January 2: The Time of Awakening: The Bridechamber
♫ Music:
Day 33 - Thursday, January 02
Title: The Time of Awakening: The Bridechamber
Scripture #1: Song of Songs 2:10-13 (NKJV)
My beloved spoke, and said to me: “Rise up, my love, my fair one,
and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!
Scripture #2: Isaiah 62:5 (NKJV)
For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
Scripture #3: Psalm 16:11 (NKJV)
You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Poetry:
“The Kiss”
by Sasha Pimentel
On Gustav Klimt’s painting, 1907-1908
Do you really think if you bend
me, I will love you? You
crack my chin up, your hands
brown pigeons scheming reunion
at my cheek and temple, your jaw
cragged at the end of your thick neck
of longing. I claw onto you
as the only tree here, your
swing. I’m mad for gravity though
I’m bound, diagonally, to
you. Let me. Push from your trunk towards
the edge and my freedom. Leave me
to wither while moss weeps
in the corners, our halo liquid
as yolk, waving from our bodies’ heat,
our divinity melting. My dress
blossoms loudly. You are still
wrestling me closer. If only I could
release to you my mouth just this
once and you would leave me,
but the shadows of your robe are
so haphazard. I know you will try
to smother me again. The poppies scratch. My feet
reach beyond spring.
THE TIME OF AWAKENING: THE BRIDAL CHAMBER
Gustav Klimt’s famous The Kiss is a large, imposing painting. A golden opulence, a halo even, envelopes the lovers, above and to their right, as the viewer takes in their embrace. Each one’s robed splendor is individually patterned yet their bodies merge in embrace. The richly fertile meadow sends up shoots of flowering vines to meet them in the flourish of excess. Are they edenically serene with their hair braided by flowers and leaves? Surely this is an ideal portrayal of private bliss––note how wondrously alone they are, needing only each other. They teeter on the edge of the world, their paradise open to the blaze of celestial consummation of beauty at the last day. Their love is enclosed in the singularity of their entwining ardor. But, on display, it is also a public rejoicing at the fecundity, fruitfulness, and fun of the created good of one flesh union. The portrayal calls out to all who can imagine their own embraces proclaiming and participating in such riches.
Song of Songs celebrates an awakening of affection in keeping with the rhythm of God’s good creation, the liveliness of Spring in the paradisal pastures powers the lover’s invitation to the beloved. Equally our Scriptures orient this human love to its framing by God’s love. Isaiah refers to the celebration and delight in the marital covenant to the larger truth of God’s rejoicing over his covenant people, the objects of his love. And the Psalm guards this moment from becoming idolatrous and solipsistic: our fullness comes with communion with God, in his presence we will know fulfillment. The gilded glitter of physical intimacy is a good but penultimate good in the light of the coming of God to dwell with us that we celebrate this Christmas time.
And yet, the coming to us of our God in love is also that wondrous and necessary work of salvation. What agency did Gustav Klimt’s models, whom he would take as lovers, have in their display to the world? Was that taking ever really a true giving on their part? Here lurks the powerful danger of a man’s delusions of mutual attraction enmeshed with exploitative social status and artistic genius. Certainly, Sasha Pimentel’s poem reads the dynamics of the image alert to the painting’s material history as a product of the artist’s actual practice. Here the woman is being wrestled, wishing, tragically, that she could submit to his pleasure if only to finally escape his violent clutches, her feet ready to leap into the abyss. If Solomon features in Song of Songs as the idealized king, what do we make of his taking of multiple wives and concubines? Too easily blaming them for leading him and Israel into idolatry, we can fail to see the idolatry of self-absorption in the taking of the covenant one-flesh union and making it a serial parade of status and diplomatic glory.
Possibly, Klimt’s sin need not cancel the beauty that can be read in his painting, just as Solomon’s sin does not undo the God-givenness of Scripture’s good news of salvation in Song of Songs. But what we can do at Christmas is recognize that the intimacy we may enjoy or hope for is fragile in our fallenness. The calling to be united to Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, disciplines the marriage unions among us to not look to human passion as the source of our eternal rejoicing. Each one of us is the victim of sin, the world, and the devil, and we, each one of us, sin in our enjoyment that too easily becomes use or even abuse of others. Scandal plagues our church and witness. People are hurt. Contrition and repentance can be hard to find. But in Jesus’ vulnerable coming we may dare to hope to enjoy most truthfully that love we offer and receive in vulnerability. We do so only when qualified by the hope of the judgment, perfection and reconciliation of all things in God’s love that will beautifully surpass our own.
