About two weeks ago I went to a wedding of some old friends. It was strange for me seeing them for the first time, really, since high school in all their finery and in front of all their friends and family at the altar. I felt they were transformed. Waiting anxiously for the ceremony to start and the rest of the guests to arrive, I started thumbing through a Bible in front of me. Usually I just skip straight back to Revelations– I know I’m guaranteed a good read if I open up to that book because something exciting is always happening in Revelations. But this time Revelations didn’t catch my interest and I kept thumbing back until the pages fell open to the Song of Songs.
I have really enjoyed Rumi’s ecstatic love poems over the years. One of my particular favorites is
“When I am with you I stay up all night. When you are gone I cannot sleep. Praise God for these two insomnias, and the difference between them.”
But I am completely unfamiliar with the Bible’s own ecstatic descriptions of love aside from David’s famous “Your two breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies” line.
Song of Solomon passage 3 reads
“All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves. I looked for him, but did not find him. I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares. I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him, but did not find him.
The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. I asked them “Have you seen the one my heart loves?” Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go till I had brought him to my mother’s house. Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”
It was the perfect passage to open up to at a wedding– about the difficulty of the search for love and the satisfaction at finding it. About not looking for love but meeting it.
I have a friend who had a great love once and it ended. He has looked for love ever since and not found it, he has searched the city and no one can tell him where his beloved is. But my friends who have given up on finding someone, who have turned their eyes to other matters have suddenly stumbled into love, abruptly and headlong. It’s amazing we’ve been telling the same story for over two thousand years.
The picture up top is “Embrace” by Egon Schiele, from 1917.