I was struck by the following coincidence of theme (or, to be more precise, agreement in metaphor) in three must-read pieces in today's Inquirer.
Ceres Doyo, the only reporter in the paper with a regular column, wrote this newsfeature even before Palm Sunday. Its publication was, wisely enough, moved to Easter Sunday. The best quote, at least for newspaper-reading purposes, comes from Bo Sanchez, the Catholic lay preacher: “God is a fierce lover who will never let go.”
This is, of course, an old refrain -- from the Song of Solomon, even. Sister Marie, a Carmelite nun, offers a more recent reference: "As Richard Hardy, a doctor of theology, said in a conference on St. John of the Cross, God loves us with an erotic love, with passion. In God, eros and agapé become one."
The theme of lover is echoed in Patricia Evangelista's weekly column, although we are in eros territory, rather than agapé.
Boracay sand is a persistent lover. It stalks you in the shower and slips beneath bed sheets. It strokes eyelashes, slides into every cleft and crevice, then sweeps into the sweat and heat of summer dreams long after the plane’s last shuddering stop on the airport tarmac.Every cleft and crevice: I hope for young Patricia's sake this compelling image is in fact an act of imagination, rather than experience recollected in some tranquility. The peerless Gilda Cordero Fernando has another piece in today's paper (she had one yesterday), this time about, well, the intimacy of connection.
No wonder the definition of one-ness is so hard to comprehend. Because it's not something you can get by reading or intellectualizing or analyzing. It is an experience. And it's momentary, a flash, a brief contact with the divine. And you can't have it either just any old time you want it.Gilda's essay may strike some as positively asexual, which may be a good thing. But it did seem to me, insufficiently spiritual animal that I am, that her inventory of forms of connectedness, of one-ness with everything, missed out on one thing: lover becoming one with beloved. I think even Augustine had a thing or two to say about that.
