Vineyard

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the maidens love you! Song of Songs 1:2-3

Strengthen me with raisins; refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. 2:5

I was with a group of students the other week and we were exploring relationships. One of the girls found a Dolly magazine that had a result of a survey I guess the magazine had designed. This survey produced a stat, which read something like “80% of girls feel they need to have sex with their boyfriend to keep them”. Sure, it’s Dolly and probably really can’t be considered as accurate – far from it perhaps. It’s also making an assumption about how boys view relationships – have some of these girls made assumptions about what boys want.. It does, however, highlight some the pressures boys and girls are under to think about sex being necessary in a relationship. Strong pressure from media and friends. We are seeing a trend on serial monogamy with young people having several sexual relationships over short periods of time, unfortunately with this comes a higher risk of STI’s – particularly Chlamydia.

Song of songs is a beautiful love story charged with sexual energy, attraction and desire. It follows the love poetry between two young people, madly in love with each other and not afraid to speak their feelings to each other – a key to a good relationship – communication!

Some other comments are made by the couple, the girl says “but my own vineyard is mine to give” (8:12). Vineyard apparently is a metaphor for sexuality. You could read this as – I’m not going to give myself to just anyone. It’s her decision to make without coercion or manipulation – something we see way too often between relationships.

The guy says something interesting too, “You are a garden locked up….you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain” (4:12) You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water… (4:15). Water is a metaphor for life, energy and purity, freshness. A garden is a place of sensual delights – locked up perhaps resembling virginity or keeping herself exclusively for her husband. I see a guy who is praising his beloved for her control of her sexuality. He isn’t pressuring her, making her feel guilty.

What is it about these two – they have so much passion for each other, so much desire they express to each other yet seem to embrace a higher level of understanding - something guiding them that seems to be stronger than their sexual desires.

Rob Bell in his book Sex God says this about how perhaps how people can regards sex;

“Sex becomes a search. A search for something they’re missing. A quest for the unconditional embrace.”

“But sex is not the search for something that’s missing. It’s the expression of something that’s been found. It’s designed to be the overflow, the culmination of something that a man and a woman have found in each other. It’s a celebration of this living, breathing thing that’s happening between the two of them.”

Not all young people are having sex and many are choosing to make their own decisions - perhaps not wanting to give themselves to just anyone. I hope all of us can find the kind of love and sexual energy expressed by this young couple in Song of Songs.

Unity

He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. 1 Corinthians 6:17

I have finished reading through “The Interior Castle” by St Teresa. It will be a book I will have to re-visit; I feel there is more to learn and experience here.

I wanted to write down some of the symbols used to describe the term she has as “spiritual marriage” of individuals with God. Isn’t this expression such wonderful one – it beautifully describes the intimacy of relationship God chases us for.

Here they are;

Union may be symbolised by two wax candles, the tips of which touch each other so closely that there is but one light.

Spiritual marriage is like rain falling from heaven into a river or stream, becoming one and the same liquid, so that the river and rainwater cannot be divided; or it resembles a streamlet flowing into the ocean, which cannot afterwards be disunited from it.

This marriage may also be likened to a room into which a bright light enters through two windows – though divided when it enters, the light becomes one and the same.

I love the use of nature in these symbols. God can teach us so much through our natural surroundings – I find it so powerful. I personally find it easiest to draw close to God while observing and experiencing nature.

This “spiritual marriage” described also reminds me of the unity shared between the Father and the Son in the fellowship of the spirit – so intimately close they are like one. And to think that we share in that circle of fellowship – in Jesus – with God. Stunning.