“O Lord, love me mightily and love me often and long; the more often you love me the purer I become; the more mightily you love me the more beautiful I become: the longer you love me the holier I become here on earth.” Mechthild von Magdeburg (medieval mystic 1285-1291).
It’s hard for most fundamentalists to even read such poetry- such truth, let alone think it Godly.
I’m not quoting some new age flake here. Mechthild left home to become a Beguine, and live a life of prayer and mortification under the guidance of Dominican friars. Much like today though, her criticism of church dignitaries and claims to theological insight aroused church opposition, and thus she joined the Benedictine nunnery at Helfta, who offered her protection and support in the final years of her life, and where she finished writing down the contents of the many divine revelations she claimed to have experienced.
The nuns of Helfta were highly educated and important works of mysticism survive from Mechthild’s younger contemporaries, St. Mechthild of Heckeborn and St. Gertrude the Great.
You have to have a MYSTICAL approach to the Bible and spiritual matters to read, let alone understand Song of Songs (Solomon). The extent of imagery doesn’t fit nicely into doctrine, dogma, or some Strong’s Concordance definition(s). Saying you LOVE God and really LOVING Him (can you love a God of only one gender?) are day and night.
One will read about fondling, taking off clothes, becoming naked, penetration, kissing the small of the back, or other individual parts. Understanding God as a LOVER isn’t intellectual stuff! The extent of erotic imagery will make a “one-foot-on-the-floor” purist (if you get my drift) BLUSH! But maybe that’s what wwe’re not doing enough of if at all- being vulnerable.
Humans love though because God loves- and AS God loves. Awaken to the Eros of God: and by the way, Eros is one of the names of God.
Are you ALIVE?
How beautiful! He/She saves us by LOVE! Thank you Ernie and Mechthild for the extension of Love and Life!
Barbara: How far away from the purity of unconditional love we have gone whoring after doctrinal purity, dogmatic discipline, and deterministic dualism….among a hundred other religious strait-jackets
One can just feel the passion in von Magdeburg’s writing. Just reading it makes me want to crawl away to that space (meditation) where that deep intimacy exists! Thanks for sharing!
It occurred to me while reading this prayer that von Magdeburg’s pleas are entirely rhetorical. We are loved more than we could ever possibly imagine, and mightily so. How soon we forget the utter depth and majesty of the Love that always surrounds and enfolds us. But even those periods of forgetfulness serve their purpose, rendering the discovery all the more beautiful. We are inherently part of, and woven into All That Is, and this is our Intrinisic Holiness.
I love these reminders from ACIM:
“My mind is a part of God’s, I AM very Holy.”
“My Holiness blesses everyone that I see”.
“My Holiness is my salvation.”
And as Rev. Ed Bacon once stated, “In every moment, something sacred is at stake.”
How far away from the purity of His Unconditional Love we are when we try to live by our physical senses, our mind and not His, etc. when we are told it is not by what we see or touch but by the Spirit we are to live…..Your commentary has helped me more than maybe any ever! It is kin to an electrical power surge!!!