The Greatest Love of All--PART 2

The whole problem of our time is the problem of love: how are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another? The reason why we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly or openly hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

                        –Thomas Merton

The Greatest Love of All

אהבתי אתכם אמר ה'

מלאכי--

"I have loved you," saith the Lord.

--Malachi 

...הנך יפה רעייתי, הנך יפה

עד שיפוח היום, ונסו הצללים-אלך לי אל הר המור, ואל גבעת הלבונה

כולך יפה רעייתי, ומום אין בך

איתי מלבנון כלה...ממעונות אריות, מהררי נמרים

ליבבתיני, אחותי כלה; ליבבתיני באחת מעינייך

מה-יפו דודייך, אחותי כלה; מה-טובו דודייך מיין, וריח שמנייך מכל-בשמים

נופת תיטופנה שפתותייך, כלה; דבש וחלב תחת לשונך

שיר השירים-- 

How beautiful you are, my darling!
    Oh, how beautiful...
    Until the day breaks
    and the shadows flee,
I will go to the mountain of myrrh
    and to the hill of incense.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
    there is no flaw in you.

Come with me, my bride….from the lions’ dens
    and the mountain haunts of leopards.
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
    you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes…
 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!
    How much more pleasing is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your perfume
    more than any spice!  Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
    milk and honey are under your tongue.

--Song of Songs

                                               

For so many people, so many holy, broken, badly hurt people, this is the hardest, most frustratingly elusive faith to achieve. To actually feel or even believe that God loves us with a passionate fiery love seems like a painfully distant, dreamy Arcadian island of fantasy. Long after the mind has reached a level of comfort in believing in God's existence, either by way of realizing that the intellectual proofs positing His being, though far from utterly conclusive, comfortably outweigh the arguments against; or through allowing the pure, stronger, innate faith of the soul to outshine the precious cognitive faculties because of the realization that "one does not kindle a candle in order to see the sun" (Petrus Damiani)- there are still miles to go before one can sleep and snuggle comfortably in the loving embrace of the Shade of the Wings of the Omnipresent, in the greatest love of all. Like a lonely, melancholy bud that cannot succeed to open its petals and receive the warming rays that are always tenderly hovering around it, the person who must struggle to escape the dungeon of terrestrial solitude and trust God's assurances that He is enamored with us suffocates within his inability to face the Infinite Love that shines with overpowering discreetness. 

While His existence can be logically exhibited, His love never can.

When Christianity (Judaism and Islam say the same-S.B.) says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes.
                         --C.S. Lewis

If only we loved Him as He loves us...Let us believe Him when He declares that He does...

A...good way for a man… to arouse and kindle the light of the love that is implanted and concealed in his heart, that it may shine forth with its intense light, like a burning fire, in the consciousness of the heart and mind, to surrender his soul to God, together with his body and [material] possessions, with all his heart, and all his soul and all his might, from the depth of the heart, in absolute truth, is… to take to heart the meaning of the verse: "As in water, face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man." This means that as [in the case of] the likeness and features of the face which a man presents to the water, the same identical face is reflected back to him from the water, so indeed is also the heart of a man who is loyal in his affection for another person, for this love awakens a loving response for him in the heart of his friend also, cementing their mutual love and loyalty for each other, especially as each sees his friend's love for him.

Such is the common nature in the character of every man even when they are equal in status. How much more so when a great and mighty king shows his great and intense love for a commoner who is despised and lowly among men, a disgraceful creature cast on the dunghill, yet he [the king] comes down to him from the place of his glory, together with all his retinue, and raises him and exalts him from his dunghill and brings him into his palace, the royal palace, in the innermost chamber, a place such as no servant nor lord ever enters, and there shares with him the closest companionship with embraces and kisses and spiritual attachment with all heart and soul— how much more will, of itself, be aroused a doubled and redoubled love in the heart of this most common and humble individual for the person of the king, with a true attachment of spirit, heart and soul, and with infinite heartfelt sincerity. Even if his heart be like a heart of stone, it will surely melt and become water, and his soul will pour itself out like water, with soulful longing for the love of the king.

