Spirit Song Text : iSOUND.COM™

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Visit our website at http://www.sustainyourspirit.com/ Also hear Jabez L. Van Cleef on iTunes podcasts, garageband.com, Gcast, Musicnet, Napster, rhapsody, eMusic, purevolume.com, thespiritradio.net, download.com, soundclick, and other download sites.

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Sunday, March 16th, 2008
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	The Song of MatthewNot Rated Released: 2005 Mp3 Price: $10.00

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	The Song of MatthewNot Rated Released: 2005 Mp3 Price: $10.00
	The Song of LukeNot Rated Released: 2005 Mp3 Price: $10.00
	The Song of JohnNot Rated Released: 2005 Mp3 Price: $10.00
	The Song of MarkNot Rated Released: 2005 Mp3 Price: $10.00

Biography

You can see a video of the Palimpsest by visiting:
http://www.myspace.com/humanrightseducation

Jabez Van Cleef a/k/a Spirit Song Text writes epic poems based on religion and human rights. He reads these poems to create the spoken word recordings on this site. To enhance his voice recordings, he has arranged the lyrics with royalty-free sounds from various sources.

The full texts to all four verse gospels are available for downloading from theworshipwell.org, a resource site of the Episcopal Church USA. You can access the files through this link:

http://www.theworshipwell.org/word.html#fresh

Jabez offers free usage of these lyrics to other artists. If you are interested in using any of these texts as samples or lyrics for your own music, please contact "jabez.vancleef_at_verizon.net"

There is a brief summary of song content in the blog section for this page.

The Song of John (Chapters 1-10)

1.

In the beginning was the Word,
The Word, the same as God.
God was heard in the beginning;
All things through God were made.

Without the Word there was nothing,
And nothing was yet made.
In God was life, and life was light,
And light all things displayed.

The living God that was the light
Shines in the darkness yet;
And darkness has not overcome
What was born into it.

There was a man sent forth from God,
And this man was called John.
He bore a witness to the light
That is God’s only Son.

He bore a witness so that all
Might see the light through him:
A true Light, born for ev’ryone,
Would call our world his home.

So the Light from which God was made
Would come, and not be known;
Would call the dust of earth his home,
And yet He would be shunned.

But, if people did receive Him,
Believing He was God,
Then they would have such pow’r, they would
Become Children of God.

Children who were not born of blood,
Nor born of passion’s seed,
Nor will of flesh, nor wish of man,
But children born of God.

From God the Word became the flesh,
And lived among us here,
A Word so full of grace and truth,
We saw his glory clear.

It was John who said of the Light,
“He who comes after me
Still ranks before me, for He comes
Out of eternity.”

From the fullness of God we all
Receive grace upon grace.
Then we saw through a darkling glass,
Now we see face to face.

No one had seen the face of God,
Yet here God’s only Son
Manifested his Father’s being,
And He became human.

John lived out in the wilderness.
Th’authorities came out
From the temple, and found him there.
“Are you the Christ?” they asked.

“I am not the Christ,” he told them.
They asked, “Who are you, then?
Are you Elijah?” but he said,
“No, I am not,” again.

“Are you a prophet?” they asked him.
And he answered them, “No.”
But they asked of him yet again,
“Tell us then, who are you?

Answer us now so we can tell
The ones who sent us here –
What do you say about yourself?”
Then John gave his answer:

“I am the voice of one who cries
Out in the wilderness:
‘Make straight the way so that our Lord
Among us all should pass!’

So did Isaiah say to us
And so I say to you.”
Still, they wanted to ask again;
They all wanted to know.

“So then, if you are not the Christ,
And don’t make prophecies,
Why are you in this wilderness?
And why do you baptize?”

John answered these authorities,
“I baptize with water,
Somewhere among you there is one
Who comes from the Father.

You do not know who this one is,
But he comes after me;
The strap of this one’s sandal I’m
Not worthy to untie.”

Now this took place in Bethany,
By the river Jordan,
Where John took the men and women
And plunged their bodies in.

Soon after this he saw Jesus
And said of him, “Behold,
The Lamb of God, who takes away
The sin of all the world.

This is the one of whom I said,
‘After me there will be
A man who ranks above me, for
He was here before me.’

Myself I did not know him, but
For him I wash their sin
With water; his name will be known
To all of God’s children.”

And then John testified to them,
“The Spirit descended,
It came down as a dove from heav’n,
And it shone from his head.

Myself I did not know him, but
The One who sent me here
Said, ‘When you see the dove descend,
Look for the Spirit there,

The Spirit will come down on him,
And there it will remain.’
I know this is the Son of God
For all this I have seen.”

The next morning, John the Baptist
Came, followed by a crowd,
And when he looked at Jesus, said
“Behold, the lamb of God!”

Two of John’s disciples heard this,
And left after he spoke.
They followed Jesus, and he turned
And asked, “What do you seek?”

And they said to him, “O Teacher,
Can we stay at your house?”
He said, “Yes, you may come with me,”
And so they joined his cause.

As the shadows lengthened that day
And the red sun went down,
Andrew, John’s disciple, followed
With his brother, Simon.

Simon came over to Jesus,
And Jesus spoke to him:
“So you are Simon, son of John?
You shall take a new name –

Now people will call you Cephas,
Or Peter, in the Greek,”
And thus was Simon, son of John,
Giv’n his new name, the rock.

The next day Jesus decided
To go to Galilee.
He found Philip, and said to him,
“Follow along with me.”

Now Philip came from Bethsaida,
Andrew and Peter’s home.
He found another friend of his,
And said, “Nathaniel, come;

We have all seen the one of whom
They prophesied and wrote:
Jesus of Naz’reth, son of Joseph.
Come with us, leave your boat!”

Nathaniel cried, “From Nazareth?
What good thing could there be?”
Philip smiled at him and he said,
“Nathaniel, come and see.”

When Jesus first saw Nathaniel,
Recalling Philip’s smile,
He said, “Behold, an Israelite
In whom there is no guile.”

Then Nathaniel said to Jesus,
“Do you recognize me?”
Jesus said, “Long ago I saw
You, under a fig tree.”

Nathaniel answered him, “Teacher!
You are the Son of God!
You are the King of Israel!”
Jesus stopped him and said:

“Because I spoke of that fig tree
You render me such praise!
Follow along with us! You shall
See greater things than these.

You will see the heav’ns opened up –
Believe this if you can –
Angels of God will rise and fall
Upon the Son of Man.”

2.

Then on the third day of the week,
As the day was dawning,
They came to a town called Cana
To go to a wedding.

At the wedding, his mother said,
“The host has no more wine.”
But Jesus answered his mother,
“The wedding will go on,

But what has that to do with me?
My hour is not at hand.”
And she said to all the servants,
“Obey Jesus’ command.”

Six big stone jars were standing there,
Each one thirty gallons.
“Fill all these jars up with water,”
Jesus commanded them.

They filled the jars up to the brim.
He said, “Now draw some out,
And take it to the steward there;
That way he can serve it.”

The steward tasted what they brought
And with joy he exclaimed,
“I thought the wine was gone! Tell me,
Where did this wine come from?”

The servants who drew the water
To fill the six stone jars
Knew what Jesus had done that day,
But did not tell others.

The steward called to the bridegroom,
Saying, “This is a sign:
Through all your days of wedded bliss
You shall not want for wine –

Ev’ryone serves the good wine first,
And all the people drink;
Then they pour the second-rate wine,
Hoping the guests are drunk –

But you have saved the best till last!
The party did not fail!”
And this, the first of many signs,
Was his first miracle.

Then Jesus, Mary and the rest,
Who followed him always
All went down to Capernaum
To stay for a few days.

The Passover Feast was coming,
So then he went with them
Up to the temple on the hill,
Above Jerusalem.

There, in the temple grounds, he saw
Money in ev’ry hand,
Where people brought sheep and pigeons,
Waiting to get and spend;

So Jesus made a whip of cords,
And he drove them all out,
With all their goods and animals
Into the busy street.

The moneychangers’ coins scattered,
Their tables overturned.
“Take these things away now!” he cried,
With righteousness he burned.

“You shall not make my Father’s house
A house of trade,” he said;
Zeal for that house consumed him then;
So the Word was fulfilled.

Th’authorities said, “Why have you
Destroyed this property?”
He said, “Destroy this temple now!
I’ll raise it in three days!”

They answered, “Forty six long years
We laid up stone on stone;
And now you claim that in three days
You’d build it all again?”

