Chapter 4:8-9
Oh come with me my bride,
Come down from Lebanon
Down from the peaks of Amana
Down from Senir and Hermon,
From the mountains of the leopards,
The lion’s den.
You have ravished my heart,
my sister, my bride,
You have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes,
With one bead of your necklace.
You call me out of my cave, and I hear you say, with only a hint of exasperation, “Come down from your pretense! I don’t care what you’re wearing, how much money you have, how successful you seem.
I know who you really are.
I know how beautiful you are my friend. You can come out of hiding now.”Infatuation may be blind, but this true love sees to the core of beauty… Ravishing the Heart of Reality, destroying the mask that keeps us apart, that keeps us separate. I am sister to all Life, bride to the Beloved.
In the Fever of Love ©2008 Shefa Gold. All rights reserved.
Practice
Chant: Libavtini
Commentary
Once I have glimpsed the truth of our Unity; once I have been touched by ultimate Beauty; once I have been seen and known and taken into the Divine embrace… I will never be the same. My Heart has been captured, enraptured and overcome. This love feels like a danger, a threat to my life as habit, a risk to being “normal.” This practice acknowledges that danger, and then encourages me to persist on this journey of awakening.
Bridge to Torah
When Nadav and Avihu bring their offering to God, they experience the complete dissolution of their separate selves in the divine fire. They offer up that illusion of separateness and enter into the truth of Oneness. The intoxication of love compels them to give everything — beyond the proscribed rules of religion’s strictures. The Song of Songs describes that state of complete surrender as our hearts are ravished by just one glance of the Beloved, just one bead of her necklace. We remember the fragility of the false self, risking everything that we’ve constructed, risking life as we know it, to be embraced by the Oneness.
Click to see Leviticus 9:1–11:47 in Hebrew and English (JPS 1985) or the associated Torah Journeys page.
Question for Contemplation
Can I come down from the pretense of having it all together and enter into the vulnerability of the heart in all its fragility?
Resources
View Love at the Center Resources.
Click to see Song of Songs Chapter 4:8-9 in Hebrew with the English JPS (1985) translation.