Shadow

Song 3:1-5 and John 1:5

^3:1 Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. ² “I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.” I sought him, but found him not. ³ The sentinels found me, as they went about in the city. “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?” ⁴ Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. ⁵ I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does: do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!

^NRS John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

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On my bed at night I sought him, who my soul loves.

I would venture to say that every single person in this room knows something of that feeling, that feeling of longing, that feeling, maybe even of emptiness, lack of satisfaction. Because it’s part of the human condition. It’s who we are; there’s something within us that is disconnected, and so it produces this deep sense of longing, and I’m not just talking about longing for the sexual, I’m talking about the erotic, which in this poem is far broader than just the sexual. It’s a horrible statement about our society that somehow we’ve reduced the fullness of erotic satisfaction only to the sexual.

No, the full erotic beauty of the world has to do with a deep satisfaction of connection to the Holy, so that it generates our creativity. It makes us, allows us, to explode with creative beauty. We become a part of it, and we long for it.

Oh, that night I was upon my bed seeking the one whom my soul loves, and found him not. The human condition – looking for something that will satisfy, looking for work that can allow us to be everything we’ve dreamed of being. Looking for the way to be connected physically, one to another, so that we feel touched and whole, not used and torn apart. We long for this, but it’s difficult to find it.

We go away on a business trip, maybe, and we work hard. We deal with all kinds of people and sometimes it’s not necessarily easy. And you enter that hotel room, and there’s nobody there. Oh, how I long to be with the one who my soul loves.

When we lose a partner, somebody who has been integral to our whole lives, we walk into the house, all alone. Oh, how we long to connect to the one whom my soul loves, as we get drained, and feel as though things are empty.

It’s difficult, though, isn’t it, to just leave it at the emptiness. Some would say impossible, just to live in that emptiness, live in the midst of that longing. We don’t do it. At least we’re not apt to do it, unless we teach ourselves. We don’t stay in that place of empty longing; instead we go out and we seek to fill it up, just like the woman in this poem.

I will go out into this city and find him who my soul loves. Well what do you find in the city? In the scriptures what you find in the city is everything the human beings try to do when they are separate, and shielded away from God, when they are exiled from God. What you find in the city, what Cain found in the city after he slew Abel and was exiled and built the first one, was what human beings construct and do outside of the presence of God.

I seek the one who my soul loves and she moves into the city and so do we. We find some way to work it out. We work hard, we try to use whatever wisdom and power is at our hands to find our satisfaction – find satisfaction in the work we do, find satisfaction in the relationships we have.

We go out into the city and try to make those things happen, but it doesn’t always work out, and the reactions, well you can see them everywhere. You can see the shadow that those actions cast when you feel rage in your heart. It’s because whatever it is that you’ve been doing or looking for is kind of a pseudo-erotic thing, a pseudo-satisfying thing. So undernearth we see the anger wells up, or maybe it’s jealousy, because we feel empty instead of complete. We are longing for the one who my soul loves.

Maybe the shadwo is depression. Whatever it is, we tend to fill up our lives with things that then create this shadow, this darkness within us. We deaden our senses to it, and so we use television, books, NPR, whatever . . . just to fill up the void so we don’t have to sit any place in that longing for very long. We treat it with drugs, and there it sits.

Oh, how I long for the one whom my soul loves, the human condition. When we go out into the city, and we try to satisfy those needs, and we travel around and finally we go to the vanguards of human wisdom, the sentinels in this poem, and we say, “Do you know where the one is whom my soul loves?” And the resounding answer is “No!” Satisfaction is not there.

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But this text holds a beautiful secret; in some ways it’s on the surface of it, really. Because the lover, the one who has sought everything that can fill her up, the one that lives within each one of us, that lover with longing goes into the city. But then goes beyond the city, and just as she is past the sentinels, the guards, she finds the one whom her soul loves. Just as she gets past all of that, she’s able to be embraced, and embrace the one who her soul loves. To be filled and completed, Eros defined, broadly.

What’s she done? She has walked through the shadow and into the light. Through the shadow and into the light. The light, you know, is within the darkness, but the darkness can’t overcome it. In fact, it is the darkness, it is the shadow that leads us towards the light. That’s the secret of this poem. Oh, I sought him, who my soul loves. I asked the sentinel, do you know where he is? No. But I got beyond that, to the empty place outside the city, and I begin to discover who it is that my soul loves.

All of those things that you carry inside you – when I talked about the shadow – the anger, the depression, and the frustration, along with all the ways that we deaden it – those are all things that we’re deeply ashamed of. We want to put them away – hide them – even form ourselves. Everybody has got a secret. Everybody carries it, and everybody hides it. Don’t you? Don’t think I don’t. We put it away because we’re deeply ashamed of the things that we are – feeling that we are the cause of our own longing.

And the wisdom of the passage is that when you don’t put it away, you don’t hide it, you don’t forget about it, you don’t deny it; when you take it out, and you look at it, and you see it – then it can lead you towards the light.

I have a new friend and teacher. He has lots of good stories, so you’re likely to hear them, his name is Rabbi Gafni. And the Rabbi told this great story about a woman he knew when he was in Israel in a spiritual community there. This was apparently a great teacher’s spouse who came to him because she had a problem – she was from another community. She was kleptomaniac, kept stealing things, and this wasn’t somebody of no means, it was an impulse. She would steal and as Rabbi Marc started to work with her and listen to her and try to understand what her shameful secret, her shadow might be, it finally dawned on him to ask her, “What do you steal?”

Notebooks and pens.

And as they talked about it more the possibility opened that the reason she was stealing notebooks and pens was because she desperately wanted to express herself on pad and paper. And the woman began to write poems and the kleptomaniac vanished, disappeared.

Now I’m not saying that everyone who steals paper and pens wants to be a writer, but this is a case of the shadow leading her towards the light. Or the accountant, who is completely enraged, couldn’t seem to contain his anger, began to look at the shadow and found out that he had a deep disturbance about that which the injustice of the world around him; it moved him to be a social activist. Through the shadow, and into the light. The light was within the darkness all the time. The darkness couldn’t overcome it.

But keep it in the dark, it controls us, it tears us down. We bring it out into the light, it can lead us towards the beauty and the hope that God would have for our lives.

It’s such a wondrous, wondrous attractive feel. Doesn’t it feel good to you? The idea that all of those things, all of those secrets, all of those things you carry as shame, don’t move God to reject you. But not only that, they are used to draw you into the light. That’s the secret that lies in the midst of this poem. It is the secret that lies within the midst of that star that the wise men followed. It’s the secret that lies within the beautiful story of Jesus who came to be the light, to draw us towards the One whom our soul loves.

Of course, your not going to do all that work just in the three minutes that Denise plays after the sermon, right? You’re not going to find it in that period of time, but you know, you are not alone. You have one another. If each of us knows that we carry a shadow, then we can find friends that we can share it with, so that we can begin to look at it and discover the light. And if there’s nobody that comes to mind for you, let me just say that I’d be there for you. I’d be happy to help you explore where to find the light in the midst of the shadow.

It’s the beautiful secret at the center of our faith: that God does not reject us. God does not seek to destroy us because of what we are or what we have done. Instead, God calls us forever into the beauty and light, into a place where we have a full and complete sense of the erotic, of pleasure, of fulfilled desire that we want for life.

^3:1 Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. ² “I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.” I sought him, but found him not. ³ The sentinels found me, as they went about in the city. “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?” ⁴ Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. ⁵ I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does: do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!