But, when Jesus told them these things,
He spoke of his own death:
When he would die and rise again,
Again to live and breathe;

When his disciples would recall
That he had said, ‘Three days;’
And they would finally believe
That he was the Messiah.

When he was in Jerusalem
Observing Passover,
Many people who saw these signs
Thought he was their leader.

But Jesus did not trust himself
To lead them, for he knew
Th’authorities would capture him,
And he had work to do.

3.

There was a righteous citizen,
Nicodemus by name;
This man came to Jesus at night,
When darkness concealed him.

He said, “Jesus, we know you are
Sent here to us from God.
Unless God was working in you,
You could not do these deeds.”

Jesus said to Nicodemus,
“Unless you’re born again,
You will not ever see God’s face,
Nor enter into heav’n.”

But Nicodemus said to him,
“Now my old age has come.
Shall I then come a second time
Into my mother’s womb?”

Jesus said, “Unless you are born,
Of water and the spir’t,
You will not enter into heav’n,
And see the truth of it;

All of these things born of the flesh
Are flesh; they waste away.
The things that come from the spirit
You have eternally.

So do not marvel that I said,
‘You must be born anew,’
The wind wanders where’er it wills
And comforts me, and you.

You don’t know where the wind comes from,
Or where the wind will go;
And so it is of ev’ry one
Who has faith as I do.”

Then Nicodemus asked of him,
“How can all these things be?”
Jesus said, “You are a good man,
Don’t you have faith in me?

The truth is, when I speak to you,
I speak of what I know.
I tell you only what I see;
You think it isn’t so.

If I have told you earthly things,
And you do not believe,
What then could ever bring you to
Believe what I call heav’n?

Many of you won’t go to heav’n
Unless you follow me;
The Son of Man is born on earth
But lives eternally.

As Moses lifted high the snake
Out in the wilderness,
So must the Son of Man be raised
High above believers.

For God so loved the world that He
Offered his only Son,
That all those who believe in him,
When mortal life is gone,

Shall not perish, but they shall have
An everlasting life.
God sent his Son into the world,
Into this world of strife,

Not to condemn, but to save them:
I will redeem the world.
They who believe the Son of God,
Hear when their names are called,

They shall not ever be condemned;
If their belief does fail,
They are condemned already, and
The slaves of their own will:

They are condemned because they spurn
The only Son of God;
They are also condemned because
They have not repented.

We see their sin because my light
Has come into the world –
They love the dark with all their might,
Where they do evil deeds.

They do not want to see this Light:
Evil in secret feeds,
In the dark it flourishes, and
Enslaves them to its needs.

But those who cleave to what is true
Are brought into the Light,
And in the Light they clearly see
Their way to perfect faith.”

Then Jesus and his followers
Went into Judea;
There they baptized all the sinners
They met along the way.

John was also baptizing them
At Aenon near Salim.
There was abundant water there,
And people came to him.

Although John preached rebellion,
Herod let him go free;
Yet he must have known that one day
They would take him away.

Now there arose an argument
Among John’s followers,
And th’authorities, who asked them
What their intentions were.

And John’s followers said to John,
“Jesus is here with us;
His disciples preach repentance,
Confusing you with Jesus.”

John said, “Not one of us finds truth
Except as it is giv’n
By him, the Son of Man, who comes
Down to us here, from heav’n.

You have understood my witness:
That I am not the Christ,
But I am sent before the Christ,
Into the desert waste.

The one who will marry the bride,
That one is the bridegroom;
The bridegroom’s friend, who rejoices,
Stays in another room.

Therefore with all this joy of mine
I must be satisfied,
For his followers will increase,
And mine will find me dead.

The one who comes from up above
Is still above us all;
But now I belong to the earth,
And there is where I fall.

The one who testifies from heav’n
Of what he’s seen and heard,
Will find few who see what he is:
The flesh which is the Word.

On those who do receive the Word
He sets his holy seal:
He is the one true Son of God;
Now his truth is revealed.

The Father loves his Son, and gives
All things into his hand;
Believers will live forever,
And know life without end;

Many of those who don’t believe,
Won’t know eternal life;
They will continue on in sin,
And they will end in grief.”

4.

Jesus himself did not baptize;
But his disciples did.
Word of his many followers
Went out across the land.

Th’authorities feared rebellion,
And chased Jesus away;
He left Judea and he went
Down towards Galilee.

Into Samaria he came,
To Sychar, near the place
That Jacob granted to Joseph
As his inheritance.

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus
Went into the green glade.
He was weary from his journey,
And he sat in the shade.

A young Samaritan woman
Came over to the well.
Jesus said, “Please, give me a drink,”
And this is what befell:

She said, “How can it be that you,
A Jew, would ask of me,
A woman of Samaria,
To serve you in this way?”

For Jews thought of Samaritans
As unclean common folk,
They would not eat or drink with them,
Nor engage in such talk.

Jesus said, “If you only knew
The gift of God, and who
Says to you now, ‘Give me a drink,’
Then this is what you’d do:

You would ask for some water, too,
And I would give you some,
But mine would be living water.”
So then she said to him,

“Sir, you have not brought a vessel,
And the well is quite deep.
Where will you get this living water?
May I please have a sip?

Are you more holy than the one
Who gave us all this well?
Who drank this water with his sons,
And then called his cattle?”

Jesus said to her, “Ev’ry one
Who drinks this water here
Will thirst again; but living water
Will quench thirst forever.

The water that I give to them
Will be in them a font
Welling up to eternal life,
Freeing from any want.”

Then the woman said to Jesus,
“Sir, give me living water,
So I may never again thirst,
And follow you hereafter.”

Jesus said to her, “Go and call
Your husband, and come here.”
“I have no husband,” she said to him.
Again, he spoke to her:

“It’s true you have no husband now,
You have had five of them;
Your husband now is just the man
With whom you make your home.”

The woman said, “Sir, I perceive
You are a great teacher.
Our Fathers worshiped in this place;
And your people, elsewhere.

If prophets in Samaria
Are so easy to find,
Why do they go to Judea
To worship their own God?”

Then Jesus answered the woman,
“Soon you will see the day
Neither Jews nor Samaritans
Will worship diff’rently.

If we worship what we don’t know,
Or worship what we do,
Soon the day will come when we both
Will worship what is true.

We will all worship the Father
In spirit and in truth,
The Father who always loves us,
And will guide us past death.”

“I know the Christ will come,” she said,
“And when He comes, I know
He will show us all of these things,
In heav’n and here below.”

Then Jesus said to the woman
“You seek your Messiah,
And sitting here, beside this well,
Is the one you search for.”

The woman left her water jar
And ran into the town,
Where she said to all the people,
“Come out and see this man:

He told me all I ever did!
Can this man be the Christ?”
And many came out from the town
To see him and be blessed.

Meanwhile, all of his disciples
Had also come from town,
They brought some food, and said to him,
“Let’s eat, and then move on.”

But Jesus said to all of them,
“Here I have food to eat,
Some food you do not know about,
So we will not leave yet.”

Then they said to one another
“Who has brought him this food?”
He said, “It is my food to do
As God says that I should.

Would you not say, ‘Now in four months
Earth will her harvest yield’?
Lift up your eyes, and see the grain
Gleaming there, in the field!

The ones who reap it will be paid
For all the grain they gather;
And those who sow, and those who reap,
Will all rejoice together.

And never were these words more true:
‘One sows, another reaps.’
You did not labor much to get
This yield of grain and grapes.

Though you did not sow, I sent you
Out to harvest the grain;
And thus you have the advantage
Of all their laboring.”

Many people who came from the town
Listened to what he said,
For they had heard the woman say,
‘He told me all I did.’

The Samaritans wanted him
To stay there in the town,
And so he lingered there two days,
And many said of him:

“Woman, we believe in him now,
Not just from what you said,
But what we have heard for ourselves;
He will save us indeed.”

And when he came to take his leave,
Jesus said to them all,
“A prophet is not so honored
Among his own people.”

He came at last to Galilee
And they came to hear him.
Many of them had been feasting
Up in Jerusalem,

Where he had shown them miracles
During the Passover.
And many, seeing what he did,
Followed him to know more.

They traveled again past Cana,
Where he had made the wine;
And at Capernaum a man
Was grieving for his son:

The boy was at the point of death.
The man knelt before them,
And begged Jesus to heal his son,
And Jesus said to him:

“Unless you see signs and wonders,
You will never believe.”
The man said, “Come, before he dies!”
Jesus said, “Go, he lives.”

