Saying For Today: Love gives only Itself. Love can do no other.
*Brian Wilcox. "How Intimate Can We Be?"
Video can be accessed on original site via upper left artist-title...
You are the Truth That got up and danced There is no right or wrong In that moving
There is a shore Where the two oceans meet Embracing in Love Then parting again
This delight is like two lovers Awakening in the morning And passing the day Cherishing memories of the night's wet embrace
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Following the publication of my book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, a woman spoke to me as she left the chapel one Sunday morning. I was the pastor of the congregation. Many of the members seemed to appreciate the book, as well as be delighted their pastor had published a book. This woman, however, looking at me sternly, as though I had an infectious disease, said, "You have a problem with sex!" I smiled back. She walked on, not saying anything else.
I guess I could have replied with the jocular, "Yes, I do have a problem with sex. I can never get enough of it." Seems that would not have been a pastoral thing to say, however.
This person was not aware, it appears, that erotic imagery is a time-honored means to intimate the intimacy between the Beloved and lover, God and the self, or Christ and the soul. Erotic imagery is used in varied religions, including Hinduism of Krishna and the self and Sufism of the lover and Friend.
This sacred intercourse, like copulation between two human lovers, can be ecstatic. This meaning, literally, to take one out of oneself. Where is one taken? Into the felt-union of Beloved and lover. The Sufis refer to this as being intoxicated with the Wine, the Beloved, the Friend. Christian sages have spoken of the union that makes this possible as a mutual-indwelling or a co-inhering. When one is living in this union, times may occur of an upswelling of the joy of this Embrace. Yet, living in the Embrace does not always mean an ecstatic feeling. Such times the self could not sustain, being in a human body.
One night, in the arms of the Beloved, whispering I said, "Will you teach me more about Love, my studies in theology did little of that?"
Theory without Union is no better than a fireplace on a cold night without a fire.
Teachings alone is like reading a manual on sex while the lover, waiting, says, "Throw that away! Come here, inside me!"
My Beloved says, “To know Me, jump in bed with Me! It’s an adventure, I assure you of that."
And I assure you too, after having jumped in, It is ~ Why else would I be smiling so much?
Somehow, I do not know how, but when a child I knew the heart of the Universe is Love. I came to know the Sacred as my intimate Friend or, possibly, came to Earth knowing it. With all my education later, including a Masters and a Philosophy Doctorate in theology, I longed for a deeper knowing of the Love. I ached for a deeper union with my Friend. The Friend became my Lover, too. Love leads to Love.
I learned, and am learning, only Love gives Love. Love gives only Itself. Love can do no other. To say, "Love me," is to say, "Give me Yourself." The question is, then, "How much of Love will you welcome into yourself?"
The Beloved prepares you to surrender, for the Beloved surrenders to you. This even as two human lovers relax into mutual embrace.
In this Union, we cannot say at any point of time, "I have reached full union with Love?" Rather, sinking more deeply in the Ocean of Love, depth to depth, we say again and again, "Yes." The whole journey is Love to Love. There are depths we have yet to explore and enjoy. Those wait for us.
