“Exploring the Song of Songs: An InterPlay Sermon” with Kate Amoss
August 30, 2015
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Song of Songs has a different spirit from any other biblical passage. Neither historical nor instructive, it is, instead, a glorious celebration of human love and desire. While scholars do not agree on the authorship of the Song of Songs, they mostly agree that it echoes the ancient love poems of the sacred marriage between Inanna, the Sumerian mother-goddess, and Dumuzi, the Sumerian harvest god. The text contains elements of some of the very earliest written records of civilization. It gives some clues to our human awareness in a time before language had come to shape our consciousness so strongly.
And yet
If you try to hold onto
A handful of blossom,
Each one will turn to a withered memory
In your hand.
Whatever it is in you that wants to die,
Let life have its way.
Lie down in those petals and let them drink you in.
Do not deny them their right to
Return to the earth
And take part in
The great cycle of
Things
That
Cannot
Last.