The Song of Songs
Monica King
April 15, 2006
April starts with Fools. Does it not?
An elder lady in my local market pointed to my pants & said there's a hole in your pants & I looked down. April Fool's she cried triumphantly!
We both laughed heartily. She got me!
Saint Paul the Apostle wrote about becoming foolish for Christ in Corinthians.
He began his letter or epistle by addressing the issues of personal identification with what the surrendered baptism is. It is the surrender of our personal navigational ego self to the power found in The Christ, Jesus.
He also goes on to say he is not called to baptize himself, but to preach.
He also says his message is not beheld in the wisdom of words. But rather that the essence of the gospel of truth is foolishness to those who are perishing or dying, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
April is usually associated with spring, love, & lovers, who often feel converted in the experience of full & total abandoned passionate, mating-to-make- babies love of the spring warm breezes.
At least on Turtle Island, that is. With spring & the quickening of all of new life & growth, naturally, there is love in the air. In the perfume & colorful wild profusion of gardens bursting forth with the brightness of blossoms, the air exploding with bird song, the scent of perfumes luring the bees from the throat of blossom to blossom, we see the natural way of things repeated endlessly in our natural world.
Today it is Saturday. It it the day after Good Friday. Tommorrow is Easter.
Taxes are due.
Here in Vermont the children begin their spring vacations. They have new spring clothes. They have their bikes out of the cellars. They laugh & play & scrap on the playgrounds, they run after pets, they eat ice-creams.
And they sing & twirl around alot. Gaze like gazelles fixated on some breath taking sight at one another, murmuring quietly at the beauty of the visions whizzing by.
It brings me to my favorite book in the Bible, the one containing the Song of Songs.
The Song of Solomon.
To know the power of God, become as foolish for love, for the apple of your heart's eye, for the sweet surrender of coupling entwined as two trees together, losing time, lost in the unmapped territory of the beloved's gaze, breath, smile, curve of thighs, tone of skin, erotic, private, mysterious power of conjugal love. The kind that transcends death.
Death of a relationship. Death of political orders. Of a dream of living happily ever after because of the collective destructiveness of the bitter galls of jealousies, rivalries; that cause armies to march & peoples to war, fearing for safety in the night.
Some are dying. Some are being saved & resurrected this day, this weekend, this time of times.
Would you rather be wise in the sight of men who deem you so with titles & initials after your name from prestigious colleges & universities?
Or foolishly, intoxicated with the breath of apples & raisins, grazing in a field of lillies, watching your beloved leap like a gazelle upon the hills, upon the pleasant places of the earth?
Foolish, foolish heart-directed by the jelly-like, weak-in -the -knees swooning power of spring-time love in the hills & the valleys.
I become the Fool every single April, bar none.
And the Song of Songs sings to me & through me & in me.
An elder lady in my local market pointed to my pants & said there's a hole in your pants & I looked down. April Fool's she cried triumphantly!
We both laughed heartily. She got me!
Saint Paul the Apostle wrote about becoming foolish for Christ in Corinthians.
He began his letter or epistle by addressing the issues of personal identification with what the surrendered baptism is. It is the surrender of our personal navigational ego self to the power found in The Christ, Jesus.
He also goes on to say he is not called to baptize himself, but to preach.
He also says his message is not beheld in the wisdom of words. But rather that the essence of the gospel of truth is foolishness to those who are perishing or dying, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
April is usually associated with spring, love, & lovers, who often feel converted in the experience of full & total abandoned passionate, mating-to-make- babies love of the spring warm breezes.
At least on Turtle Island, that is. With spring & the quickening of all of new life & growth, naturally, there is love in the air. In the perfume & colorful wild profusion of gardens bursting forth with the brightness of blossoms, the air exploding with bird song, the scent of perfumes luring the bees from the throat of blossom to blossom, we see the natural way of things repeated endlessly in our natural world.
Today it is Saturday. It it the day after Good Friday. Tommorrow is Easter.
Taxes are due.
Here in Vermont the children begin their spring vacations. They have new spring clothes. They have their bikes out of the cellars. They laugh & play & scrap on the playgrounds, they run after pets, they eat ice-creams.
And they sing & twirl around alot. Gaze like gazelles fixated on some breath taking sight at one another, murmuring quietly at the beauty of the visions whizzing by.
It brings me to my favorite book in the Bible, the one containing the Song of Songs.
The Song of Solomon.
To know the power of God, become as foolish for love, for the apple of your heart's eye, for the sweet surrender of coupling entwined as two trees together, losing time, lost in the unmapped territory of the beloved's gaze, breath, smile, curve of thighs, tone of skin, erotic, private, mysterious power of conjugal love. The kind that transcends death.
Death of a relationship. Death of political orders. Of a dream of living happily ever after because of the collective destructiveness of the bitter galls of jealousies, rivalries; that cause armies to march & peoples to war, fearing for safety in the night.
Some are dying. Some are being saved & resurrected this day, this weekend, this time of times.
Would you rather be wise in the sight of men who deem you so with titles & initials after your name from prestigious colleges & universities?
Or foolishly, intoxicated with the breath of apples & raisins, grazing in a field of lillies, watching your beloved leap like a gazelle upon the hills, upon the pleasant places of the earth?
Foolish, foolish heart-directed by the jelly-like, weak-in -the -knees swooning power of spring-time love in the hills & the valleys.
I become the Fool every single April, bar none.
And the Song of Songs sings to me & through me & in me.
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