Stanza 8
—
ESPOSA:
Mas ¿cómo perseveras,
¡oh vida!, no viviendo donde vives,
y haciendo porque mueras
las flechas que recibes
de lo que del Amado en ti concibes?
—
BRIDE:
But how you persevere, O life,
Not living where you live;
The arrows bring death
Which you receive
From your conceptions of the Beloved.
Excerpt of Saint John +’s teaching on stanza 8:
When God favors the soul by disclosing to it a spiritual knowledge and experience of other creatures, he gives it some illuminations concerning these creatures in the way we mentioned, although these illuminations are not always so sublime as the others. It seems these creatures impart to the soul an understanding of the grandeurs of God, which are not entirely understandable; and it is as if they were making these grandeurs understood while yet they remain to be understood. Hence there is an “I-don’t-know-what behind their stammering”…
How do you endure
O life, not living where you live?
To understand these lines it should be known that the soul lives where she loves more than in the body she animates; for she does not live in the body, but rather gives life to the body and lives through love in the object of her love.
Personal reflection on stanza 8:
Because I study neurospirituality, i.e., how the brain participates in experiences and beliefs that are identified in some way as having a spiritual quality or nature to them, I routinely encounter efforts from others to reduce the spiritual life to mere sentimentality or emotion. There is even a term that has been coined–“frisson”–to describe the affective excitement that often accompanies peak aesthetic or spiritual experiences. While there certainly can be sentimental and emotional components to spirituality along with moments of affective excitement or “frisson”, there is also a quality of deep knowing that infuses spiritual life and which is not adequately reflected by these efforts to reduce spirituality to sensible emotion alone. This noetic quality is sometimes called “ineffable”, “unspeakable”, or “beyond words”. I recognize why the skeptic might deem it a little too convenient that a dimension of existence which they contest is mysteriously veiled “beyond words”. Yet here it is again in SJ+: namely, that there is an “I-don’t-know-what” quality in the spiritual testimony that reduces even him to mere babbling and stammering when he tries to fully express it.
With all of this said, there is for me a noetic quality beyond my words in these lines of the stanza:
. How do you endure, O life, not living where you live?
Rather than elaborate, I’m going to reiterate SJ+’s words from his commentary here, which I find worthy of depth reflection and quiet meditation, and recollective prayer:
. (T)he soul lives where she loves more than in the body she animates;
. for she does not live in the body, but rather gives life to the body
. and lives through love in the object of her love.
May we love and live in Christ.
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