By Sister Doreen, SSJD
“When did the first whisper of your primeval love touch with infinite tenderness all that exits?
When did your kiss awaken each sleeping atom? When did you breathe life into every particle?
Oh, Ancient Love, forever gliding through the ages, You continually birth yourself into creation including this present moment of flowing life. You whisper in this day with similar tenderness, reverberating in the beating heart of existence. You are a steady cadence of love within us all.“
(Carolyn McDade)
Pondering Carolyn’s quote – and her hymn song that is printed later in this reflection, I thought how the words Ancient Love seems to express that deep longing for God – and God’s deep longing for us: a Love beyond understanding, without beginning and without end, the wild, unconditional love of God. It is a Love, that Ancient, essential, central, important, fundamental Love, that calls us not to who or what we believe in so much as to how we live our life. A journey that we make the road by walking, alone and together, toward that transcending mystery and wonder that calls us to a deeper and more open relationship with God and with ourselves and each other, and with the world in which we live today. It is ancient and yet ever new.
It made me recall some questions from Ronald Rolheiser’s book “Against an Infinite Horizon”. “Do we ever really take the unconditional love of God seriously? Do we ever really take the joy of God seriously? Do we ever really believe that God loves us long before any sin we commit and long after every sin we will ever commit? Do we ever really believe that God loves everyone, good or bad, and opens the gates of heaven to everyone? Do we ever really take seriously how wide is the embrace of God? Do we ever believe Julian of Norwich when she tells us that God sits in the corner of heaven, smiling, his face completely relaxed, looking like a marvellous symphony? For nearly all of us the answer is ‘No’, except for rare moments of grace, we still believe in a God who is hyper serious, wired, intense, pained, disappointed in us, disappointed in the world, and far from unconditionally forgiving. Yet the deep struggle of all religion is to enter into the joy of God.”
To know that there is a steady pulse of love beating in the heart of the world despite what we see or fear or experience as tragedy and brokenness is the hope that we hold and the joy that we celebrate, even when our celebration is one of lament. To know that there is a steady pulse of love beating in the heart of those experiences of beauty, tenderness, community is the hope that we hold and the joy that we celebrate, even when our celebration is one of dance, noisy clapping and singing, and bursting joy.
More than any words that I could share, the following hymn: O Ancient Love – #36 in Sing a New Creation, Anglican Church of Canada, text and music Michael Joncas, it offers a meditation that is rich as we ponder this Ancient Love, a Love beyond understanding, the wild, unconditional love of God. This everlasting love, this ancient love, a love that has been, is now, and will be forever mine and yours! We do know this wild, unconditional love of God as ancient, hidden, promised, and living. We know this wild, unconditional love of God as homeless, lowly, hungry, and living. We know this wild, unconditional love of God as gentle, tender, hopeful, and living. We know this wild, unconditional love of God as suffering, boundless, mighty, and living. All of these words of our experience of God’s wild and unconditional love take us out of ourselves and place us in the presence of the living God and to the experience of the call of St. Teresa of Avila’s prayer: “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet buy yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christs compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless us now.”
“O ancient love, processing through ages; O hidden love, revealed in human form; O promised love, the dream of seers and sages: O living Love, within our hearts be born; O living Love, within our hearts be borne.
O homeless love, that dwells among the stranger; O lowly love, that knows the mighty’ s scorn; O hungry love, that lay within the manger: O living Love, within our hearts be born; O living Love within our hearts be borne.
O gentle love, caressing those in sorrow; O tender love, that comforts those forlorn; O hopeful love, that promises tomorrow: O living Lord, within our hearts be born; O living Love, within our hearts be borne.
O suffering love, that bears our human weakness; O boundless love, that rises with the morn; O mighty love, concealed in infant meekness: O living Love, within our hearts be born; O living Love, within our hearts be borne.”
It calls us to a life that is a challenge and one that is countercultural to the world we live in today, as we long for the kingdom of God on earth. We reach out for a world where everyone is accepted as having fundamental worth and value, where equality, loving justice and compassion mirror our oneness and care for each other, where we can live together with our differences in peace and harmony, where there is respect and harmony rebirthed in our relationship with creation and the whole cosmos. As we ponder that living Love, that ancient Love, we long for the wisdom to teach us how to live, to know that right here, right now, God has chosen to be at home with us, empowering us to new life, to communities of love, peace, and justice – we know this in the midst of a world that is broken and fragmented longing for peace and wholeness. O Ancient Love, wild, and unconditional Love, oh living love, within our hearts be borne.
For you and for me, someone from time to time seems to put just into words that deep longing, and deep aching for that ancient love that is alive around us and in the world, the beautiful and the broken world that we live in. John Mark McMillan, a gospel singer, sang out that deep longing and aching feeling – both of God and of that within me in the following words:
I want to know Your heat and light
I want to taste the breath of life
I want to lose myself inside of all You are.
Where could I run? Where could I hide?
That You could not love me alive?
Again I find myself inside Your eternal arms
I can feel the aching of the aching of an ancient love.
Oh I, I can feel the aching of Your heart
I can feel the aching of the aching of an ancient lovе.
Oh I, I can feel the aching of Your heart again
I want to dream, the dream of You,
I want to taste Your living fruit
From the tree of life, from the heart of Your garden.
Are You the One who dreamed me up
who drew me up out of the dust
Again I hear You calling me out of the darkness.I can feel the aching of the aching of an ancient love.
Oh I, I can feel the aching of Your heart
I can feel the aching of the aching of an ancient lovе.
Oh I, I can feel the aching of Your heart again
Here I am, Here I am, Here I am, Here I am
I can feel the aching of the aching of an ancient love.
Oh I, I can feel the aching of Your heart
I can feel the aching of the aching of an ancient lovе.
Oh I, I can feel the aching of Your heart again
When I read Carolyn McDade’s quote, and then looked at the hymn that she wrote “Long Before the Night” – #115 in Sing a New Creation, Anglican Church of Canada, text: Carolyn McDade – I thought that perhaps it was a fit ending for pondering. This Ancient Love, this Mother and Father of us all, without beginning and without ending – somehow I wanted to express in this reflection that I want the word that says I feel it all, all at once: for my heart doesn’t just sing one note at a time but sings many notes at the same time in chorus! Oh Ancient love, that churning of opposite feelings that weave through us like an insistent breeze and leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves, blesses us with paradox so we might walk more openly into this world of ours that is so full of both brokenness and devastation and so full with beauty and with joy.
“Long before the night was born from darkness, long before the dawn rolled unsteady from fire, long before She wrapped her scarlet arm around the hills there was a love; this ancient love was born.
Long before the grass spotted green the bare hillside, long before a wing unfolded to wind, long before She wrapped her long blue arm around the sea there was a love: this ancient love was born.
Long before a chain was forged from the hillside, long before a voice uttered freedom’s cry, long before She wrapped her bleeding arms around a child there was a love: this ancient love was born.
Long before the name of a God was spoken, long before a cross was nailed from a tree, long before She laid her arms of colours across the sky there was a love; this ancient love was born.
Wakeful our night slumbers our morning, stubborn the grass sowing green wounded hills as we wrap our healing arms to hold what her arms held this ancient love; this aching love rolls on.”
Yes! Yes! “Arise shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” Isaiah 60:1.