The Beloved

Rumi:

One went to the door of the Beloved and
knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is I.'
The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'
The man said, 'It is Thee.'
The door was opened.

Red, and etc.

As the perfect finishing touch of the disguise, the soul puts on the precious red cloak of charity. The third virtue lends elegance to the other two and lifts the soul near to God. The red cloak of charity makes the bride so alluring to her Beloved that she dares to say: “Although I am black, O daughters of Jerusalem, I am beautiful and so the king has loved me and brought me to his chamber.”

The cloak of charity is a mantle of love. It heightens love for the Beloved. It protects and conceals the soul from her third adversary: the animal nature. Where there is true love of God, the urge for self-gratification and the attachment to one’s own things cannot enter. Charity strengthens and revitalizes the other virtues. It renders them more genuine. It graces them with loveliness and deeply pleases God. The Song of Songs calls charity the seat draped in purple on which God rests.

The three-colored virtues prepare the three faculties of mind, memory, and will for union with God. Faith darkens and empties the mind of all natural understanding and so prepares it for union with divine wisdom. Hope pulls the memory away from all creature attachments. St. Paul says that hope is for that which one does not have. And so it withdraws the memory from the ordinary things that can be possessed and focuses it on the glory the soul hopes for. Charity annihilates the appetites of the will, ruining the soul’s taste for anything that is not God. Charity centers the desires on God alone. Charity cultivates the will and merges it with God through love.

The virtues separate the soul from all that is less than God; their purpose is to join her with God. Unless the soul walks sincerely in these three virtues, it is impossible for her to reach perfect union with God through love. It is vital for the soul to wear this disguise if she is to reach her goal, which is sweet and loving union with the Beloved. It was a blessed chance the soul took when she put on this disguise and stayed with it until the end of her journey. That is why she cries out in the next verse, “O exquisite risk!”

Green

Over the white robe of faith, the soul spread a green shawl of hope. Draped in hope, she is liberated from her second adversary: the world. This is the green of living hope in God; it fills her heart with courage. Hope lifts the soul to the sphere of eternal life. In comparison with these divine aspirations, all earthly things seem withered and worthless. The soul cannot take back her worldly wardrobe. She can no longer focus her desire on anything that was, is, or will be in the world. She lives wrapped in hope for nothing less than the infinite. Her heart is so transported that she cannot touch earthly things. She can’t even see them.

St. Paul calls this green disguise the “helmet of salvation.” A helmet protects the whole head. It covers it entirely, except for a visor to peek out of. Hope shrouds the mind’s senses so that they will not become absorbed in worldly things. Shielded by hope, no arrow from the world can wound the soul. Hope opens a visor in the soul through which she can look only toward the divine. David says: “Just as the eyes of the handmaid are fixed on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes fixed on our God until he has mercy on us who hope in him.”

Wearing the luminous green shawl, gazing perpetually upon God and nothing else, content only with him, the soul brings delight to her Beloved, and he gives her all that she hopes for. Without this green shawl of hope in God alone, the soul might as well not even start out on her journey of love. It is unrelenting hope that moves and overcomes all obstacles.

White

The inner robe of faith is pure white: radiant, blinding to the eye of the discursive mind. It is the foundation of all the other virtues. Clothed in faith, the soul is protected from the Fallen One. Dressed in white, the soul captures the heart of her Beloved and attains union with him. Without faith, says, the Apostle, it is impossible to please God; with faith, he says, it is impossible not to. It is as if God were saying to the soul: If you desire union with me, come clad in faith beneath everything.

The soul was wearing the white robe of faith when she went out into the dark night and traveled the dangerous depths of inner emptiness. There was no comfort for her senses, no light for her intellect. No relief from above: God’s house seemed to be locked and the Master hidden away. No relief from below: her spiritual guides had nothing left to offer. And yet the soul suffered with humility and perseverance. She passed through these troubles without growing discouraged and blaming the Beloved. The Beloved proves his lover’s faith. “Because of the words of your lips, I have kept hard ways,” says David.

The End of the Dark Night

As I'm sure anyone who reads this blog will be gratified to know, I have finished Mirabai Starr's wonderful translation of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul and will at last move on to something else. I just wanted to post Chapter 21 of the book, which is titled: “An explanation of why the soul says that she is in disguise, and a description of the colors of the disguise the soul wears in the night.” "Disguise" refers to verses in St. John's original poem, "Songs of the Soul."* John analogizes by way of wardrobe - the soul's garments, of three colors, representing three virtues - something I find charming and beautiful. I'll reprint here the whole chapter, separating posts by color, because....well....because it's so Krzysztof Kieslowski:

We disguise ourselves by hiding under a garment that makes us look different from who we really are. We use our disguise to please and charm our Beloved or to elude our enemy and accomplish our mission undetected. We choose the clothing that most clearly reflects our heart’s desire and also most carefully conceals us from discovery by those who would do us harm.

The soul, filled with love of God and longing for his friendship, leaves her house dressed in the vivid hues of her affection. She goes out covered in love and she is safe, invisible to her three adversaries: the world, the animal nature, and the Spirit of Evil. She wears garments of three different colors: white, green, and red, which symbolize the three virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

Don't forget to read these in reverse-blog order!

I have to add that I adore St. John of the Cross. What sweetness, and what lovely gentleness in this man! He wrote the poem first, and added Dark Night of the Soul as an explication; some think the poem far surpasses the explanatory prose, but I love much of what he has to say in the book. When he speaks in the poem of "my house," he is referring to physical human existence, which encompasses all of our sensual and spiritual passions: "The exquisite risk begins once the soul finds all the members of her household asleep. It is God who has put all the passions and appetites - both sensual and spiritual - to bed." Perhaps I would have understood this eventually, but I was glad for lengthy discussions of sleeping household members, the climbing of secret ladders, and the wearing of various colorful robes, shawls, and cloaks. Incarnation, indeed!


* "Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still."

"Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night."

From John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul (Mirabai Starr's translation), Book 2, "The Night of the Spirit," Chapter 6: "Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night":

In dark contemplation, the soul suffers the suspension of all her natural supports and perceptions, which is terribly painful, like hanging in midair unable to breathe. God is purging the soul, devouring all the imperfect habits and inclinations she has contracted throughout her entire life, as fire consumes the tarnish of metal. Besides this natural and spiritual poverty, she is likely to suffer interior torment from the radical undoing of all the remaining imperfections rooted firmly in the substance of the soul. "I shall gather up the bones and light them on fire. The flesh shall be consumed and the whole composition burned, and the bones shall be destroyed," says Ezechiel. "Place it also empty upon the embers that its metals may heat up and melt, its uncleanness taken away from it, its rust consumed."

Purified in this forge like gold in a crucible, as the Wise Man says, the soul feels as if she herself were coming to an end. David calls out to God: "Save me Lord, for the waters have come in even unto my soul. I am trapped in the mire of the deep. I have nowhere to stand. I have come unto the depth of the sea and the tempest has overwhelmed me. I have labored in my cry, my throat has become raw and my eyes have failed while I hope in my God."

God greatly humbles the soul now so that he might greatly exalt her later. And he makes it so that when these feelings are quickened in the soul they are soon stilled; otherwise she would die within a few days. The soul is only aware of their vibrancy at intervals. These souls descend into the underworld alive.

I will say more about this later.

Right now, I have two thoughts. First, that this sort of thing, the reading of Scripture as a description of the mystical journey of the soul as it moves towards (and away from) God - something that John of the Cross does quite often - is the beginning of a new theology. It is a way to make the Bible intelligible in the modern world; a way to connect with people outside the tradition.

This kind of reading diametrically opposes "fundamentalism" - and it is a historical method as well. "Fundamentalism" is essentially, and ironically, a very modern way of looking at the Bible. It is a scientific reading of literature that was often meant to be read and understood in a completely different way. This, I think, is the means to the end we seek: a "new Pentecost," as I read elsewhere (someplace!). A new language for a new era, and a way for the Holy Spirit to reach the modern ear.

Second: Well, maybe I'll wait on that as well; so much to say about it. But here's the topic: what our connections through this medium mean for religion going forward. I get a lot out of talking things over with people online, and together we already make up an informal "community" of sorts - people who identify with, and feel related to, one another in matters of the heart and of the spirit. Some of us are self-described solitaries (in the religious sense, I mean) already, but we have found a way of talking to one another in way in which most of us can't, with people in our actual lives. I find this to be similar to what happens in the monastic communities, actually. I'm very interested in how the phenomenon might play out; I wonder if there will be formal "virtual communities" of this sort in the future, made up of people who have otherwise normal lives but internet-based spiritual lives. Can we pray the Daily Office together, apart? Can we follow one of the various "Rules of Life" this way, or create new ones? Can we work out new theology in these kinds of discussions? (The web is changing the world in every other area of life, through the lightening-fast spread of ideas; why wouldn't this also happen in the spiritual life?)

IOW, can we have ordinary, but religious, lives, together in this way in the modern world?

But this is a big topic, so maybe for later.

"God, of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself; -- only in Thee I have all"

Julian of Norwich, REVELATION: Chapter V

In this same time our Lord shewed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving.

I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding.

Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God.

In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, — I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my God and me.

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa

In her words:

It pleased our Lord that I should see the following vision a number of times. I saw an angel near me, on the left side, in bodily form. This I am not wont to see, save very rarely.... In this vision it pleased the Lord that I should see it thus. He was not tall, but short, marvellously beautiful, with a face which shone as though he were one of the highest of the angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call Seraphim.... I saw in his hands a long golden spear, and at the point of the iron there seemed to be a little fire. This I thought that he thrust several times into my heart, and that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew out the spear he seemed to be drawing them with it, leaving me all on fire with a wondrous love for God. The pain was so great that it caused me to utter several moans; and yet so exceeding sweet is this greatest of pains that it is impossible to desire to be rid of it, or for the soul to be content with less than God.

Here's Bernini's rendition of the event:


And some interesting anecdotes:

While the visions are today the most famous part of her spiritual experience, she considered them inferior to the quiet sense of union with God that she was to achieve later in life. The visions were disorienting and an embarrassment, although she did her best to hide them from her sisters. They were also dangerous. It was not unusual for visionaries to wind up at the stake. Teresa's autobiography was already being examined by the Inquisition for signs of heresy; and as a woman and the descendant of Jews, she was especially suspect. Increasingly, those around Teresa tried to disassociate themselves from her. At the same time, Teresa felt drawn to a more strict life of poverty and self-denial.

In 1562 she began a reform of the Carmelite order (later known as the "Discalced" or barefoot, Carmelites) with a small convent, St. Joseph's, in Avila. Here she lived for four years; "the most restful years of my life". The convent had no endowment and subsisted on alms. One day Teresa went into a trance while holding a frying pan with a little oil in it, which worried her sisters. They weren't concerned about the trance, which they were used to, but were afraid that she might spill the oil. It was all they had. Here she wrote a treatise, The Way of Perfection, as a guide to the monastic life. Her cell did not have a table or chair so she wrote kneeling on the floor at a ledge under a window, with no re-reading or editing.

She was a great friend of St. John of the Cross, and they together attempted to reform the Carmelite Order, of which they both were members.

Songs of the Soul II

A much better translation of John of the Cross' Songs of the Soul - again by Mirabai Starr:

On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing -
O exquisite risk! -
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.

Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still.

That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.

This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me
- The one I knew so intimately -
In a place where no one could find us.

O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved!

Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.

Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.

I lost myself. Forgot myself.
I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind.
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten.

It's amazing how different each translation is, and what a huge difference it can make in the reading of the poem....

A ray of darkness

From Mirabai Starr's most excellent, poetic, and sensual translation of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul. This is from Chapter 2, "Night of the Spirit." Chapter 1 is called "Night of Sense"; the seeking soul must pass through each to attain union with God - the purification first of the senses and then of the spirit.

The dark night of the spirit is an inflowing of God into the soul. It purges her of imperfections: natural and spiritual. Contemplatives call it "infused contemplation" or "mystical theology." This is where God transmits his secret teachings to the soul and instructs her in the perfection of love. She does not have to do a thing, nor will she understand a thing. Infused contemplation is the wisdom of the loving God. It both purges and illumines the soul, making her ready for the union of love. The same loving wisdom that purifies and enlightens the blessed spirits on other planes of existence, purges and illumines the earthly soul, now.

But here is the doubt: Why is this divine light, which illumines and purges the soul of ignorance, called here the "dark night"?

Divine wisdom is not only night and darkness to the soul but also terror and suffering. Its height transcends the natural reach of the soul and so it looks like darkness to her. Her own insignificance and impurity also cause her to experience the light of God as painful and oppressive. The Philosopher suggests that the clearer and more manifest are divine things in themselves, the darker and more hidden they are to the natural eyes of the soul. The brighter the light, the more blinding it is to the owl. The more directly we gaze at the sun, the more it darkens our visual faculty, depriving it and overwhelming it, because of its inherent weakness.

And so, when divine light strikes the soul that is not yet fully illumined, it causes spiritual darkness to drop over her, transcending her limitations, impoverishing and darkening her natural intelligence. St. Dionysus and other mystics call infused contemplation a "ray of darkness." The power of the discursive mind is conquered by this great supernatural light.

David says that "near to God and surrounding him are darkness and clouds." It's not that this is actually so but that it seems that way to the feeble intellect which is blinded by such radiance and cannot rise to meet it. "Through the great splendor of his presence," says David, "clouds passed," that is, between God and our own understanding. When God sends forth from himself the illuminating ray of secret wisdom to the soul not yet fully transformed, her mind is enveloped by darkness.

Fasting

The Lenten fast has been a very good and I hope important experience for me. (I have to admit that right after the Primates' meeting, I abandoned it for a few days, when I went into a period of "who cares?" hopelessness; but I've come back to it again. I'm glad about that, because the most solemn period of Lent is approaching.)

I haven't had any other problems keeping the fast, though; I've eaten one smallish meal each day, and other food that in total added up to less than that meal. No meat, and no sweets - except on Sundays, when I can eat a little more also. Today, like all Fridays in Lent, I kept a strict fast: only one meal - no food at all for 24 hours, from last evening after dinner to this. I just ate a small piece of soda bread, and it tasted so sweet and delicious. You gain a definite appreciation for these things you almost never think about here in the wealthy West.

I hadn't realized that I'm normally almost never hungry; that I'm almost always satisfied in a physical sense. It really does make you think much more about people who don't have enough to eat on a daily basis. It's concretely changed my outlook in that way - and it's made me remember at all times that it's Lent, too. It does, as I read earlier this year, "disrupt and disturb the secular order." I really do think fasting (and other disciplines, but this is an obvious one, and something everybody can do) is important for this reason; I'm supposed to be living a religious life, and that should involve disruption and discomfort.

"The Call of the Cross" is a Lenten devotional publication from Episcopal Relief and Development. Today's reading is this:

Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. - Mark 9:41

When we turn on a faucet, we expect to get clean water. In the developing world, only 50 percent of children have access to clean drinking water. Dirty, unsafe water is responsible for killing millions of children in our world every year. When Jesus said, "Anyone who gives a cup of water...." he was affirming a central truth in scripture. Anyone who does even the smallest act of kindness will find that God honors and values that act of kindness.

I don't know really what an ordinary person can do about this problem, except to give money to try to fix it, and to talk about it like this. I have to remember, always, that people are suffering - especially when I'm lucky enough not to be.

