{"id":26914,"date":"2026-05-04T08:01:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T12:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26914"},"modified":"2026-05-04T08:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T12:25:09","slug":"26914","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26914","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, May 3, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Belovedness - Sarah Kroger (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EwSyLLHdvlo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Love Song of the Soul<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In the CAC\u2019s<\/em>&nbsp;Essentials of Engaged Contemplation<em>&nbsp;course, James Finley and Mirabai Starr describe how the Song of So<\/em><em>ngs in the Old Testament expresses the soul\u2019s longing for God as well as God\u2019s longing for us. Core faculty member James Finley says: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Song of Songs is one of the poetic works of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament, along with the Torah and the Prophets. It\u2019s a poem about two people who are very erotically and intensely in love with each other. They also have a deep reverence for each other, which is the gift of such love. The text\u2019s inclusion in the Bible is interesting because it makes no mention of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The scholar Bernard McGinn points out that there\u2019s an understanding of this poem that is relevant to faith communities. The Jewish community viewed it as a poem of God\u2019s love for the Jewish people and of the people\u2019s love as a community for God, but it\u2019s also about each Jewish person\u2019s love for God and God\u2019s love for each person. That understanding carried over into the Christian tradition, where it\u2019s read as God\u2019s love for the church as well as God\u2019s love for each Christian and their love for God. The central imagery reveals a deepening interplay of communion between God and humanity, collectively and personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>CAC guest faculty member&nbsp;<\/em><em>Mirabai Starr continues:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Song of Songs is our soul\u2019s quintessential blueprint. <strong>We often have this sense that to be born is to be separated from our source. The path of this life, then, is a path of return and homecoming\u2014and it\u2019s characterized in many ways by longing, yearning, and remembering in our bones that we come from Love<\/strong>. The desire beyond all other desires is to return to Love. That spiritual longing is often expressed or mirrored in our human relationships. I don\u2019t see that as a problem. Our human relationships are not illusions that stand in for the real thing, the spiritual longing of our spiritual selves. Rather, <strong>our human relationships are the field on which this love dance plays out in this life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Finley<\/em><em>&nbsp;concludes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyone who\u2019s ever been smitten by love doesn\u2019t need to explain why the Song of Songs is sacred. In other words,<strong> love\u2019s the best thing going. It\u2019s way up there with hummingbirds and sunsets. It\u2019s one of God\u2019s better ideas, because a life rich with love is a life rich with meaning.<\/strong> God is the infinity of love; therefore, our love for each other is an incarnate manifestation of that infinite love, which is incarnate in our love for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Song of Songs expresses this love song of the heart. The rhythms of the poet\u2019s voice are the rhythms of love itself. The language is so poetic because it\u2019s evocatively incarnating the nonlinear realizations of love. That\u2019s why, when we read Scripture this way, it affects us at such a deep level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Holy of Holies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday, May 4, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>If a dream of God is a delicate thing, how much more so a dream of God the Lover.<br>\u2014Ellen Davis,&nbsp;<em>Getting Involved with God<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis shares the history of the Song of Songs\u2019 inclusion in the Bible:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is a book that barely (no pun intended) made it into the Bible, and with good reason. It never mentions God, at least not explicitly, and it mentions a lot of other things we would not expect to find in the Bible. The scriptural status of the Song of Songs is so questionable that the Talmud actually records the great debate\u2026. It was the declamation of Rabbi Akiba, the great teacher, scholar, and martyr of early Judaism, that finally carried the day:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Heaven forbid! No Jew ever questioned the sanctity of the Song of Songs; for all the world is not worth the day when the Song of Songs was given to Israel. For all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies! [1] \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Akiba\u2019s view of the Song\u2019s unique holiness carried not only that day, but well over a millennium of biblical interpretation among both Jews and Christians. The eight chapters of the Song of Songs have generated more commentary than almost any other book of the Bible\u2026. In the thirteenth century, Bernard [of Clairvaux] wrote eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs, and he never got beyond chapter three, verse one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In recent years, however, this tide of interpretation has turned\u2026. The present consensus is that the Song of Songs is a celebration of human sexuality that was included in the canon of scripture by mistake, because the ancient rabbis thought it was about the love of God and Israel\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If the Song is solely a celebration of human love, then nowhere within the covers of the Bible is there a truly happy story about God and Israel (or God and the Church) in love\u2026. If the Song has nothing to do with the story of God and Israel after all,<strong> then there is nowhere to turn to hear one partner say, \u201cI love you,\u201d and the other answer right back, \u201cYes, yes; I love you, too.\u201d For this is the only place in the Bible where there is a&nbsp;<em>dialogue&nbsp;<\/em>of love.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Davis describes how the Song of Songs <strong>overcomes the separation that began in Genesis between God, humanity, and the earth:&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The poet of the Song has a dream, and in that dream <strong>all the ruptures that occurred in Eden are repaired\u2026. <\/strong>Following carefully and imaginatively where the words of the Song lead, <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">we can share the poet\u2019s and God\u2019s dream of the original harmony of creation restored<\/span>\u2026. A woman and a man, equally powerful, are lost in admiration of each other\u2014or more accurately, in admiration they truly find themselves and each other. And the natural world rejoices with them.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>==================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Individual Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where does the two-way dialogue of love \u2014 &#8220;I love you&#8221; answered by &#8220;I love you, too&#8221; \u2014 feel most alive or most absent in you right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Group Discussion \u2014 choose one:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li>Starr says our human relationships are &#8220;the field on which this love dance plays out.&#8221; What does that stir as you sit with your own?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Davis writes that the Song&#8217;s poet dreams the ruptures of Eden repaired. What in you longs toward that dream?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What would it mean to receive the Song of Songs as written&nbsp;<em>to<\/em>&nbsp;you \u2014 not about someone else&#8217;s love, but God&#8217;s love song to your own soul?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Love Song of the Soul In the CAC\u2019s&nbsp;Essentials of Engaged Contemplation&nbsp;course, James Finley and Mirabai Starr describe how the Song of Songs in the Old Testament expresses the soul\u2019s longing for God as well as God\u2019s longing for us. Core faculty member James Finley says: &nbsp; The Song of Songs is one of the poetic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26914"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26914"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26919,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26914\/revisions\/26919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}