Why I read the Song of Songs V

Auguste Rodin, Kissers
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), ‘Kissers’

Many of us will have come across statistics like: the average man thinks about sex every seven seconds. I have always thought this to be a rather timid estimate. My fifth reason for reading the Song of Songs is that it makes me think about sex all day.


I have been seriously tempted to hit the ‘Publish’ button after finishing the previous sentence. Perhaps I should have done. I am rather worried though that I could be misunderstood, that I could be taken seriously. Of course, I don’t buy that statistic. It seems ludicrous to me, and yet I do believe that there is nothing wrong with thinking about sex all day. In fact, given Christianity’s tarnished reputation in this area, perhaps more of us should think about sex all day, provided we manage to move beyond that endless preoccupation with sexual ethics to a simple enjoyment of our sexuality and sensuality. Should that not always have been the starting point, in our thinking and our talk about sexuality? The Song of Songs would seem to suggest so.

So, yes, I read this delightful book because it makes me think about love, sex and sensuality. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Next time, you speak after the tone

Another few lines from Carol Ann Duffy, this time from ‘Quickdraw’, again published in Rapture:

You’ve wounded me.
Next time, you speak after the tone. I twirl the phone,
then squeeze the trigger of my tongue, wide off the mark.
You choose your spot, then blast me

through the heart.

These lines express so well how we sometimes wound each other, indeed, how we snipe at each other, in what we say.

I miss God

I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. … I miss God who was my friend. I don’t even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky.

Thus Jeanette Winterson in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, an autobiographical novel that tells the story of Winterson’s painful break with her fundamentalist, pentecostal upbringing.

Crucified by hate, he responded with aggressive love

Who better to quote on Good Friday than Martin Luther King?

Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis …. Jesus … knew that the old eye-for-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with aggressive love. … Calvary will be a nagging reminder that only goodness can drive out evil and only love can conquer hate.

From Strength to Love

Like a sudden flight of birds

How does it happen that our lives can drift
far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time,
queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift
the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme
we make with loss to assonance with bliss.
Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds
from earth to heaven after rain. …

From Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Rapture’, published in Rapture, a collection of poems that are all part of one book-length love poem. I picked this up in town today, having previously read Duffy’s The Other Country. So far, so enjoyable …