Arise, My Love
Song of Songs 2:8-15
Song of Songs 2:8-15 (NRSV):
8 The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
9 My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away,
11 for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
14 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face;
let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is lovely.
15 Catch us the foxes,
the little foxes,
that ruin the vineyards—
for our vineyards are in blossom.”
Anybody feeling anything, hearing this Biblical love poem? Like how you might feel watching your favorite romance? The Notebook? Ghost? How Stella Got Her Groove Back? That one might actually be a decent comp, for this text. “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” could easily be the title of this poem.
This text might seem to some of you like a fitting, poetic companion to last week’s Easter text, with its images of rising and new life. To others of you it might feel like the farthest distance I could have gone, scripturally, from last week’s text, leaving behind the resurrection of Jesus Christ–hardly small potatoes, theologically speaking–for something a little more…sexy?
Song of Songs, for all its possible allegorical elements and theological layers of meaning, is most plainly, a love poem, an erotic poem, a story of desire and intimacy between two lovers. While authorship has traditionally been attributed to King Solomon, recent scholars have questioned male authorship, surmising that a woman wrote the text, given that a woman’s voice drives the plot. But I would say that even if this text is about romantic Love, it’s about more than just romantic Love.
Scholar Abi Doukhan notes that “Song of Songs” is a Love story but also possibly a story of challenging and leaving behind patriarchy, and a story of a woman discovering and embracing herself, free from social expectations of her, without dismissing her fundamental relational and social obligations*. So, romantic Love, yes, but also profound self-Love. But a self-Love that arises not through separation but relationship. In other words, we find ourselves, together.
* Abi Doukhani, Womanist Wisdom in the Song of Songs: Secrets of an African Princess, vi-vii.
The first thing you might want to know about this text is that the main speaker is a woman, which is unusual for the Bible. Speaking of last week’s Easter story, and the leap to this text, remember that women are the first to witness and then share the news about Jesus’s resurrection.
You might also want to know how this woman kicks off her poem, in chapter one: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” Kinda sets a spicy tone! “Mouth kisses?” No shame in admitting that Song of Songs is your favorite book of the Bible, if it is!
You might also want to know how this woman describes herself, in the verses preceding this section: “I am black and beautiful” (1:5)—an incredible self-affirming declaration that, 2500+ years later, feels very relevant. She also says: “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.” (2:1). More self-affirming speech. What is a Biblical way to speak about oneself? Read “Song of Songs”! There is a time for being modest, but there’s also a time for pride in who we are.
You might also want to note the speaker’s declaration of what she wants: “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples” she says before this (2:5). Not everyone feels safe enough to make requests of others, feeling like they might be imposing. I know that many women, in particular, have been conditioned to believe that it is bad to want things or to say what you want. This woman says what she wants.
You might also notice, as you read through Song of Songs, that this woman is telling the story, she’s the one adoring her "beloved," almost like a prize she has won, which feels like an important subversion, in regard to gender roles, in that time, or in a lot of times.
That all sets the tone for today’s text. And despite all that context, I don’t really want to talk exclusively about romantic Love. I think there is truth here about Love, about the ways we can show up for each other, that goes beyond the experience of romance, but if you just want to think about romance today, that’s fine.
So then, what does this text tell us about Love, about the kind of things we do when we actively love someone, whether that’s a lover, a friend, a family member, a stranger or enemy, or even ourselves?
Ashley Wilcox, a Quaker and friend of Camas Friends, asks a great question of this text: “What if (Song of Songs) were the only part of the Bible we had? How would we think about God if this were our only sacred text?”* I’ll take a shot at answering that.
*Ashley Wilcox, The Women’s Lectionary, 112.
What if Song of Songs, and this passage in particular, were all we had? No Genesis, no Exodus, no kings and wars, no prophets, no Jesus and disciples, no Paul and early Church? What would we then think about God, at least according to this hypothetical, abridged Bible? I might think God cared about the Earth, about growing things. I might think God cared not about pragmatic arrangements or patriarchal marriages but about real human love. Romantic love, yes, but there’s echoes of Love beyond romance, here. I might conclude God wants women to speak, and values women’s ways of knowing and experiencing the world.
And once I started to realize that women, in a patriarchal world, have a voice and exist for more than the men who seem to run the show, I might begin to think everyone has a voice, that people exist for more than to support the greed and dominance of a particular group of people. I might think God wanted a world where everyone thrived.
I might even think God was something like these characters. Both of them really: God as dynamic, energetic, bounding presence, drawing us out, enticing us to discover the world around us and ourselves, as we see in the beloved. And…God as powerful potential, awaiting our nurture, enticing us to draw God out, to make Love come alive in others and in our world, to move the God who is Love from their restful, recreating, incubating season of winter into springtime, a season of growth and becoming.
I invited you last week to feel the resurrection story, not overthink it, and that is also an appropriate way to read poetry, like this. What does this text make you feel? What do those feelings compel you to do?
Listen to this woman. She sees the one she loves, leaping and bounding, maybe with a big silly grin. The beloved arrives, peeking in the window and through the lattice, which doesn’t seem to be creepy in this case, but welcomed enthusiasm and curiosity. The speaker is pursued–not helpless or without agency, but nonetheless, pursued.
The beloved says: “get up, let’s go, let’s do stuff, there are so many wondrous things to discover, so many possibilities to actualize, so much life to experience and nurture and protect; come with me!” As a kid, I’d go to a neighbor’s house and say “can Patrick come out and play?” Nowadays all my kid’s friend hangouts are planned between parents over text message, but it was a different time, in the early 90s, in my small town of Woodland, where I roamed the neighborhood, knocking on doors, not selling anything, just looking for a companion, for an hour or two. “Come on–let’s go play!”