The man believed what Jesus said,
And made his way back home,
And as he went along the road,
He saw his servants come.

“Your son’s alive,” they said. And he
Asked when the fever left.
“Yesterday, at the seventh hour.”
The man knew in his heart

That hour when Jesus said to him,
‘Go, he lives,’ was the hour
He and the rest of his household
All became believers.

This was the second miracle
Jesus showed the people,
When he came down from Judea
And into Galilee.
5.

In those days, in Jerusalem,
Next to the Gate of Sheep,
Were gathered all the invalids,
And there they ate and slept;

And they were such a multitude —
The blind and sick and lame —
They sat by the Pool of Mercy,
Bethesda was its name.

Ever and again from the pool
Water gushed up to them:
And all the beggars clamored then;
They raised a fearsome din.

They fought to find salvation in
The water gushing up—
They thought healing was in the pool,
There by the Gate of Sheep.

One man lay there at Bethesda
For thirty eight long years—
He strove to reach the water’s edge
But held back in his fear.

Now Jesus saw him lying there
As round the others milled,
And Jesus said to the poor man,
“Do you want to be healed?”

The crippled man answered Jesus,
“I can’t reach the water;
When it boils up they all go first,
And I must go after.”

Then Jesus spoke to the sick man:
“Stand up, and take your bed,”
And as He spoke the man stood up,
His affliction was healed.

As this was on the Sabbath day,
Th’authorities complained:
For him to tote his bed away
Was a violation.

But the man answered them, saying,
“The One who healed me said,
‘Stand up and take your bed’ to me,
So here I have my bed.”

Later Jesus saw the same man,
And said to him again,
“Be well! May nothing worse happen!
May you stay free from sin!”

Then the man told many people
That he’d broken the law.
Because Jesus had told him to,
He’d carried the bed away.
And when they came to challenge him,
They heard Jesus reply,
“My Father labors ev’ry day—
He works, and so do I.”

All th’authorities said to this,
“Let us put down this pride,
He breaks the holy Sabbath, and
Now claims that he is God!”

Jesus answered them, “It is true,
The Son will do nothing
But what He sees the Father do,
Then He does the same thing.

We know the Father loves the Son,
And shows him all his deeds,
And you may marvel at the work
That from this love proceeds;

For as the Father raises those
Who die, to give them life,
So also will the Son then raise
All those who may believe.

The Father judges sin, and lets
The Son mete out judgment,
So people will praise the Son’s Word,
And try to do what’s right.

Those who do not honor the Son
Do not honor the Word.
They revel in dishonor, and
They will find their reward.

Truly, all those who hear my Word,
They will find their true worth,
They will not come to judgment, but
Be delivered from death.

And so I say to you truly,
The hour will soon arrive
When all the dead will hear my voice.
Those who believe will live.

Life itself will be the Father,
And life itself the Son;
The Son brings judgment to them all
For He is born of man.

Do not marvel at all these things.
The hour of judgment comes,
When all of them will hear my voice,
Even down in a tomb.

Those who believe in me shall come
To enter into heav’n,
And those who have done evil will
Be judged for all their sin.

You will find justice measured out
By God’s authority;
Such justice comes not from my will,
But God’s, and speaks through me.

If I bear witness to myself
Then who would believe me?
But others may bear my witness,
And live this righteously.

You asked John about his witness
And he told you the truth:
The man and the Holy Spirit
Both brought his witness forth.

O people, I say this to you,
To help keep you from sin:
John was a burning, shining lamp,
He gave a glimpse of heav’n—

Then you were willing to rejoice,
To wait within his light,
And then you thrilled to hear his voice,
And feel within, its heat—

Hear this: My own testimony
Is far greater than John’s,
For my Father has giv’n me
Greater works to be done:

These very works to which I now
Bear witness. I am sent,
And my Father, who sent me here,
Witnesses what I want.

If you have never heard his voice,
And never seen his face,
My Father’s word has never been
Your source of saving grace.

For you may not believe in me
Whom the Father has sent;
You search the scriptures, thinking there
To grasp your own intent.

The scriptures bear the witness of
Eternal life in me,
Yet you refuse to see it there,
And you see what you may.

I have received no glory from
The ones who can’t believe;
But I know that down within them
Is an absence of love.

Though I came in my Father’s name,
They would not receive me;
Another one, with an earthly scheme,
They treat honorably.

You think glory comes from others,
Who answer you with praise;
Glory will never come from them,
But only from God’s grace.

Do not think I will accuse you
To my Father in heav’n.
It’s Moses who indicts you now,
Whose laws you have broken.

If you believed Moses truly,
You would believe in me;
He saw my coming long ago,
But now you blind your eye.”

6.

After this Jesus crossed over
The Sea of Galilee,
And many people followed him,
To see what he would do.

He climbed up the side of a hill
Along with the others.
Because he meant to speak to them,
And all eat together.

When he saw how many were there,
Such a great multitude,
He said to Philip, standing by,
“Do we have any food?”

“No,” said Philip, “All our money
Would not get enough bread
So that all these people could have
A little bit to eat.”

But Jesus had asked the question
To measure Philip’s faith,
For he himself knew what to do
To get something to eat.

Andrew suggested to Jesus,
“Over there is a lad.
He has five loaves and two fish –
But that won’t feed this crowd.”

Jesus said, “Tell all the people
That they should sit and eat.”
There were five thousand of them there.
They all sat down to wait.

Jesus took the loaves and the fish,
And gave thanks for the food.
He broke it then into pieces
And all of them were fed;

And when the whole crowd had eaten,
Jesus stood up and said,
“Gather up what is left of these
Pieces of fish and bread.”

So they gathered the crusts and bones
And filled twelve baskets full;
And when the people saw this sign,
They called it a marvel.

“This man is indeed a prophet,
Come here to make us free!”
They would have forced him to be king,
But then he went away,

Into the hills, all by himself.
It started to get dark,
And the twelve went down to the shore
So they could all sail back.

Jesus had not returned with them;
The wind blew up a gale,
The sea was rising, and the men
Had to tie down the sail.

They had rowed three or four miles out,
And were fighting the wind,
They saw Jesus walk on the sea,
And then they were afraid.

“Don’t be so afraid,” Jesus said,
“I’m here.” And he climbed in.
At that very moment, their boat
Touched solid land again.

In the morning the word had spread
In the town where they’d been,
That the twelve men had sailed away,
But Jesus had not gone.

Some people went to look for him
Up on the grassy place
Where they feasted on fish and bread
After he said the grace.

But they didn’t see him up there,
So they took their own boats,
And sailed them to Capernaum
And found him in the street.

When they saw him they said to him,
“How did you cross the sea?”
He said, “You’re not asking because
You saw a miracle,

But because you filled your stomachs
At the feast yesterday.
Do not labor for earthly food
Which perishes away,

Labor instead for heav’nly food
Which gives eternal life.
I set my seal on all of you,
And it will keep you safe.”

They asked, “What do we have to do
To do the works of God?”
He said, “This is the work of God:
That you believe my words.”

They said to him, “What sign have you
To show us who you are?
What works can you perform for us,
To make us all believers?

Our mothers and fathers ate bread
That fell down from the skies;
‘Moses gave them the bread of heav’n;’
This is what scripture says.”

“Moses did not give them heav’n’s bread!”
Jesus exclaimed to them,
“My Father gives them the true bread,
That gives life to the world.”

Then they said to him, “Jesus, Lord,
Give us this bread always;
Forgive us all our debts, as we
Release all our debtors.”

Jesus replied to all of them,
“I am the bread of life,
With me you will never hunger,
And all those who believe

In my word will not thirst either.
What I have said to you,
What you have heard and seen me say,
And all these things I do,

Should lead you to believe in me.
My Father entreats you –
All of you who repent your sins –
I will not reject you –

I have not come down here from heav’n
To follow my own will,
But the will of God, who sent me.
I’ll walk among you all,

I won’t lose any of God’s gift
That has been giv’n to me.
And when the day of judgment comes,
We will all be ready.

All of those who listen to me,
All who believe in me,
They shall all live eternally,
And they shall never die.”

Th’authorities said, “Who is this?
Does he know what he says?
How can he say to us, ‘They shall
All live eternally’?”

Jesus answered, “Don’t stop people
If they come to hear me;
Unless my Father draws them here,
They will all stay away.”

‘And they shall all be taught by God’
This is what scripture says:
Ev’ryone who hears and learns this
From God, then comes to me.

None of them have seen the Father.
I come to you from God.
I will give you eternal life.
I am eternal bread.

