Song of Songs: better than ice cream

Songs of Songs may be my favorite book in all of scripture (today anyways)! What is a book about sexual desire doing in this law book on how to a please an angry judge? Could it be that this is more true than the ritualized rules we fashioned from scripture? Maybe this love is the nature of our relationship with God and gives value to our desire to be joined with another.

Song of Songs immerses the reader in the spiral of seeking and finding and more seeking of two lovers. It is a celebration of their love and desire for one another and for Garden Life. There is debate concerning the identity of the Beloved. Some say it is Solomon, some say it is not Solomon. It does not matter to me, really. The point is the Shulamite woman and the Beloved long to be together.

Song of Songs 2:4-7’ “he brought me to the house of wine/ His canopy over me is love (ahavah, self-sacrificial love)- …(his passion for me sustains me)/ for I am lovesick.”

Coleman Barks, in Bill Moyer’s Fooling with with Words, spoke of growing up in Chattanooga and sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth as he watched the sun go down and saying to his mom, “I have that full feeling again.” He spoke of Presence and that longing for something imagined yet unattained. I get that from Song of Songs. I am “lovesick” for a place, a union, a belonging that my heart knows but is not yet.

The banner, or canopy, is reminiscent of the chuppah used in traditional Jewish wedding ceremonies. Ray Van der Laan describes the giving of the law at Mount Sinai as symbolically linked to a wedding between God and His bride: the smoke, darkness, lightening serve as a covering, the recitation of a relationship contract, the word for standing (suggests standing beneath), the process of purifying themselves (mikveh), the four promises of Passover (.. “I will take you”). In his With All Your Heart series, he writes “So the Israelites can be thought of as not just standing at the base of the mountain but standing under God’s great chuppah, the canopy under which the bride and groom stand in a traditional Jewish wedding. To be under God’s chuppah is to be covered with the canopy of his intimate, protective love. (session two: Making Space for God study guide).”

In this, I hear the Beloved saying (some paraphrasing) “Rise up, my love, my fair one/ And come away with me/Winter is past/ Rain is over/ the flowers are here/ the time of singing has come/… the fig tree is budding/ Rise up/ Come away with me!” (Song of Songs 2:11-13).” The Beloved goes on to implore her to meet him in the “cleft of the rock…left me see your face.” After Israel committed adultery on their wedding day, God was angry. In Exodus 33, God was ready to give them the promised land, but He would not go with them anymore. But Moses longed for His Presence- “Your love is better than ice cream/ better than anything else that I’ve tried.” He longed for the Beloved. So, Moses met with God at Sinai, in the cleft of the rock, desiring to see the face of the Beloved. And when God met him there, He showed Himself: merciful, gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, …(Exodus 34:6-7).” In verse 9, Moses begs God to ‘take us as your inheritance.” The relationship would continue.

Or, Song of Songs 3, “I will seek the one I love/ When I found the one I love/ I held Him and would not let him go…”

Mary pouring oil on Jesus immediately came to mind! Whether or not this was Mary, the sister of Lazarus as the context of John 12 suggests or, if it is Mary of Magdalene as traditionally assumed (Luke 8 first mentions her after this incident), Mary found the one she loved. She did not want to let him go. Mark writes, “…as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard (Mark 14).” Song of Songs 1:12 is similar, ‘While the king is at his table/ My spikenard sends forth its fragrance.” She is criticized for the wasteful display. But, a lover does not care about such things:

Many waters cannot quench love

Nor can the floods drown it.

If someone would give for love

All the wealth of their house,

It would be utterly despised

Song of Songs 8:7

Perhaps she was anointing him for his upcoming death as some have said. And, perhaps the frankincense and myrrh of Song of Songs is an allusion to the birth of Jesus. Or, perhaps, this is simply a woman whose deep desire would not let her Beloved go.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Our Beloved, pursues relationship with us. This relationship infuses all life with meaning. In a covenant, the relationship is the authority. And so, He is the desire of our hearts and in Him our longing is satisfied. The lens of this marvelous love gives revelation to all our environs. In the words of the writer of Song of Songs, in the words of Sara McClahlan, in the words of ee cummings, I hear the echo of the wisdom of God imprinted in all that is, I hear the words of psalmists, I hear the words of prophets- I hear and see Jesus. It is love, not law, that is gravity for my heart.

“Your love is better that wine… (Song of Songs 4:10).”

Or, is it better than ice cream or chocolate? Sara McClachlan knows that “full feeling” also. The ache of our heart is for our Beloved. Only His Presence will satisfy. Nothing will quench this love. No price is too high. Nothing else can cure this lovesickness. Nothing else can quell this homesickness. We carry His heart. From this love, we can pour out love on others freely. As this love has been freely poured on us.

In the meantime, enjoy the wine, the ice cream, the chocolate, the company of the one you love. And know, that this is simply a taste. Hear the words of Sara McClahlan’s song as a rendition of Song of Songs, as our response to Jesus, the Beloved of our soul.