Talk by Gillian Coxhead
Using music to accompany her reflections, Gillian asks what is the experience of “love’s urgent longings” and dips well into John of the Cross’s poem to describe how God gives us a taste for Him alone.
Venture of Delight (27 min.)
Fired with Love’s Urgent Longings (47 min.)
One dark night
Filled with love’s urgent longings
-Ah, the sheer grace!-
My house being now all stilled;
In the darkness and secure,
by the secred ladder, desguised;
-Ah, the sheer grace!-
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now all stilled;
On that glad night,
In secret, for no one saw me,
Nor did I look at anything,
With no other light or guide,
Than the one that burned in my heart.
This guided me
More surely than the light of noon
To where he waited for me
-Him I knew so well-
In a place where no one else appeared.
O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
The lover with his beloved
Transforming the beloved in her lover.
I understand and forgot myself
All things ceased
I went out from myself
Leaving my cares
Forgotten among the lilies.