In a manner corresponding in every detail to the said figure and image but to an infinitely greater degree, has the Lord our God dealt with us. For His greatness is beyond comprehension, and He pervades all worlds and transcends all worlds… it is known of the infinite multitude of worlds, and of the countless myriads of angels in each world …[and] before Him, all of them are accounted as nothing at all and are nullified in their very existence…All these [angels] ask: "Where is the place of His glory?" And they answer: "The whole earth is full of His glory," that is, His people… to bring them near to Him in true closeness and unity, with a truly soulful attachment on the level of "kisses" of mouth to mouth, by means of uttering the word of God…also with a form of "embrace," namely, the fulfillment of the positive precepts…of the King…

Like one who betrothes a wife that she may be united with him with a perfect bond, as is written: "And he shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh." Exactly so, and even infinitely surpassing, is the union of the divine soul…with the light of the blessed En Sof (Infinite).

Therefore did Solomon, peace unto him, in the Song of Songs compare this union with the union of bridegroom and bride in attachment, desire, and pleasure, embrace and kissing…For through the union of the soul with, and its absorption into, the light of the blessed En Sof, it attains the quality and degree of the holiness of the blessed En Sof Himself, since it unites itself with, and is integrated into, Him, may He be blessed, and they become One in reality…for the corporeality of the body does not prevent the union of the soul with the light of the blessed En Sof, Who fills all worlds, and as is written: "Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee."

      --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya Ch. 46

                She's all states, and all princes, I,

               Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

               In that the world's contracted thus.

         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

                                                      --John Donne

One must constantly bear in mind that which is the beginning of divine service, as well as its core and root...[to] contemplate in his mind the greatness of the blessed Infinite Light of God and His Kingship, which extends to all worlds, both higher and lower...Yet He leaves aside the creatures of the higher worlds and the creatures of the lower worlds and He uniquely bestows His Kingship upon...him in particular, for a man is obliged to say: “For my sake was the world created.” And, behold, God Himself stands over him.

                                  --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya

God and the Raging Soul

One who spends rigorous and existentially challenging minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years searching for God, starving for a ray of His visage, begging for a glimpse of His truth, thirsting for sensual confirmation of His Being, striving to empirically experience His closeness, and stubbornly clinging to the lowest threads hanging down from His luminous garments while staring at the stark, cold, empty, world of tears, agony, and gas chambers can feel nothing but resentment, anger, and insult when reading

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough. 

Wallace Stevens

Only an atheist too proud and enticed or an agnostic too weary to continue raging could see the path to the Divine as "a single shawl/Wrapped tightly round us." Only someone that never tried or stopped attempting to fearlessly climb above the vacuum of fleeting moments of happiness and the crevices of serene fulfillment can so smugly grin at those who know the heavy price of those rare, stunning moments of touching Infinity.

Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all its crises, pangs, and torments. Yes, it is true that during the third Sabbath meal at dusk, as the day of rest declines and man’s soul yearns for its Creator and is afraid to depart from that realm of holiness whose name is Sabbath, into the dark and frightening, secular workday week, we sing the psalm "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters" (Ps. 23), etc., etc., and we believe with our entire hearts in the words of the psalmist. However, this psalm only describes the ultimate destination of homo religiosus, not the path leading to that destination. For the path that eventually will lead to the "green pastures" and to the "still waters" is not the royal road, but a narrow, twisting footway that threads its course along the steep mountain slope, as the terrible abyss yawns at the traveler’s feet. Many see "the Lord passing by; and a great and strong wind rending mountains and shattering rocks… and after the wind an earthquake… and after the earthquake a fire" but only a few prove worthy of hearing "the still small voice" (I Kings 19:11-12). "Out of the straights have I called, O Lord" (Ps. 118:5). "Out of the depths I have called unto Thee, O Lord" (Ps. 130:1). Out of the straits of inner oppositions and incongruities, spiritual doubts and uncertainties, out of the depths of a psyche rent with antinomies and contradictions, out of the bottomless pit of a soul that struggles with its own torments I have called, I have called unto Thee, O Lord.