Your Fathers ate of mortal bread,
And so your Fathers died –
If you eat my eternal bread,
You will stay by my side.

I am the living bread which comes
Down from God’s heav’n on high;
If you all partake of my flesh,
Then you will never die.”

People argued among themselves,
Raising a great dispute:
“How can this man claim to save us,
And give his flesh to eat?”

Jesus said, “If you do not eat
My flesh and drink my blood,
You shall not be mine forever,
Nor will you be redeemed.”

When they heard this, many of them
Said, “Who can accept this?
This is very hard for us to do,”
Even his disciples.

But Jesus, knowing what they thought,
Said, “Are you offended?
What if you all could see me
Rising up into heav’n?

The Spirit is what gives us life –
Our flesh is no avail.
My words are both life and spirit,
But some reject me still.”

From the very first Jesus knew
Which ones did not believe,
And he knew which ones would be true,
And which be first to leave.

And He said to them, “This is why
Those who believe in me
Believe also in the Father.
Who lives eternally.”

Many disciples left him then
For they did not approve.
He said to the ones remaining,
“Will you not also leave?”

Peter exclaimed to him, “O Lord,
Where would we ever go!
Your words in us are eternal!
You are all that we know!

You are the Holy One of God!”
Jesus answered him, “Yes,
But I chose ev’ry one of you,
Even one who betrays.”

For he knew God had determined
Judas would betray them,
By bringing the Roman soldiers
So they could capture him.

7.

Jesus decided he would stay
Awhile in Galilee –
Because he knew in Judea
Were many enemies.

The Feast of the Tabernacles
Was coming, so his men
Said, “Let’s go back to Judea,
So your works may be seen –

We should not do things in secret.
Don’t you want our works known?
To make some diff’rence in the world,
These great deeds must be shown.”

“My time has not yet come,” he said,
“Your time is always here.
The world cannot quite hate you, but
I rouse their hate and fear,

Because I say th’authorities
Exploit all the people.
You can go to the feast yourselves,
And not meet with trouble.”

Jesus stayed by himself at home,
And when they had all gone,
He followed them, not openly,
But traveling alone.

At the feast, people were asking,
“Where is he? Where is he?”
And there was great disappointment
He was not there that day.

Some said, “He is good, and righteous.”
Others said, “He is evil;
He leads the common folk astray!”
But among these people,

No one would speak out openly
To praise or condemn him,
Because they feared the Romans would
Hear it, and arrest them.

Jesus, paying them little mind,
Appeared in the temple;
While they celebrated the feast,
He spoke to the people.

And the people marveled at him,
“We never heard this teaching!
Since he has never studied here,
Who taught him all these things?”

“My teaching is not mine,” he said,
“But comes from my Father;
If you would try to do his will,
Listen, and He is there:

For the one who teaches from pride
Only glories in pride;
The one who reaches from glory
Gives you glory inside.

Didn’t Moses bring down the law
Sent by the one on high?
Yet now none of them keep this law,
Else why would they kill me?”

The people said, “We won’t kill you!
We don’t want you to die!”
But Jesus said, “I healed one man,
They raised this hue and cry—

Moses gave them circumcision,
(Really, my Father did),
They circumcise on Sabbath days,
Call it the will of God;

Why is healing on the Sabbath
Such a cause for their anger?
I heal the poor and lame and sick
In the name of the Father.

They should not make moral judgments
From technicalities,
But they should judge by what is right,
And love their enemies.”

In the temple some of them said,
“We know him! This is he
Whom th’authorities sought to kill,
Here, speaking openly!

Why don’t the Romans do something?
Can it be they don’t know
That this teacher claims to be Christ,
Telling us what to do?

Yet we all know who this man is,
And who his fam’ly is;
When the Christ comes to us at last
He won’t look like this Christ.”

“You all know me!” Jesus proclaimed.
“You know where I come from!
But I tell you, here on this earth,
I did not choose to come:

The one who sent me is the Truth,
You do not know the Truth.
I know Him, for I came from Him:
He sent me to this earth.”

Seeking at once to end this speech,
The crowd had him surrounded,
They could not lay their hands on him:
The hour had not yet sounded.

Yet, many who had heard him teach
Believed in him, and said,
“If the real Christ had not taught this,
What else could we have heard?”

The Romans, hearing how the crowd
Argued insistently,
Sent soldiers out to arrest him
Quietly, secretly.

Jesus said, “I shall be with you
Now just a little more,
Then I go back to my Father,
The One who sent me here.

You may still seek to find me here,
But you will not find me;
Where I will be, you cannot come.”
The crowd spoke violently,

And cried out to one another,
“Where does he mean to go?
Will he join the diaspora?
Or sail across the sea?

Will he live among the Gentiles,
And teach the word in Greek?
What does he mean, ‘You won’t find me’?
Tell us, where would we seek?’”

Then, in the last hour of the feast
Jesus stood up and spoke,
“If any one of you has thirst,
I’ll show you what to drink:

All those who now believe in me,
They will all drink my blood,
‘Out of this one’s own heart shall flow
The living water’s flood.’”

He spoke then of his Spirit, which,
For all those who believed,
Would be their spirit forever,
The spirit of his love.

Some said he was a true prophet;
Some said he was the Christ;
But some of them spoke foolishly
Who did not know his past:

“The Christ can’t come from Galilee!
The words of God proclaim
The Christ must be of David’s house,
And be from Bethlehem!”

And so the people divided.
Some of them condemned him,
But they left him alone instead
Of taking his freedom.

And the soldiers all went back to
The religious police,
Who asked them, “Where is this Jesus
We sent you out to seize?”

They answered, “No one ever spoke
As we heard Jesus do!”
Th’authorities protested, say’ng,
“Have you lost your minds, too?

We, who have studied the scriptures;
We, who are in authority;
We say this crowd must be accursed!
We must enforce the law!

Then Nicodemus, a wise judge,
Who secretly had gone
To speak to Jesus, long before,
Said to them, ev’ry one:

“Does the law seek to judge a man
From whom we have not heard?
Let us go, and ask his beliefs;
Let us hear all his words.”

They answered him, “Nicodemus,
Are you from Galilee?
You may search there, both high and low,
And hear no prophecy.”

8.

On the Mount of Olives, Jesus
Went out to spend the night.
In the morning, at the temple,
He came again and taught.

All the same people had returned.
Outside he stopped with them;
They brought before him a woman
Who had known many men.

Th’authorities asked him to judge
Whether she ought to die.
They argued the just thing would be
To stone her publicly.

They were attempting to test him,
To lure him into sin:
If he refused to punish her,
Then they could bring him in.

Jesus, bending low to the ground,
Wrote letters in the sand;
But they pursued their question, so
He stood and raised his hand,

And faced them, saying, “If you are
Completely free from sin,
You be the first to throw a stone,”
And then cast his eyes down.

Beginning with the oldest one,
They left him, one by one,
Till Jesus and th’adulteress
Were left there all alone.

Jesus raised his head, say’ng to her,
“Woman, where have they gone?
Have none of them cast stones at you?”
She answered, “No, Lord, none.”

Then Jesus said to the woman,
“I do not condemn you.
Go, and do not sin any more.
God tells you what to do.”

He went back into the Temple,
Where he had come to teach;
Many came in, following him,
And others just to watch.

“I am the light of all the world,”
He said in the Temple.
“You will never walk in darkness
If you follow my call,

But you will have the light of life.”
Th’authorities said, “No,
Now you bear witness to yourself,
Which you said not to do.”

Jesus said to them, “Even so,
What I am say’ng is true,
For I know where I come from, and
Where I’m going to go.

You cannot know of either place –
You only see my flesh --
I do not judge you, but God would
Judge all of you harshly –

For I alone do not decide
Your fate, but also He
Who sent me here, among you all,
So two would testify.

When I bear witness to myself
My Father speaks through me.”
They said, “Where is your Father?
Is he inside of you?”

“You don’t know either me or Him,
And if you did know me,
You would know who my Father is,
And follow us gladly.”

Again he said, “I’ll go away
And you will look for me;
But unless you search honestly,
You will all surely die;

Unless you believe, you’re condemned.”
Then they speculated:
“Does this mean he will kill himself?”
They analyzed his words,

And he said, “You are from below,
And I am from above;
You are part of this mortal world,
I am eternal life.

I told you all that in your sins
You would certainly die;
And you will die, unless you can
Repent and come to me.”

Then they asked him, “But who are you?”
And Jesus disputed,
“Why do I speak to you at all?
I have too much to say.

