Abstract
Research on the use of the Song of Songs in spiritual direction is rare; yet, the Song of Songs (or Canticle of Canticles) is a highly conducive case as it provides in nuce the poetics, lyrics, erotics, and aesthetics of human and divine love which is found nowhere else in Scripture. This article draws on these unique features, integrates the biblical and the experiential, and offers a poetics-praxis paradigm for use in contemporary spiritual praxis. With the poem’s metaphorical vineyard (a figurative term for the beloved herself) serving as hermeneutical key, the beloved’s experience of love is interpreted through a multifaceted reading that is intrinsic to the poem, namely: eros [yearning]; mythos [searching]; mustikos [finding]; and kosmos [birthing]. In following the inner dynamism and dramatic tensions across the eight chapters of the Song, the fourfold reading traces the beloved’s transformation from a neglected vineyard (Can 1:6) to a generative vineyard (Can 8:12). The article concludes that transformation in love is a journey from depletion (the giving away of self) towards deification (the giving of self in love), and suggests tending one’s own vineyard as a living testament to divine love and a living sacrament in the world.
Highlights
The use of the Song of Songs in spiritual direction is a significant research topic for two reasons: firstly, both the biblical love song and the practice of spiritual direction are rooted in ancient traditions; and secondly, the Song of Songs remains one of the most disputed, marginalised, and neglected of biblical texts
This article, by way of background, elucidates four aspects that underscore the value of an ancient poem for a contemporary practice, namely: (1) the Song of Songs tradition, (2) a recovery of the Song’s spiritual vocation, (3) essentials of spiritual direction, and (4) presuppositions for a poetics-praxis amalgam
The Song of Songs, as an ancient Israelite love poem, is embedded with spiritual allusions that are continuous with the biblical tradition, yet expand the interpretative horizon for new uses and reuses of the poem
Summary
The use of the Song of Songs in spiritual direction is a significant research topic for two reasons: firstly, both the biblical love song and the practice of spiritual direction are rooted in ancient traditions; and secondly, the Song of Songs remains one of the most disputed, marginalised, and neglected of biblical texts. This article, by way of background, elucidates four aspects that underscore the value of an ancient poem for a contemporary practice, namely: (1) the Song of Songs tradition, (2) a recovery of the Song’s spiritual vocation, (3) essentials of spiritual direction, and (4) presuppositions for a poetics-praxis amalgam. While the focus is on the human subject rather than on the text as object, and is underpinned by experiential exegesis, the following literary aspects are deemed crucial in a spiritual direction reading: firstly, the Song of Songs is ‘the hermeneutic key’ to interpreting the Scriptures (Kingsmill 2009:10) in spite of the fact that it poses ‘the exegetical challenge par excellence’ (LaCocque 1998a:38); secondly, the Song’s leitmotif of love is central as underscored by the following summation: ‘Love is the core of revelation; all the rest is commentary’ (LaCocque 1998a:38); thirdly, the mystical aptitude of the Song is deeply embedded in the text as poetry ‘mimics reality in the hypothetical mode of fiction’ (Ricoeur 1995:240); and, fourthly, as ‘iconographic text’ that serves as ‘a window opening between two worlds’, the Song ‘witnesses to our fragmentations and yet offers glimpses of a higher unity’ (Davis 2006:176–177).
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