And when the Torah testifies that Israel, in the end, would repent out of anguish and agony… "In your distress when all these things are come upon you… and you will return unto the Lord your God" (Deut. 4:30), it had in mind not only physical pain, but also spiritual suffering. The pangs of searching and groping, the tortures of spiritual crises and exhausting treks of the soul purify and sanctify man, cleanse his thoughts, and purge them of the husks of superficiality and the dross of vulgarity. Out of these torments there emerges a new understanding of the world, a powerful spiritual enthusiasm that shakes the very foundations of man’s existence. He arises from the agonies, purged and refined, possessed of a pure heart and a new spirit. "It is a time of agony unto Jacob, but out of it shall he be saved" (Jer. 30:7) – i.e., from out of the very midst of the agony itself he will attain eternal salvation and redemption. The spiritual stature and countenance of the man of God are chiseled and formed by the pangs of redemption themselves. 

                                 --Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man

My Soul Thirsts for You

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
    my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
    as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
    beholding your power and glory.
 Because your steadfast love is better than life.

                                     --Psalm 63

King David composed this psalm in the Judean Desert, while exiled from Jerusalem, therefore he was in a state of longing. Spiritually as well: when a divine soul finds itself in this world, it is in a desert. While it may attain a lofty degree of comprehension of G‑dliness, thus finding itself in a Judean desert, its present spiritual state cannot at all compare to its former spiritual state, before its descent into this world. Hence its thirst for God.

You are aware of only one unrest; 

Oh, never learn to know the other! 

Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, 

And one is striving to forsake its brother. 

Unto the world in grossly loving zest, 

With clinging tendrils, one adheres; 

The other rises forcibly in quest

Of rarefied ancestral spheres.

                                               --Goethe, Faust

                                                                      

When Kierkegaard wrote about the sickness unto death, he was not remarking on a bronchial infection.

                                          --David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion

Is there, is there balm in Gilead?

Quoth the raven,

                                 Nevermore...

                                                         --Poe   

                                                                       

And I am seized by long forgotten yearning

For that kingdom of spirits, still and grave;

To flowing song I see my feelings turning,

As from aeolian harps, wave upon wave;

A shudder grips me, tear on tear falls burning,

Soft grows my heart, once so severe and brave;

What I possess, seems far away to me,

And what is gone becomes reality.

                       

                                 --Goethe, Faust

Heaven Is A Place On Earth (Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 1 (C)--CONTINUED)

Comprehended history form[s]…the actuality, truth, and certainty of His throne, without which He would be lifeless and alone. Only

from the chalice of this realm of spirits

foams forth for Him His own infinitude.

            

                                 --G.W.F. Hegel, and adapting Schiller
                                                  End of Phenomenology of Spirit

Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 1 (C)

As God comes to see the pilgrim with both Eyes, so when the pilgrim comes to appear before God, he must be able to see with both eyes.

                                                                     --Talmud, Chagigah

I entered there and saw, with an eye of some sort of my soul, an eye above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light.

                                                                    --Augustine, Confessions

Have We not given him two eyes…and shown him the two paths? Yet he would not scale the Height.

                                                                     --Koran, 90

And maybe that's what it means to see Him with two eyes. 

It is easy to look at Him in His pristine Infinity with one eye and at the versatile, detailed world around us with the other.

But that is to not see Him in totality. That is failing to scale the Height and to perceive His unchangeable Light that remains One in the myriad aspects of the mundane. And hence, a one-eyed view does not illuminate our "airy region," the empirical reality that we experience. We must strive to make a full pilgrimage to Paradise while alive, to keep our eyes in Heaven as we look at all the beauty and goodness on Earth.

Her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

                                            
                                        --William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet