping out of the front door of the office, I let the Holy Spirit take me somewhere. Literally, I’ll stand on the sidewalk for the briefest of moments (“brief” is key to avoid being plowed over on the sidewalks of Boston) and purge, trying to create emptiness that is reserved only for Him during that hour.
This Wednesday, we went to a park – it’s a spectacular park just across the Charles River Dam in Charlestown. It was built as part of our infamous Big Dig, thanks to all of your taxpayer dollars (really, thank you all!). We sat down next to a winding walk that formed the edge of a slope of filled will daffodils. Spring is so full of His glory, and this was our mantra, staring at a single daffodil.
This is what He had me write for you all:
Easter Breaths
By His breath
The winter blanket removed
and from the lifeless brown I
struggled forth and
burst.
One in a sea of 10,000 daffodils
Six petals pure white
silken snow borne from snow
a pair of white Trinity
clasping a golden trumpet
fringed in scarlet.
My vanity
Gentle Gardener,
my vanity sings but of Your glory
Please, my Gardener, be pleased
His breath so soft.
I lift my trumpet
to Him
nodding
You exist, my Gardener, You exist
He breathes again
gently.
I and the sea of 10,000
nodding
in syncopated rhythm
You exist, our Gardener, You exist
Your hope is ours
that mournful man may
stop and gaze and listen.
And nod.
Our vanity is but for Him
He exists, our Gardener, He exists
By May’s approach, we
mirror yet inversely our Gardener’s son.
In 3 day’s time
our silken snow will melt
brown.
Trumpets silent.
Chaff
A gentle Breath
And we 10,000 relinquish the song
to daylilies and daisies
who will sing and sing their vanity
and sing our melody
the song of the Gardener’s glory.
While we 10,000 sleep.
Content
With love for a joyous weekend – get out there, be empty for Him and enjoy!
Your brother
Dave, Yes, I KNOW you're right. I have actually thought a lot about that myself. What I don't know is how men and women's yearnings are different. I only know women, (generally).
I have thought a bit about John of the Cross, and how his writing is from a feminine point of view, NOT effeminate, but a receiver. Women receive, men give (in the physical realm), but we are all oriented as receivers toward God.
So JoC was writing things that women, especially, identify with. The yearnings he writes about are so actual. Women channel those yearnings into relationships with men. Their "literature" (racy novels, soap operas) is full of this yearning for relationship, misdirected.
As far as I can tell, men's yearnings have to do with intimacy too, but differently. Their "literature" (porn, ahem) is all visual, hence the lack of words.
So you tell me; what were you thinking exactly when you wrote that. You can see my yearning has been for cosmic, eternal purpose. That seems more masculine than feminine. But that took a back seat to the yearning for union with God until it occurred. What's yours, and how is it similar to other men and different from women, do you think?
Sonja,
[Thanks BTW for featuring the poem…all for Him.]
Union for me was akin to inebriation. It was a wildly beautiful and heady experience. It was so sublime…leaves you full and, yes, yearning, like you get a faint scent of something that doesn’t exist here…a call with an unparalleled purity. And it does leave you questioning: wow, where to from here?
The challenge is in the descent back down to earth, right? It’s that particular earthward ride that got me thinking about men vs. women. Our Lord constantly reminds me that my role is in the trenches. So after a couple experiences, I know where to head with no expectations other than to wait for further orders. To me, the feeling is more soldier-like than spouse-like…that’s the genesis of my question to you about men vs. women.
St. Catherine told us that God may choose at times to remove His consolation but never His grace. More than once during periods like that, I’ve relied on this wisdom that she shared with us and “just keep swimming” (if you’ll allow me to create a metaphor out of a quote by Dory from Finding Nemo).
Also, I’m not sure that we can find our eternal purpose by looking directly for it…and likewise Union. It might be like the elusive island that Sinbad has to get to - he can’t get there by setting it as a destination; he has to find it serendipitously. May I make a suggestion? Try changing your scale. Refocus and redirect. Find Him in the serendipity of His creation. Find Him in flowers and in woolly bear caterpillars and in falcons and in dew-covered grass (I recommend going barefoot) and in the making of coon skin caps. Simplify and find Him like your boys do in their love for you.
Have a joy-filled weekend.
Love and hugs, Dave
Hey, I left a comment! I guess I didn't click "publish your comment" ! Give me a bit and I will get back to it...Irritated,
Sorry to hear about your techno-trouble last night. I hope the resulting irritation dissipated with the sunrise.
Warm regards and prayers for ya,
Dave
Happy St. Catherine's day! She has had such a profound influence on me. There is so much to learn! And she helped this particularly ignorant student become slightly less so.
Bless her Lord. Bless her for the Diaglogue, and bless her for her sufferings. She's been a good teacher.
Humbly.
POTA, (thanks to Len for that moniker)
What an incredible spring day…showing off His glory again!!! Go out, dance and rejoice in it, “skip about like calves from the stall”, romp and get fat in its bounty. Store up its goodness, for we grown-ups know that winter will come again and come all too soon. [The consolations of winter are there but He makes us work for ‘em. It’s in the labor of winter that we are strengthened, and just when we thought March would never end, BAM, spring arrives to refresh!]
Check out Lamentations 3:19-32.
Love, prayers and hugs.
Hi, Sonja,
Not sure if you check these older posts any more...regardless...typing, typing.
A quick note as a reminder that He's walking with you even in what feels like darkness...and I'm tagging along too, a faithful puppy dog - encouraging you.
Hey look what I found in the Dialogue last night:
"I even give equally to the sinner and the righteous man, and often more to the sinner than to the righteous man, because the righteous man is able to endure privation, and I take from him the goods of the world that he may the more abundantly enjoy the goods of heaven."
Yikes, I always knew He had it in for me. (kidding!)I know it's true, but it's SO HARD!! (whining). I trust Him with it, though. Whatever happens I will make it, with His grace. POTA
I got so much out of the chat we "abnormals" had scale - how He measures things differently. Your last two sentences above - only 15 words - but they speak volumes!!! Amen, Sonja, amen.
Have a joyful weekend. Enjoy your feathered neighbors.
Peace and love.
Post a Comment