25 February 2011

Sober Intoxication

The Song of Songs is obscure. It indicates that these songs sung between God and a soul chosen as bride and mated and united to God in the human spirit’s chamber, united in the very Image of God are utterly mysterious and completely inexpressible. Not even the bride herself is able to express what she has perceived. When hearts have been moved to jubilation of this sort, the things that result within the spirit cannot be put into conventional and customary words. Just as people drunk with wine lose the ability to talk in a normal fashion, so the bride drunk with sober intoxication speaks in a way intelligible not to anyone and everyone, but only to lovers loving in a similar way.

~ Expositiones Mysticæ Cantica Canticorum, Dom Nicholas Kempf ~