And the springtime imagery is easy to feel, for someone like me who gets pretty giddy as the fawn lilies and trilliums and balsamroot and Camas lilies emerge. “Flowers are appearing, turtledoves are singing, fig trees are producing, vines are blossoming, everything smells so good! You’ve got to come with me and experience it for yourself!”
The speaker, though, is hiding; you could hear this as being cute or coy, as if they’re saying “you’re gonna have to find me!” But I actually hear this as more fearful or unsure. It’s a valid thing, I think, to feel shy, hesitant to leave what’s comfortable, cautious about stepping out, trusting someone, showing your true self, and so on.
And we don’t always know why people don’t just act, or go, or do the thing we would do if we were in their shoes. We don’t always know people’s stories or what holds them back from taking a step we think they should take. The speaker may be in what feels like a safe and comfortable space, and maybe it was for a time, during “winter.” But seasons change. It’s springtime, now, And so she is enticed by the beloved to embrace this new season, assured that they will move through that season, together.
And then there are those potential threats, those “foxes” that ruin the vineyards. The world is full of beauty, yes, but also tragedy. As we read at the Easter sunrise service last weekend: “The world is indeed full of peril…but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” J.R.R. Tolkien.
I’m also reminded of the poetry of William Butler Yeats: “Come away, O human child! / To the waters and the wild / With a faery, hand in hand / For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.” Now in that poem, the fairies arguably trick the human child. The poem is called “The Stolen Child” after all. Is this woman, the speaker in Song of Songs being tricked or stolen? I think neither, because I think consent–a key word in any responsible and respectful sexual ethic–is given. The woman is called to come away, not coerced but enticed, given an invitation that she accepts, on her terms.
She also is not escaping the weeping of the world, like the fairies entice the child to do, but boldly going forth into that tearful world, knowing that nature, including the human parts of it, contains multitudes. Life is blooming, emerging everywhere, and there are threats to that life. Part of the coming out and going forth is to enjoy the wonders of the world, but it’s also to “catch those foxes” that would threaten that thriving. Life is to be enjoyed; life is to be protected; we do this twofold work together.
What I wonder, in expanding the scope beyond romance to any kind of relationship, whether familial, friendly, or otherwise, is: when might we be the one, waiting for the invitation to come out of winter and move into spring? And, when might we be the one, extending the invite?
“Song of Songs” may be a very saucy book–and I don’t want to downplay that–but I’m also not so sure that romantic Love, friendship Love, parent Love, stranger Love, etc., all have fundamentally different rules. I mean, sure, I don’t give mouth kisses to my friends. I don’t tuck every person that uses our food pantry into bed at night. I don’t only make myself available to my kids on Wednesday afternoons and every other Thursday evening from 6pm to 7:30pm. I don’t fist bump my wife to show her affection–I don’t only fist bump my wife to show her affection. There are some ways our love manifests in certain relationships that it doesn’t in others.
But the heart of Love–participating in the lives of others in ways that affirm, and elevate, and protect, and energize, and embolden, and nurture, and so on–that’s pretty consistent across all the Loves, I think. So that’s part of why I want to broaden the scope of this text, today. It’s not just because I really don’t want to talk to you all, as a group, about skin and hair and hips and biceps.
So what does this text tell us about Love? I do think Love calls us out, calls us forward, calls us to rise. I think there are people in our lives that can often come alongside us, with a vitality and enthusiasm and outlook we lack, in a particular moment, and be what we need in an otherwise challenging time. And I think we can be that for others.
A very romantic, sensual scripture, for sure, but it’s not hard to read this in the context of healthy friendship, for example. “Hey look, there comes my friend! My friend is so excited to spend time with me! I’m kind of stuck, here…and they came all the way to be with me? They know I needed a boost and they brought me a smoothie? They want me to come with them and go check out the wildflowers in Lacamas Park on this beautiful day? Wow! Don’t they have better things to do? I'm the better thing? I’m a priority?”
Have you ever been that person, the beloved, or just a timely friend, who says: “Let’s go for a walk. Let me help you with that. Why don’t you get out for the evening, and I’ll watch your kids. I think you have a talent for this. You look incredible. Let me take that off your plate. You could really make a difference. Maybe it will go better than you think. You are needed, out here. Let’s go together, and make some noise. You can do this. It’s okay if you can’t do this, and maybe you and we will figure it out along the way.”
Or, have you ever been that person in the clefts of the rock, awaiting an invite, a nudge, a vote of confidence, an open door that you cannot open but others can, even if you are the one who must enter or exit?
If I only had this text and nothing else from the Bible, I might conclude that: Love is energizing. Love is attentive. Love is showing up. Love is opening up. Love is enticing, alluring. Love is a nudge. Love is the ecosystem, moving from winter to spring, changing in harmony. Love sees the sacred, and draws it out. Love is protective. Love awakens us to what is good and beautiful, all around us. Love is something we do together.
Honestly, I see this Love in Jesus, too, so if we think he’s right about Love, then maybe this woman who speaks in “Song of Songs” is right, when she speaks of Love. Actually, let me correct that: I know she’s right. Who am I to say she’s not, anyway?
Queries:
What does this scripture highlight or clarify for me?
How do I identify with either character?
What invitation or encouragement can I give to someone this week?
What do I need to help me “arise…and come away”?
What good and beautiful things am I being invited to cherish and protect?