Poetry of Love: Rediscovering The Song of Songs
“Tender and inviting, intimate and alluring, fiercely devoted. Oh yes, our God has a passionate, romantic heart. Just look at Eve.” - John Eldridge
February 10th, 2025
📍Charlotte, North Carolina, USA 🇺🇸
Greetings from the wilderness!
With Valentine’s Day approaching this week, it seems only fitting that we continue on this path of Love and receptivity…
I love to read poetry. Some of my contemporary favorites include Yung Pueblo, Rupi Kaur, and Morgan Harper Nichols. Along my healing journey, I’ve also come to love the wisdom of the psalmists because intimacy and relationship with God are at the essence of their writings and spiritual lives.
So much of my faith journey has viewed God as a Father figure, sometimes even a Mother figure. Right now, as I work to heal my receptivity wounds, the Lord is taking me on a path of discovery to know and encounter God the Lover.
You see, God has a heart of Love for all of us and longs for our hearts in return, and this can be found all across the Scriptures. While the Psalms are probably more familiar to you, have you ever read the Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon)? There are multiple ways to interpret this book in the Old Testament, and because of its erotic and sensual language, you won’t often hear it being preached from the pulpit—So much so that new priests are sometimes banned from even reading the book.
I interperate it as Jesus speaking Love over His bride, which is us. From that perspective, I’ve been reading through this book of the Bible over and over again, watching the dance of Love between Jesus and my heart emerge from the pages. The divinely feminine aspects of my heart, which reflect God’s heart for me, long to have Love spoken over it. The back/forth dialogue between the Shepherd King (Jesus) and the Shulamite Woman (us) feels like a love note (v1:5,8 TPT):
The Shepherd-King
Yet you are so lovely!
The Shulamite
Yet you are so lovely—
like the fine linen tapestry hanging in the Holy Place…
The Shepherd King
Listen, my radiant one—
If you ever lose sight of me,
Just follow in my footsteps where I lead my lovers.
Come with your burdens and cares.
Come to the place near the sanctuary of my shepherds.
My dearest one,
Let me tell you how I see you—
You are so thrilling to me…
Consider this your invitation to explore this book of Scripture more deeply. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading The Passion Translation, making sure to read the footnotes, as they are key to understanding.
Like the Psalmists, the Christian mystics wrote primarily about a reciprocated deep longing between God and Their (pronouns reflective of the triune personhood of YHWH) people. In fact, Mechtild of Magdeburg’s book, Flowing Light of the Godhead, has been described as “bridal mysticism,” very reminiscent of the Songs of Songs. She attributes God’s passionate longing for the soul similar to that felt by the soul for God. For example (Book 2:23, 25):
Love: Alas foolish soul, where are you?..
Soul: Do not awaken me
I do not know what you are saying.
Love: One must awaken the queen
When the king desires to come to her.
Soul: I am in holy order
I fast, I keep vigils, I am without mortal sin
I am sufficiently bound…
How can I love so gladly someone
Whom I do not know?
Love: Alas how can you not recognize the Lord
Who is named so often to you?...
Ah beloved let me awaken you…
Love: You are like a new bride.
Whose only love has left her sleeping
From whom she cannot bear to part for even one hour…
I await you in the orchard of love
And pick for you the flower of sweet reunion..
You’ll hear me talk more about these ancient wisdom teachers, but for now, I want to share one of my more contemporary favorites: Karl Rahner. In his book of meditations, Encounters With Silence, he forms a dialogue with God that is both intimately loving and highly relational—
“When I abandon myself in love, then You are my very life, and Your Incomprehensibility is swallowed up in love’s unity. When I am allowed to love You, the grasp of Your very mystery becomes a positive source of bliss… The more complete the dependence of my fragile existence upon Your unsearchable counsels, the more unconditional must be the surrender of my whole being to You, beloved God.”
I truly believe that the relational longing for deep intimacy with God was first established through Eve. Like this quote from John Eldridge in his co-authored book Captivating, “Tender and inviting, intimate and alluring, fiercely devoted. Oh yes, our God has a passionate, romantic heart. Just look at Eve.” Stay tuned for more reflections on the divine feminine and its role in our ability to receive God.
For now, I pray that this Valentine’s Day, we all encounter God, the Lover of our hearts and souls, and are awakened to the Love so freely given to each and every one of us. Amen.
With Love,
Jennifer
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