The One who sent me here is God;
I come to you from God;
I make here an offering of
Ev’rything you have heard.

When you raise up the Son of Man,
I think that you will know –
You’ll know that I do nothing from
My own authority.

From the first, the One who sent me
Has always been with me;
He has not left me; with his help
I make all people free.

If you understand all these words,
Follow me honestly;
Then all of you will know the truth –
The truth will set you free.”

They said, “The sons of Abraham
Are not in bondage now.
When you say we will be made free,
Explain this to us: How?”

Jesus answered them, “I tell you
Sin makes you into slaves;
And if you do as sinners do
It’s you I come to save.

Slaves do not own their own houses
Nor do they inherit;
But a slave sometimes finds freedom
If he would ask for it.

If your asking could make you free,
And make you clean of sin,
I would help fulfill God’s promise
To Abraham’s children.

And yet now you seek to kill me,
You will not hear my words.
My words are not truthful to you,
And you think I have lied.

I speak to you of what I know
About what you have been;
My Father speaks also through me,
And knows what you have done.”

“We’re sons of Abraham,” they said.
To this, Jesus answered,
“If you were Abraham’s children,
You would do as he did.

Through the bright angel from on high,
God spoke to Abraham,
And told him not to kill his son,
For his faith redeemed him.

But now people seek to kill me,
Because I tell the truth.
The truth which you have heard from God
Brings to you only wrath.

This is not what Abraham did!
Your own blood lust inspires you,
It makes you slaves to your own blood,
It is the flame that fires you.”

“We were not born of this blood lust!
We worship God!” they said.
“Tell me why you do not love me
When I hold out my hand?

I come not of my own accord,
But God has sent me here.
Why do you not understand me?
I teach, and make it clear –

It is because you cannot bear
To hear this lesson taught;
You are filled with earthly desires,
That twist and strain your thought;

You are all creatures of desire,
Driven by your own will,
You’re strangers to the realm of truth,
All born to die and kill,

Your Fathers were all murderers,
They lived and breathed falsehood,
They lied, and Fathered yet more lies,
And you are all their seed.

But because I tell you the truth,
The fire in your blood burns!
The only truth that you believe
Is threat and violence!

Which of you then comes to bind me?
Who comes to tie my hands?
If you were really men of God,
You would ask forgiveness.”

Th’authorities said, “Aren’t we right
In assuming that you
Are really a Samaritan,
And a demon also?”

Jesus said, “I am no demon;
According to the law,
I honor my Father in heav’n;
Yet you dishonor me,

And I seek no glory from you,
But there is One who does:
This One will be the judge of all
That is and ever was,

I speak the truth when I tell you,
That those who follow me
Will conquer death and come to heav’n ,
And live eternally.”

Th’authorities said, “Now we know
That you are a demon;
Abraham and the prophets died,
And so does ev’ryone.

But you say, ‘Those who follow me
Will never taste of death.’
Are you then greater than Abraham
And the prophets both?

Who do you think you are?” they said.
“My own glory is nothing,
Because my Father glorifies me,
The One you call your God;

But you have never known Him, while
I know Him as his Son.
If I said any diff’rently
His will would not be done.

I cannot lie to you, for I
Must keep His word always.
Your Father Abraham rejoiced
That we would see this day:

Abraham sees this and is glad.”
Then people understood
That Jesus was not telling them
About some promised good.

They said, “You are still a young man,
And you’ve seen Abraham?
He answered, “Truly, I tell you,
Before he was, I am.”

Then they took up stones to kill him,
They understood it all;
But Jesus had left the temple;
There was no one to kill.

9.

In the street, Jesus saw a man:
All his life he’d been blind.
His disciples said to Jesus,
“What caused this affliction?

Did the blind man do some great sin,
Or did his parents sin,
That he was born without having
The gift of his vision?”

Jesus answered, “No person’s sin
Made this man’s sight go dim;
His blindness shows the works of God
Made manifest in him.

We all must work the works of God
While we still have the day;
Night comes, and then we cannot work,
For then no one can see.

As long as I am in the world,
I will be the world’s light.”
And as he said these words to them,
Into the dust he spat,

And with the spit and dust he made
A little clump of mud
And rubbed it on the blind man’s eyes.
After this, Jesus said,

“I send you to wash in Siloam.”
(Siloam means to be sent.)
The blind man felt his way along,
And that is where he went.

He washed there, and came back seeing
As well as anyone.
So then his neighbors all came out,
All those who knew the man,

And they asked, “Wasn’t he the one
There, holding out his hand?”
Some said, “Yes,” and the others said,
“He just looks like that one.”

The man himself said, “I am the one!
I was blind! Now I see!”
“How were your eyes opened up, then?”
He said, “Jesus made clay;

With it he rubbed both of my eyes,
And sent me to Siloam;
I went, and washed, and got my sight;
And then I came back home.”

They asked him, “Where is Jesus now?”
He answered, “I don’t know.”
They brought him to th’authorities,
To see what they would do.

Because it had been the Sabbath
When Jesus made the clay
Which opened up the blind man’s eyes
When it was washed away.

Th’authorities all asked the man
What had happened that day;
He said, “He put clay on my eyes,
I washed, and now I see.”
Some of th’authorities spoke out,
“Jesus does not know God;
He does not keep the Sabbath day!”
Then once more they argued,

For some of them would not accept
That it could be a sin
To render such a miracle
As what had healed this man.

So they asked the man to tell them,
“What do you have to say
About this Jesus, since he did
Open your eyes that way?”

“He is a prophet,” said the man.
Then, they would not believe
That the man had been blind from birth.
They went to where he lived,

And called his parents out, and said,
“Is this your son? You say
He was born blind? How then has he
Come to see in this way?”

They said, “We know this is our son,
And he was always blind.
We don’t know how he came to see.
Why don’t you just ask him?

Though he was blind, he is of age,
He can speak for himself.
Tell him the answer that you want
And that is what you’ll have.”

They called the man a second time
And said, “We’re sure of this:
That Jesus is a great sinner,
And rebels against us.”

The man said, “If sins or not,
That I cannot tell you.
I know only one thing: that is,
I was blind, now I see.”

They asked him, “What did Jesus do?
How did he make you see?”
The man said, “I have told you once,
What more now can I say?

Didn’t you hear me the first time?
Why do you ask again?
Why don’t you join his disciples,
And follow him, and learn?”

They all disparaged him, saying,
“He has cast spells on you;
We have all been taught by Moses,
Whom God has spoken to;

As for this man Jesus, we don’t
Know where he has come from.”
The man answered, “What a marvel!
How can such a thing be?

You don’t know where Jesus comes from
Yet he has healed my eyes!
I think that God may not listen
To sinners, with their lies!

If anyone does worship God
And does God’s will, each day,
I think God will listen to him;
And God will hear me say

That never, since the world began,
Has it ever been seen
That someone opened up the eyes
Of a person born blind.

If this man were not sent from God,
He could not have healed me.”
They answered, “You were born in sin,
We don’t care what you say!”

Then th’authorities cast him out,
So Jesus asked of him,
“Though you were blind, do you believe
Now, in the Son of Man?”

The man answered, “Who is he, sir?
I will believe in him.”
Jesus said, “Now you have seen him;
And felt his mercy come.”

The man said, “Yes, Lord, I believe,”
And he worshiped Jesus,
Who said, “I came into this world
To show truth in God’s ways,

That those who are blind can still see,
And those who see are blind.”
Those who heard this rebuked Jesus,
For they were offended.

“Are judges also blind?” they asked,
And Jesus said to them:
“If you were blind, you would be free
Of any guilt or stain.

But now you say, ‘We see all things,’
And so your sin remains.”
Then Jesus left them standing there.
Their taunts were all in vain.

10.

At the Feast of Dedication
When wintertime had come,
Jesus walked into the temple;
The people came to him.

The portico of Solomon
Was where he stood and taught,
And he spoke to them carefully
To help them interpret:

This is what I will teach today:
Each of us has a choice:
To enter the sheepfold by the gate,
Or through some other place.

If you don’t enter by the gate,
But come in somewhere else,
You will be treated like a thief,
Who sneaks under the fence.

The one who enters by the gate,
That one is the shepherd.
The gatekeeper opens to him,
And the sheep hear his words.

He calls his own sheep, each by name,
He takes them out to feed,
And they all follow after him,
For they know he is good.

They know his voice, and they would not
Follow a stranger so;
They would run off from the stranger,
Whose voice they would not know.”

