Rise Up, My Fair One, and Come Away

Chagall, Song of Songs

Chagall, Song of Songs

Spiritual Sunday

St. Valentine, who has evolved into the patron saint of lovers, was beheaded by the Romans for (among other things) marrying Christian couples.  As Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, I turn to that most erotic of books in the Bible, Song of Songs (also know as Song of Solomon).Some, unnerved by its unbridled sensuality, have argued that “my beloved” is God come to Israel or Christ come to humankind.We are the rose of Sharon and God is the apple tree, under whose shadow we sit with great delight and whose fruit is sweet to our taste.

I’m fine with an allegorical explanation because it allows us to imagine God as reaching us through our sensual selves as well as through our moral compass. I love the vision of God as a roe or a hart that “cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills” (shades of Wordworth’s Tintern Abbey), and I delight in how it shakes up the stereotype of divinity as old man with a white beard. Why shouldn’t God be lover as well as father (and mother, for that matter)? The Greeks, to get at the multiple dimensions of God, had multiple gods: Zeus and Aphrodite, Hera and Dionysus.  Let not a failure of imagination circumscribe the god you worship.

I wonder if Julian of Norwich has Song of Songs in mind when she describes Godhead as “our everlasting lover.”

Perhaps you currently find yourself in the midst of a cold and wintry February.  If so, let the poem remind you that the explosive joy of spring, along with the blossoming fig tree and the cooing turtle dove, is on the horizon. Know as well that the joy you experience is God. The passage is from the King James version of the Bible, chapter 2. Have fun:

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.

His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.

I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.

My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.

Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

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