Intoxicated Soul

At an early age, I was intrigued by the guitar.

While in college, I bought a nice guitar but nothing came out of it. I sold it after getting married. Following my divorce at 38, I was driving through a small Louisiana town and saw a “Going Out of Business” sign at a music store.

Out of curiosity, I decided to stop.

About a year later, I had learned basic chords and skills. I decided to extend my learning in front of people. Gratefully, I was accepted into a very forgiving church choir.

It took a risk to expose and practice my spirituality and prayer life from under the proverbial “bushel basket.” This is no small feat for an introverted personality in a dominant social culture where it “ain’t manly” to show such things.

What transpired since that simple beginning in 1998 contains more words than I am sure you are willing to read but I will say “it brought personal and spiritual transformation – in ways I could not have imagined.

Song became my prayer and soul exposed.

I no longer sing or play in front of groups. Yet there remains a spirit of melody and lyric deeply embedded in the expression of my soul to my Beloved. I sing sometimes silently and sometimes out loud – as my thoughts, heart, and spirit prompt. It is a gift given and received.

How are we to express our soul’s longing and consummation for what cannot be satisfied with finite things of this earth?

Some never contemplate. Others say it’s “too deep.” And yet, many grab instead for finite things or simply just fear to enter this Silence. And, all the time it is rather simple and on the surface of life.

I Found my Beloved, by John Michael Talbot, is one such expression of the soul’s longing for its Maker, … it’s Beloved. Its words come as a response to the writings of St. John of the Cross in his Spiritual Canticle. Its first three stanzas are:

Where have you hidden, Beloved,

and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag after wounding me;

I went out calling you,

but you were gone.

 

Shepherds, you who go up

through the sheepfolds to the hill,

if by chance you see him I love most,

tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

 

Seeking my Love

I will head to the mountains

and for the watersides,

I will not gather flowers,

nor fear wild beasts;

I will go beyond strong men and frontiers.

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Words to JMT’s “I Found My Beloved, begin:

So, I found my Beloved,
in the mountains, on the lonely and far distant times

On, resounding waters,
I heard the whispering of love’s breezes to heal my broken heart.

And its end:

So I have abandoned,

all I ever sought to be.

And in dying, my spirit

has been released.

“God With Us.”