As Jesus told them this story,
They did not understand,
So they all asked him what it meant,
And again he explained:

“I’m by the sheepfold’s gate,” he said,
“The ones who were first there
Were thieves and robbers, and the sheep
Knew them only with fear.

I’m by the gate, where they enter,
Where they go to be safe;
By day they go into the field,
To the pastures they love.

The thief comes in only to steal,
To kill, and to destroy;
I come in so you may have life,
And live abundantly.

I am the shepherd, kind and good;
Who will lay down his life
So that the sheep will all be safe,
Not stolen by a thief;

Someone who is not the shepherd,
May not protect the sheep,
He fears the wolf and leaves the sheep
And the wolf eats them up;

The wolf chases and scatters them,
And they have no defense;
But the good shepherd and his flock
Know each other as friends.

I the shepherd know my own,
And you, my own, know me.
As my Father in heav’n knows me,
So I know all of you.

And I will sacrifice my life
To guard this flock of mine,
And other sheep, in other folds
Will come with us and join,

And all of them will heed my voice,
And come into my fold,
In one great flock, and I shall be
The shepherd of them all.

For this my own Father loves me,
That I lay down my life,
That I may take it up again,
And keep my flock all safe.

No one can take my life from me,
By choice I lay it down;
This is what God has done for me,
And now I make it known.”

Some still said, “He’s like a disease;
He may infect us all.
Why stay here and listen to him?”
Yet others heard his call,

And said, “These are not the sayings
Of one who is possessed –
Can demons open blinded eyes?
We’ll set for him a test.”

So then they gathered round and said,
“How long must people wait?
If you’re our savior, then tell us,
So we can celebrate.”

Jesus said, “I told all of you,
But you did not hear me.
What I do in my Father’s name
Shows all of you the way.

But none of you follow the way
You are not in my fold.
My sheep hear me, and they know me,
They are the ones I hold.

I know them, and they follow me,
They have eternal life,
They shall never give up the spir’t,
And they shall not know grief,

They are held in my Father’s hands:
They have been his, always,
He knew of them before all time,
And they hear what He says.

My Father is greater than all,
And therefore nothing can
Snatch them from my Father’s hand.
Now all of us are one.”

Th’authorities still threatened him,
But Jesus answered them,
“Many good works are done for you
By my Father’s strong arm.

So tell me, which of these good works
Is cause for killing me?”
They said, “You should be stoned because
You lead people astray.

You are a man; and yet you try
To make yourself a God.”
“Is it not written in your law
That ‘You are Gods,’?” he asked.

“The Word of God came down to men,
And if God is human,
This Word cannot be broken, and
You should not say it can.

My Father blessed me and sent me
Among you in this world,
And you say I should not tell you
I am the Son of God?

If I don’t do my Father’s works,
Then don’t believe in me;
But if I do my Fathers works,
Then let these works display

The love my Father has for you,
The love He has for me,
For He and I are one in love,
As from these works you see.”

Then when they tried to capture him
He went away again,
Across the Jordan, to the place
Where John had baptized him;

And many more came there and said,
“John did not leave a sign,
But what John said about this man
Was true. We follow him.”

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Sunday, March 16th, 2008 New Website: Find the Fire of Love and other works free on our new website: http://www.sustainyourspirit.com/ Thanks for your support. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 2:08 PM

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 New website Visit our new website at www.sustainyourspirit.com, or email jabez@sustainyourspirit.com. There is a list of links to our podiobooks hosted by Gcast and iTunes, including: -Verse Gospels, and the Saxon Gospel -Mystics and Anchorites from Medieval England -Creation Stories and Religious Texts from Many Cultures -Choral Music Explorations -Inspirational Works on Human Rights and Civil Disobedience Awaken from the restless modern dream. Come and sustain your spirit with us! Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 4:25 PM

Friday, December 15th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXIII, ii) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the medieval exhortation to holiness set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. The Fire of Love (XXIII, ii) by Richard Rolle Truly as you desire after your death To ascend to full and perfect joy, So it behooves you in this earthly life To love God with a whole and perfect heart. Else as now, you are not giv’n to God, So then shall you not have your perfect joy, But endless torment be your bread and meat. For truly while you heed not here your Maker With whole love and mind, you are proved soothly To love some creature more than it is lawful. A soul can not have reason without love Whilst it is in this life finding its way: Wherefore the love thereof is the soul’s foot, By which it shall be borne to God or fiend; Subject to him whose will it has served here. Nothing truly can be loved complete, But for the goodness that it has, or seems, Which goodness is either in the one beloved Or thought to be in that, that is beloved. Herefore truly is it, that they who love Bodily beauty or worldly riches, fall, Beguilèd as it were by strong witchcraft; For truly delight is not part of those things The which we think we feel or see in them, Nor is the joy we feign when we behold them, Nor the good name we give to what we see, But only as we tell ourselves they are. No man therefore more damnably forgets His own soul than the one who sets his eye On woman, however innocent, for lechery; Truly, the eye’s taper kindles the soul, Anon, from things we see, then thought comes in, Engendering desire within the heart, Together, these defile the inward beauty. Wherefore suddenly with a noyous burning In fire we are enfolded and made blind, That we see not the sentence of the Judge. And thus the soul, taken from heavenly sight By countenance of evil, unclean love, Stints not to show the tokens of her error: Unless she may bring forth the filth conceived, She is mistrustful of her own prosperity. Filth your soul has conceived, and wicked desire; Thereby shall wickedness thrust him ahead; That sooner the soul may slide in slippery lust, Inasmuch as she then takes no heed To the great peril in which she errs, The sooner does God’s countenance withdraw; Whilst truly she begins to take her pleasure In copious fleshly desires, then she sees not Into how great a pit of wretchedness, From small conception, she has cast herself. He who has so willingly despised God, Casting himself down into deadly sin, God shall reject unwillingly after this life. Truly his soul cannot defend herself, In the time to come, from pains of hell; That, set in this life, would not, when he could, With all his power, forsake those deadly sins. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 2:08 PM

Thursday, December 7th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXIII, i) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XXIII THAT PERFECT LOVE MINGLES NOTHING WITH GOD: AND WHY. AND THAT IT IS NEEDFUL TO LOVE: AND OF THE BLINDNESS OF FLESHLY LOVE Perfectly forsaking the filth of sin, And leaving back the vices of this world, We find we may love nothing else but God. How truly should God be our all in all If nothing were in us beside His love? No man has joy unless he so has love. The more therefore that we have love in God, The more and plenteously he shall joy in us; Because we busily, fervently desire, In what we get, more heartily we joy. Therefore we joy because we reach for God; And that God truly is the Joy we are: The which forsooth none have, that seek aught other. If I would grasp at anything for myself, And make not God the end of my desire, I certain make a traitor of myself, My hidden guilt more openly is shown. God truly will become us in this wise: That none be mingled with Him in His love. For if you fracture and divide your heart, Dread not to love another thing with Him, Know well, your love will be forsook of God; For God will not behold a part of love. All the whole truly, or the nought, He takes; For when he died, then He gainbought the whole. And in the sin, forsooth, of Father Adam Your body and your soul were damnèd all; Wherefore God came down to a Maiden’s body And gave the price of your deliverance, That He might deliver you your soul, Taken from the power of the fiends, And He might make your body with your soul Blessèd at the ending of the world. Therefore also you have ten commandments Which mark your path to find eternal life. If you will enter in that kingdom, lost, And after, will be cleaned with Christ’s own blood, It behooves you now keep God’s commandments. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:50 AM

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXII, ii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Mewdieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Thus shall the perfect have sweetness in mind Such as the angels have up in their heav’n; Although this earthly sweetness, not so much. Soothly in this wise are we made perfect; And we need not be purged with ghostly fire After this life, who, being in the flesh, Burn whispering with the fire of th’ Holy Ghost. And yet this perfect love makes not a man Ay not to sin; but that his sin lasts not, As it is strifed forthwith by fire of love. Truly such a lover of Jesus Christ Says not his prayers like other righteous men; For, set in righteous mind continually, And ravished above himself by love of Christ, He is taken into marvellous mirth, And a goodly sound is shed within him, So that he as it were sings prayers with notes; And offers with his mouth a melody That, though hidden from the human sense, Is full bright heard to God and to himself. Strength and ghostly virtue have now truly So much overcome the flesh’s heaviness That he can be ay glad in Christ forever, Whose very heart, turned into fire of love, Feels heav’nly heat, that he can scarcely bear, Before the greatness of such burning love. But the goodness of God keeps him alive Until the time ordained for his departure; The strength God gave him, so that he this much Might love, and truly say, ‘I languish here.’ As the Seraphim burned, he burns, and loves; He sighs and joys, he praises and grows warm; And the more heated he is from very love, Then the hotter he burns in very love. He dreads not death, but he is glad to die, As the Apostle told us long before: Mihi, inquit, Christus vivere vita est, et mori gaudium, ‘Christ to me is life; to die, great joy’. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:06 AM