Prayer:
Lord, God,
Lead us, by your Spirit, to love as you love us in Christ,
Lead us to confess and repent of our sin,
Lead us to honor the marriage bed and keep it holy,
Lead us to support and celebrate beauty as we glorify you alone,
Lead us to love your church, gathered, local, messy, painful, and persevering,
Lead us to see the vulnerability of your incarnation, for us, as the opening for conversations, acknowledgements, recognitions, and celebrations that draw us closer to each other and to you,
In your Spirit’s power, and in the name of Jesus,
Amen
Dr. Andy Draycott
Associate Professor of Theology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
The Kiss
Gustav Klimt
c. 1907
72 x 72 in.
Belvedere Museum
Vienna, Austria
Public Domain
The Kiss, probably the most popular work by artist Gustav Klimt, was first exhibited in 1908. The work presents an embracing couple, concealed behind a large golden cloak. This heavy embellishment protects and encircles the couple, emphasizing the immortality of their love. Two distinctive parts constitute the image: the first part depicting the man shows a repeating geometric black and white motif, symbolizing his strength, virility, and masculinity. Meanwhile, the second part portrays the woman, and here Klimt uses flowers and circles to reflect images of femininity and maternity. Klimt’s The Kiss is the archetype of tenderness and passion.
https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/art-analysis-the-kiss-by-klimt/
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-kiss-gustav-klimt/HQGxUutM_F6ZGg?hl=en
About the Artist:
Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods. Early in his career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he began to develop a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved new success with the paintings of his "golden phase,” many of which include gold leaf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt
About the Music #1: “Canticle of the Groom” from the album For The Bride
Lyrics #1:
Arise My bride, My beloved
Arise My sister, beautiful one.
For see the winter now is closing.
The rains are over,
The flowers appear on the earth.
All of the world will surely blossom.
The song of the dove will be heard in our land.
So lift your voice sweet and lowly.
Arise My bride and lift your song,
And rejoice.
As the vines now bloom in fragrance
Arise My bride to the chamber come.
As the flowers of dawn now open
You will conceive and bear a son.
So rejoice and rejoice.
And sister beautiful, My bride beloved.
Like an enclosed garden
Like a fountain sealed.
To bring forth the fruit and fragrances
To bless your children
To bless all the peoples
And all the nations heal.
And be healed, so be healed.
Arise north wind, come south wind
Blow to open the garden of love.
Flowing fountain, living water.
Flowing down to the earth from above.
I have come into My sister garden.
I have come to freely drink her wine.
I have come to taste and gather freely.
I have come to gently kiss My bride.
About the Music #2: “Canticle of the Bride” from the album For The Bride
Lyrics #2:
Let us kiss with a touch of our life,
Call me Lord, to your chamber.
For Your kiss is as excellent wine,
Flowing smoothly poured out for a Lover.
For the bride belongs to the Lover,
And the Bridegroom yearns for His bride.
So come to the night, there to empty our life,
To be fulfilled with the flowers of the dawn.
Let us go to the vineyard my Love,
To see if the vines are in bloom.
If the vines have opened to blossom new life,
So I will open to you.
As the flowers send forth their fragrant perfume,
So the doors of My love shall be opened.
For I have stored up My treasure for you,
And now I give you my love.
For the bride belongs to the Lover,
And the Bridegroom yearns for His bride.
So come to the night, there to empty our life,
To be fulfilled with the flowers of the dawn.
So come to the night, there to empty our life,
To be fulfilled with the flowers of dawn.
Composer/Performer #1 and #2:
John Michael Talbot (b. 1954) is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, author, and founder of a monastic community known as the Brothers and Sisters of Charity. His songs were the first by a Catholic artist to cross well-defined boundaries and gain acceptance by Protestant listeners. Talbot won the Dove Award for Worship Album of the Year for his album Light Eternal with producer and longtime friend, Phil Perkins. He is one of only nine artists to receive the President's Merit Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 1988 he was named the No. 1 Christian Artist by Billboard. Today, Talbot is one of the most active monk/ministers alive, traveling over nine months per year throughout the world, inspiring and renewing the faith of Christians of all denominations through sacred music, teaching, and motivational speaking.
https://johnmichaeltalbot.com/
About the Poetry & Poet:
Sasha Pimentel was born in the Philippines and raised in the United States and Saudi Arabia. She received an M.F.A. from California State University, Fresno. Pimentel is the author of For Want of Water (2017), which was selected for the National Poetry Series by Gregory Pardlo, and Insides She Swallowed ( 2010), which received an American Book Award. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at Universität Leipzig in Germany. Pimentel was the guest editor for Poem-a-Day in March 2021 and currently teaches in the bilingual M.F.A. program at the University of Texas, El Paso, where she lives.
https://poets.org/poet/sasha-pimentel
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Andy Draycott
Associate Professor of Theology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
Andy Draycott is Professor of Theology in Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. His research expertise is in evangelical reception of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress. He has published numerous academic articles in this area. Presently examining and analyzing readers’ marginal annotations in book copies of The Pilgrim's Progress, he would be happy to hear from any CCCA devotional readers who have annotated copies on their shelves. He can be found through his website: www.professorpilgrimsprogress.com