Today's Epistle Reading

Or part of it, at least. It's Romans 8: 37-39 (NRSV), with the verse numbers removed. James Alison notes rightly that often it's better to read Scripture straight, so to speak, to get the original sense of it. It's Paul at his mystical and poetic best, again:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Luminous, wonderful

Holy Spirit,
Giving life to all life,
Moving all creatures,
Root of all things,
Washing them clean,
Wiping out their mistakes,
Healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
Luminous, wonderful,
Awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.

~ Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)


(I am so grateful for these people - Hildegard and St. John of the Cross, and others. I find it incredibly difficult to deal with the intense anger and resentment that I feel right now towards the Church, and towards other Christians - while at the same time feeling unable to sever my relationship with the Christian faith. I am so completely conflicted and so confounded. And hurt, also, it has to be said.

But when I read these things I am peaceful again. There are and always have been very spiritual people in the Church, all the while it goes through these spasms and paroxysms of power and money and status. Right now, I need rest and the solace of the mystical; I need to feel close to God again - something I've been finding more and more difficult over the past year, as I've made myself crazy with fighting over "the issue."

Thanks be to God for the deep sanity of contemplation. And for a way to talk about it, via weblogs and the internet - which is also, ironically, the main source of all the pain. Well, that's life on earth, isn't it?)

Oh, night more lovely than the dawn

From Urban Dharma: The Los Angeles Buddhist Catholic Dialogue, a review of an edition of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul:

As the last rites were read to him on his deathbed at the age of 49, John of the Cross, the 16th century poet, mystic, priest and monk, interrupted. Please, he begged, read me "The Song of Solomon."

That such a sensual, luscious poem to love would be the last words John wished to hear is a bittersweet commentary on his life. He was a member of Teresa of Avila's Discalced Carmelite Order--the Barefoot Carmelites--and Teresa's beloved, passionate friend. His finest and most famous poem, "Songs of the Soul," combines the best of each of his vocations. He and Teresa were committed to the reform of the Carmelites, and both of them were caught in the chaos of the Inquisition in Spain.

At 25, John was captured and imprisoned in a closet in a monastery by a community of monks who upheld a Vatican faction's dim view of Teresa's reforms. He was starved and flogged. After nine months of captivity, he escaped by lowering himself out of his cell with a rope made of strips of cloth. He got himself to a Discalced convent and wept as he heard the nuns reciting the Angelus. He wrote "Songs of the Soul" in a state of gratitude and ecstasy.

Reformation is not an easy thing, it appears; something for me to keep in mind. "The Angelus" bell at the convent is rung three times during the day, three times three times each, at 6 a.m., at noon, and at 6 p.m. All recite it privately rather than in chapel together; the bells are beautiful, like the faint sweet voice of the angel Gabriel calling from some other realm, an echo of God's presence both here and in the world to come.

The poem, "Songs of the Soul", which "describes a night in which a soul escapes from her house to join her lover, her creator, in a night of risk, ecstasy and passion" - a dark night in which the soul meets her Beloved:

1.
On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings — oh, happy chance! —
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

2.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised — oh, happy chance! —
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

3.
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

4.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me —
A place where none appeared.

5.
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

6.
Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

7.
The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

8.
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

I went to mass today; I wanted to taste that sweetness again. I heard more during the sermon about "unity," and gritted my teeth, and promised I would do what the Beloved requires. I do not know what that is.

"What do you believe that you cannot prove?"

A very intriguing question from my favorite online magazine, Edge.

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

Among the thinkers asked this question are Freeman Dyson, Esther Dyson, Marc Hauser, Margaret Wertheim, Steven Pinker, Martin Seligman, Ray Kurzweil, and Michael Shermer.

Edge asks a different question at the beginning of every year. Some examples: "What Questions Are You Asking Yourself?"; "What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?"; "What Questions Have Disappeared?".

Check 'em out, and the regular articles, too, which run the gamut from Physics to Biology to Psychology to Culture. It's a great resource.