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXII, i), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XXII THE BURNING OF LOVE PURGES VICES AND SINS: AND OF THE TOKENS OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP Love’s burning, truly taken by a soul Purges all vice and plants all virtue’s beauty; It voids in souls too much, prevents too little, It never stands with deadly sin again, And if it does with venial, nevertheless, The moving and desire for love in God Is still so hot, it strifes with venial flesh, Without however thinking of the deed That would make manifest that venial sin: For whilst the lover is borne up to God, Carried by strong and ever fervent desire, All things displease him that might draw him back, And sight of God will end his petty deeds. Truly whilst gladdened by this songly joy, His heart may not express what he then feels Of heavenly things, in languishing for love. Perfect men also never bear from earth What may be burned by perfect life to come, For in the heat of Christ’s love, all their sins Are strifed and burned and made as never were. But lest a person think himself so perfect, Perfect in vain when he is not in earnest, Let him hear what true perfection is: This truly is the life of perfect souls: Casting away all charge of worldly errands; Forsaking father and mother and all your goods, And following Christ always, without question; Despising all passing things, for endless life; Destroying worldly desires with fervent labor; As far as it is possible, refraining From lechery and all unlawful movings; Burning only in the love of our Maker; After knowing bitter sorr’ws and pains, And finding busyness in ghostly works, Feeling heavenly contemplation’s sweetness; From these traits, finding joy in God’s love, And being taken up by contemplation Into ghostly song or heavenly sound, Biding sweetly in an inward rest, Where all disturbances are put aback; And in so much that whilst it may be lawful For souls in God to labor nothing outward, Going within, to sing the heav’nly sweetness Of eternal love forevermore, In songs delightful of unmeasured mirth But all in silent music unimagined. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:23 AM

Monday, December 4th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXI, iii) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Some truly do alms of their righteous goods; Others to their death defend the truth; Others clearly, strongly preach God’s word, And others tell their preaching in their writing; Others suffer for God greater penance And live in wretchedness throughout this life; And others, by the gift of contemplation, Are only busy to find converse ghostly, And set themselves to narrowly loving Christ. Without doubt, mongst all of these estates, They that by their gift would be contemplative Joy with a special joy that cannot fade; And they are now all worthy with their singing To joy in God’s great love forevermore. Truly if any man might get both lives, That is to say, contemplative and active, Keep and fulfill them, he would be full great; Imagine that he might do bodily service, And nevertheless still feel that heavenly sound Welling in him as he performs his labors, Melted in singing within, of heavenly love. I know not ever any mortal had this. To me it seems they could not be together. Christ truly in this way is not like men, Nor His blest Mother is like other women. For Christ was not led off by wandering thoughts; Not contemplative in a common manner, As saints who live this life are contemplative; And truly He needed not to toil as others, Striving for years to rise above the earthly, Because, from onset of His own conceiving, He saw God, needing not to labor more. No marvel by great exercises ghostly There comes to some of us a songful joy, And we receive the sweetest sound from heaven; And so henceforward wish to stand in rest, That with great sweetness we may joy in God. Therefore the one that serves well active life, Is busy to rise to contemplative. He who is truly raised up in this manner, With the gift of heavenly contemplation, Comes down never again to labor active; Unless p’radventure he is so compelled To take some form of governance of Christians; And that I pledge has seldom, or never happened. But faulty contemplatives can be seen, For they are less imbued with heat of love. Forsooth the lesser saints are sometimes better Than greater saints, to take a place of prelacy, For they who could not manage inward desires, Do better in transacting outward business. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:57 AM

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXI, ii) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a booklenth poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. A person is not holier or higher For the outward works that she may do, For truly God, the Beholder of the heart, Rewards willingness more than sentient deeds. For the more burningly that a person loves, By so much more he climbs to high reward. In true contemplatives, there is sweet heat The plenteousness of God’s own love abiding, From the which a joyful sound is sent Into them there above, with unthought mirth; And this is never found in active orders; For they turn not alone to heav’nly things. Contemplatives do turn only to these things, So that they might more worth’ly joy in Jesus. And therefore active life is put behind; The contemplative, in this noisome present, And in the life to come, is well preferred. Wherefore in the litter of King Solomon, The pillars are silver; the resting place is gold. The pillars of the chair are strong upbearers; The goodly governors of the holy church; These are of silver, for in conversation They’re clear, and in their preaching filled with sound. The golden resting place contemplative Is the place where, being in high rest, Christ, He most especially, lays His Head, And they in Him right singularly rest. These are of gold, for they are purer, dearer, In honesty of living incorruptible, And redder in burning love and contemplation. God forsooth has forordained His chosen Fulfilling divers services for them. It is not given truly to each one To execute or enter all his offices, But each has that, that most accords his state. Wherefore the Apostle says of this: ‘Unicuique nostrum data est gracia secundum mensuram donationis Christi;’ ‘To each one of us is grace then given after the measure of Christ’s gift to us.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:10 AM

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XXI, i), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness set as a book length poem in Modern English, by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XXI THAT CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE IS WORTHIER AND REWARDFULLER THAN ACTIVE: AND OF BOTH PRELACY AND PREACHING Which life is it better to aspire to? Many think that active brings reward, Because of many deeds and teachings there. But those who think so, cheat themselves unknowing, For they have not the virtue of contemplatives. Though many deeds may help atone for sin, The best contemplatives are closer pure; Therefore we say the life of sequestration Is altogether better, sweeter, worthier, And the more fertile in its true reward, That is, the joy of finding unwrought good, Because the soul that thrives in lonely thought She loves our God that much more burningly. And more of grace is asked if solitaries Would lead life rightly, than is asked of active. The reason that more fervent love is needed By contemplative, than by active life, Is that solitude takes both minds and bodies: Therefore these quiet, thoughtful souls will taste The sweetness of the eternal, before they die. The active truly service God in labor, Running about, and tarrying but little, Finding no inward rest, making good way, Wherefore they cannot take time for delight, Save seldom and in shortness even there. Contemplatives love as if continually Within embrace of their own true Beloved. Forsooth some say that active life is fruitful, For it does works of mercy for the poor, It preaches and it works other such deeds; Wherefore the doer builds up certain merit. I say, rewards for works are accidental, That is, they bring joy of the thing that’s wrought. And so, one might be taken with the angels And have reward that cherubim shall not; That is, remembered joy, of some good deed Done in this life, of the which another— Without compare surpassing in God’s love— Did not, for being lost in contemplation. It also ofttimes happens that some one Of less reward does good, and preaches of it; Another, who preaches not, that much more loves. Is not the first one better, because he preaches? No; the one that loves the more is better, Although he do the less of preaching on it; He shall have some reward, though he preached not, That the loud preacher was not worthy of. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:03 AM

Monday, November 27th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XX,ii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Therefore it follows and we see full well: ‘Et servus tuus dilexit illud;” ‘And he Your servant takes delight in it.’ Therefore truly is his spirit burned, Because your word, Lord, is the thing he loved; He took to ponder, and after that, to work. You he sought, sooner than what was yours, And has received of You both You and yours. Others serve You in order to have yours, And for You they really care but little. Truly they feign they would be in Your service, To get some worldly honor among men; But whilst they joy to have in hand few truths, They lose the many more they might have had, Because of You and yours, themselves and theirs. It behooves us pray we may be saved; Therefore th’ apostle James warns, saying to us: ‘Orate pro invicem ut salvemini,’ ‘Pray for yourselves, that ye will be saved.’ Also that we be not made slow in prayer, And be continually occupied in good: ‘Vigilate et orate ne intretis in temptationem,’ ‘Wake ye and pray, to enter not temptation.’ Truly we ought ever to pray or read Or meditate, with other holy deeds, That our enemy never find us idle. But it must be taken heed to, here, With all the busyness we wake in prayer, That we will not be lulled by vainer thoughts The which withdraw the mind, and it forgets Whither it’s truly bound and always strained, And if they can, they overcome devotion; Devotion which the mind would sure perceive, Praying with wakefulness, busyness, and desire. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:42 AM

