Luke Hankins: Yehud
a Amichai writes in his poem “Relativity”:Someone told me he’s going down to Sinai
because
he wants to be alone with his God:
I warned him.
Indeed.
You ask what the human cost of entering “the mysterious place of devotion” is. In my experience, it is very high. And judging by what poets devoted to God throughout the ages have written, I think they would agree. But I don’t think anyone enters a devout life counting the cost—not even monastics and ascetics (which I certainly have never been). That’s because one can’t imagine or begin to comprehend the actual price until it’s already being exacted. Hopkins, in “Carrion Comfort,” writes:
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me?
The psalmist(s) of Psalm 42 write(s):
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Some, from a perspective outside of religious or spiritual devotion, would undoubtedly say that the cost is high because the devout are fooling themselves, chasing after shadows and myths and confronting their own neuroses in the dark, working themselves into a frenzy seeking what was never there to begin with. This is certainly not a novel idea for anyone who has ever genuinely sought the divine. (E.g., see R. S. Thomas’ poem “Threshold.” Whom do you meet in the desert? Is it the Maker in whom you see all of your fears and all of your hopes embodied, or is it the Nothing in which you see only a reflection of yourown inexplicable being? And which is more terrifying?
he wants to be alone with his God:
I warned him.
Indeed.
You ask what the human cost of entering “the mysterious place of devotion” is. In my experience, it is very high. And judging by what poets devoted to God throughout the ages have written, I think they would agree. But I don’t think anyone enters a devout life counting the cost—not even monastics and ascetics (which I certainly have never been). That’s because one can’t imagine or begin to comprehend the actual price until it’s already being exacted. Hopkins, in “Carrion Comfort,” writes:
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me?
The psalmist(s) of Psalm 42 write(s):
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Some, from a perspective outside of religious or spiritual devotion, would undoubtedly say that the cost is high because the devout are fooling themselves, chasing after shadows and myths and confronting their own neuroses in the dark, working themselves into a frenzy seeking what was never there to begin with. This is certainly not a novel idea for anyone who has ever genuinely sought the divine. (E.g., see R. S. Thomas’ poem “Threshold.” Whom do you meet in the desert? Is it the Maker in whom you see all of your fears and all of your hopes embodied, or is it the Nothing in which you see only a reflection of yourown inexplicable being? And which is more terrifying?
