Richard pursued an immediate, personal communion of the soul with the Infinite God. While scholastics of the Middle Ages sought knowledge of God through natural reason, contemplative mystics like Richard found God primarily through experience--by adoration above logical analysis, with the heart above the intellect, through spiritual feelings beyond the strict demands of logic. It might be simplistic to say that mystics are characterized by the word devotion, scholastics by speculation.
So, turning to the reading, what does Richard have to say to us today? A few questions to begin the discussion:
How can we deal with any embarrassment we may feel about Richard of St. Victor's love language? Or biblical love language?
What spiritual benefits might we discover by thinking of God as a sweetheart or a spouse?
What role does the head play in your spiritual life? What role does the heart play?
How do you think about Richard's images:
the One waiting
the distracting crowd
the progression into intimacy: hearing, seeing, kissing, falling into divine sweetness?
If you would like internet access to this reading, email karen: info@theologicalhorizons.org
next week: Dorothy Day & Matthew 25: 31-46
2 comments:
The mystical eroticism and rich imagery Richard offers is that for which I suspect we all long in the holiness of relationship. Why does it seem so impossible in our time? Is it the intensity of time that makes it seem so impossible to grasp the sacredness of relationship in the imagery of the loved and the lover? "A very small, brief delay--I shall not say of a year, nor shall I say of a month or a day--is troublesome enough to the longing of one who is impatient". Ha! Today I might write--'I shall not say an hour, nor shall I say a minute or a second'. Has the compression of time intensified eroticism, displacing it from sacred to pornography. Interestingly, the discussion questions for this reading admit to this--"How can we deal with any embarrassment we may feel about Richard of St. Victor's love language? Or of biblical love language?" Cannot the absolute burning passion of erotic and physical love not honestly reflect the passion of relationship with God/with humanity? Yet,instead, in the frenetic burn-out of modernity, we twist this passion into something that becomes abusive and useless--quickly spent. What have we lost? What did Richard and his time know?
Reading this passage reminded me of my seminary professor's statement that Song of Songs was the text most preached upon in the midieval church. He explained that the imagery of marriage and sexual love were felt to be central to understanding God's love for and pursuit of his church.
We have lost this ease with metaphor and poetry. We now prefer the intellectual exercise of wrestling with Pauline doctrine.
But I find the idea of Jesus as lover of my soul fits my experience of faith in a very satisfying way. I see, when I am looking for them, many tokens of God's love for me in my life. Love notes, one might call them. Things God does for me that I have never asked for in prayer or even mentioned verbally as desires and yet he who knows my secret heart knows they wil please me. Our home by the water in Florida is one example. I have always loved the beach but was initially dismayed when we moved to Florida. It was a strange place to me. But now I see how God granted me the desire of my heart in placing me near the beach. Walking by the beach now gives me that same spiritual sense of peace it did when I was young, but now instead of longing to be able to be there more often, I feel so filled with God's goodness in granting this privilege to me as a regular part of life.
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