Monday 12 April 2010

A study of interjections

I have felt some unwillingness, most noble and devout lady, to expound these four stanzas which you have requested me to explain ... (the first few words of the prologue to Living Flame of Love by St John of the Cross.)
I thought I might write about the 'Ah' and the 'O' of the beloved as noted in Carl's post on the Song. Or even include the opening demonstrative of the Lamentations chapters 1, 2, and 4 to which 'how' I prepended an 'Ah' for the acrostic. All this in order to relate the intensity of these particles to the 'Oh' of the Living Flame of Love - as the expositor does in the first few pages. I cannot do more than point out that these are the interjections of love.

Each word of the exposition is so well placed, I find it impossible to reduce it. Further in the introduction the writer invokes the promises of the farewell discourse - (John 14:23). In the exposition of stanza 1, the writer also invokes John 7:38. All these allusions are true in themselves and true in the context - but there is an area of the exposition which my own knowledge would not necessarily agree with. The expositor claims that the breaking of the web in the first stanza is a desire to pass into eternal life. I don't think so. The poet is already in eternal life and is still in the land of the living and is able to write. So nihil obstat or not, there is more to say.

And that says to me that perhaps I am not yet ready to read this. Or is it that I must find a different language from that which has received a nihil obstat in order that I might express this joy. I am to find words - but my exposition might not be without obstacle. Or has the expositor implicitly pushed the exposition to say what is acceptable to others even if it misses the mark. Perhaps these writings cannot then be trusted having been tamed by a hidden conformity.

I have often found this - and I wonder if I am simply wrong and alone. Where does this leave me? Am I such a maverick? If I felt that, I would be saying that God is fickle - and this I know is false. Psalm 27 expresses the enigma already
...what if I had not believed I would see the goodness of יְהוָה
in the land of the living?

For a month or so I have been looking forward to what April Deconnick may say on John and the history of the Church - I wonder if it will be pointing in this direction. This may relate also to the heart strangely warmed of Wesley which Ken Schenck pointed out this morning.  In the meanwhile - tonight, our Bible study will begin to read the five scrolls - starting with the Song.


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