The first was a simple observation made by my pal Joe, our choir director, as we listened to three different versions of Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, which we spent no little effort to learn in the Spring. He quoted the Psalm on which the piece is based, "As the deer longs for running streams, so my soul thirsts for You..." and commented on how this lends to a "nice, peaceful feel" to the notes flowing over each other. Immediately inside my head it was as if I heard a needle being yanked off a record. It took me, of course, quite some time to put that immediate sense into words, which is why I've been stewing instead of already having lectured him on this. This much I will grant: the idea of running streams is a nice, peaceful image. But the idea of longing, of thirsting is about as far from peaceful as I can imagine.
Have you ever been thirsty? Like to the point of the thirst hurting you? You say to yourself, and I dare say a deer would say the same, could she form the words, "If I do not find water, I am GOING TO DIE!" I'll faint, the wolves will attack me, I'll be ripped to shreds, I'll die. Finding water becomes a passionate, all-consuming, life-or-death quest. And this is the image to which the Psalmist compares the soul's thirst for God. If I do not find the face of my God, I AM GOING TO DIE! I will become bitter or despondent or arrogant or attach myself to some other sin as a crutch doomed to fail me, and I will die.
The Sicut Cervus is not a violently passionate piece, by any means. And in my humble and uneducated view of this music, I believe this is because Palestrina wrote with faith. This piece is the end of his collection of Lamentations for Holy Saturday, meant to just precede the Easter Vigil. The second part of the motet ends with the words "My tears have been my food day and night as all day long I am taunted 'Where is your God?'" Palestrina knows where his God is. Hence, he is not longing with the desperation of one whose hope has been destroyed. He is longing for the One he knows is present, but not fully. To me, this is the achiest kind of longing. It's the glass of water that is being poured right in front of you, you want it so badly, but it isn't yet in you, recharging your cells. You see God, miraculously He comes to you in His Word, in His Sacraments, but you aren't yet in heaven. The passion of the longing reflects the Beauty of what the longing one desires. I think this is what softens the tone of the piece. I think this is why I have become so incredibly fond of this particular motet.
Then a few days later my friends Suzanne and Jeff brought me this lovely virtual church sign:
The quote states: "The foundation of poverty is on the certainty that God fulfills what He makes you desire." I'm guessing that this is from the latest School of Community reading on poverty. This takes my thoughts about longing in a different direction. I posted not too terribly long ago about a conversation with a then-newly-married that has stuck in my mind, regarding whether the delights which God places in our lives are really ours to "keep" or set our hearts on. One could consider it a very realistic thought process to say, No, if I have children whom I love or a spouse whom I love or friends whom I love or a pastor whom I love, etc., these people are not mine to keep. They could at any moment die, or by some awful turn of events we could become alienated, etc. etc. But this kind of realism for some of us is about as cuddly as a steel blade, and makes it almost impossible to bond with anyone, for constant fear of loss. This truth, that, first of all, God puts desires in our hearts, and secondly, He fulfills, is the answer of complete relief to this option of cuddling up with a steel blade of "reality". God is love: that is reality. God is my Father: that is my origin. God made me for Himself: that is my destiny. The desires He places in my heart come from His love, His Fatherhood, and His desire for my destiny. I can trust them, and moreover I should trust them.
Longing, then, becomes safe to the extent that my heart responds to a desire that comes from God. And it's a win-win, because to the extent that my heart's desire is tainted by my impurity, I present this heart constantly to Him and in the process my heart is purified. I've prayed for a pure heart so often from the perspective of being too embarrassed to have an impure heart! So stupid. Basically my prayer was "God, I want to always look good to myself and others, so please purify me." In response, God has at times taken my hand and walked me through things that made me feel quite besmudged! Hello!? It's not about you, remember? Purity don't always look like what you think it does, honey.
So longing is a passionate, but not hopelessly desperate or vain search for God's presence. I see now that this has been a constant striving of my soul, although in the past my search was much less informed by faith. At times I believed that what Palestrina writes of was completely impossible on earth and possible only in heaven. I did not grasp Christ's sacramental presence, nor the power of His Holy Spirit, nor the fellowship of the Body of Christ here on earth.
These are signs, they are like the water being poured, and even the water we drink, though we remain thirsty. We have what we long for, and we long for what we have to be made fuller. And I think if we have ceased to long we have ceased to live, whether we realize it or not.
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