Saturday, November 25th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XX,i), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem in blank verse, by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XX OF THE PROFIT AND WORTHINESS OF PRAYER AND MEDITATION Constant prayer conditions us to get, And hold, to stableness of holy mind; Grounded in mind it undoes sloven’s work. And though God knows all things, and how they end, And even before we ask God any thing, He knows already just what we will ask; Still, we ought to pray it constantly. Because Christ has instructed to us to pray; And He went out alone at night, for prayer. And because He so commanded us, ‘Sine intermissione orate. Oportet enim orare, et non deficere.’ ‘Without ceasing shall you pray, always. You should pray, and never fail to pray.’ And that we may be worthy of his grace, Joy in this life, bliss in time to come, Therefore He says, ‘Ask and ye shall receive. He that asks receives, it shall be opened.’ Also because the angels offer prayers To God, to help accomplish their fulfillment. Truly all our raw desires are bare And open thus to God; and angels know When saints express these high and holy things, And they burn with love of life eternal, By God’s showing, and by their outward deeds, Because they see these busy saints at work. Wherefore the angel said to th’ prophet Daniel: ‘Vir desideriorum es.’ ‘A man you are of various desires.’ Also because by constancy of prayer The soul burns in the fire of Godly love; As our Lord truly says here by His prophet: ‘Nonne verba mea quasi ignis, et quasi malleus conterens petras?’ ‘Are not my words to you as burning fire, and as a mallet shattering the stones?’ And here the psalmist so declares to us: ‘Ignitum eloquium tuum vehementer;’ ‘Your speech has kindled up a mighty fire.’ But there are many now that would cast out The word of God from mouth and heart and soul, Not suffering it there to rest in them; And therefore they are not burnt with a heat Nor comfort, but bide them in cold and sloth, Even after mouthing prayers innumerable And claiming meditation of a scripture, Because forsooth they neither pray nor think, But make a motion where no substance is; Whilst others that put back all cold and sloth Within a short while they are greatly burned, And in Christ’s love chase after Him full strong. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:58 AM

Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIX, iii) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, here set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. But it may not incongruously be asked Whether this perfect place in love, once had, May at any time by souls be lost. Truly whilst man can sin he can lose charity; But not to be able to sin belongs not here; On earth we sin, but not in that far country: Wherefore each person, howsoever holy, Yet still can sin, and often mortally; For the dregs of sin are fully slakened Never, in any pilgrim of this life. Truly if there were a soul so purified That she no more desire nor could be tempted, She should already have the state of heaven; So it would not reward her to default. I know not aught if any such be living. Speaking for myself, my flesh desires Against my spirit, my spirit against my flesh; My inward man may gladly observe God’s law, But I know not yet, so much Godly love That I could utterly slake fleshly desire. Nevertheless I promise that there is A high degree of perfect love, the which Who has it, he may never after lose. Forsooth, it is one manner of such love That one person might contrive to lose it, And quite another always have it by, That love he will not leave although he can. The perfect truly do abstain themselves, As much as in them is, from ev’ry thing By which perfection can be quick destroyed. Truly with the freedom of their choice They are fulfilled with flowing grace of God, With which they now are busily stirred to love, To speak love, and do service with their love; And they show love in heart, and mouth, and work. When such a person perfect turns to Christ He despises worldly passing things, And fastens body and soul immovably To the desire only of his Maker, As far as this he may, by his mortality, Because of the corruption of his flesh. And then, no marvel, manly in his might, First as ’t were the heavens being opened With the open eye of his understanding, He beholds the citizens of heaven; And afterward he feels the sweetest heat, As it were a burning fire within him; And then he is imbued with marv’lous sweetness, And henceforth he is joyed by songly noise. All this therefore is perfect charity, Which no man knows but he that has received it; And he that has received, should never leave it: Sweetly he lives, securely shall he die. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:24 AM

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIX, ii) by Richard Rolle The Fire of Love Continuation of Richard Rolle's Medieval Exhortations set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. All them that we may love and be loved by— All them to God, the source of love, we yield: Because He wants that all the heart of man Be housed within Himself and in his love. All desires, all movings of the mind, He wants these also all be fastened in Him. Forsooth, the person that loves God completely, Can feel nothing in his heart but God, And if he feel nought else, nought else has he; But whatsoe’er he has, he loves for God, And he loves nought, but what God wills he should; Wherefore he loves no thing that is not God, And so he is, and all his love is God. Forsooth the love of such a soul is true, For she conforms herself to fit her Maker, The which has wrought all things to please Himself. When love eternal flares up in our souls, Then fades the vain pomp of this painted world, And fleshly love is held but foulest filth; And whilst the soul finds her intent devotion, Desiring nothing but the Maker’s pleasure, Marv’lously she burns herself with fire: The fire of love that slowly spreads within her; And growing in ghostly good, she falls not back Into that broad and slipp’ry way, to death, But rather, raised up by that heavenly fire, Ascends into a life contemplative. That life contemplative cannot be got By any person in this vale of tears, Even a little, unless at first his heart Flames up from in its depth a torch of love, So that he feels it burn the fire of love, And knows his conscience melt with heav’nly sweetness. A person’s truly made contemplative Whilst tasting sweetness and whilst feeling burning, He nearly dies for greatness of his love. And therefore he is fastened in embrace, As it were bodily, of endless love; Seeing unceasingly all of his desire, He busies him to go in heaven higher, And to perceive that light still unperceived. Forsooth such people know not how to find Comfort for the soul; they seek God’s comfort, God in whose love now languishing they are; They come to desire the ending of this life, And grievous cry out therefore with the psalmist: Quando veniam et apparebo ante faciem Dei? ‘When shall I come before the face of God?’ And this cry grievous, is their perfect love. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:53 AM

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIX, i) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book length poem in Modern English by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XIX OF FAIRNESS OF MIND: VANITY OF THE WORLD: LOVE OF GOD: AND UNION WITH OUR NEIGHBOR: AND WHETHER PERFECT LOVE CAN BE LOST AND GOTTEN IN THIS WAY If you be glad in fairness, know it well, For the fairness of your gladdened mind Shall be belovèd of the highly Fair, If for His love you keep it undefiled. Flesh corruptible, with all its beauty All too soon gone, beguiling all its lovers, Is ever feeble and to be despised. Therefore the virtue of our life stands here: That vanity should be despised and spurned, And we cleave ever closer to God’s truth. All things which we desire in earth are vain; The true things are the heav’nly and eternal: Things which we know, but which cannot be seen. Each Christian person shows a Christian self, A man or woman truly chos’n of God, By setting all these earthly things at nought; When our desire is fully spread in God, We then can hear a secret sound of love That none still in their worldliness would know, Wretchedly withdrawn from heav’nly joy. No marvel that the soul, shining in silence, Utterly intent to love eternal, And inwardly all hungering for Christ, Would have her heart’s capacity fulfilled With plenteousness of sweetness, without end; So that, in feeding, is this flesh made merry, Aloft in flight, as ’t were with angels’ life; And they are gladdened with that songful mirth. Therefore if our love is pure and perfect, Whatever thing our heart loves, becomes God. Truly if we love ourselves in Spirit, And love all other creatures that there are, Only in God, for God, and after God, What else is there in us or them, but Him? For when our God is truly loved by us, With a whole heart, and with all virtue, Then, without doubt, do we love our neighbor: All that could be loved, is loved most rightly. If we shed forth our heart before God fully, And in our love of God are bound with Him, So we are one with God, and with God’s love, What more is there by which we can love any? Truly in love of God is love of neighbor. Therefore as he that loves God, knows no other, And is by this compelled to love his neighbor, Just so he is compelled to love himself, For there is in himself nothing but God. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:47 AM

Monday, November 20th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVIII, ii) by Richard Rolle The Fire of Love (Incendium Amoris) Continuation of the book length Medieval Exhortation set as a poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Nevertheless should every mortal soul Know that she comes not to the heavenly kingdom By way of riches, fleshliness and lust; Since, it is said of Christ himself forsooth,: Quod oportuit Christum pati, et ita intrare in gloriam suam; ‘That Christ chose to suffer, and enter His joy.’ If we are members of our Maker’s body, Then we shall follow Him however he goes; If we with Him go not as He has gone, We are no longer members of that body, For from the Head we have ourselves divided. Truly if we are sundered, head from body, This is a thing that’s greatly to be dreaded, For then by flesh we are joined to the fiend, And in the end, God says: ‘I know you not.’ He, truly, by a noyous and strait way Entered into heaven to find glory; So how should we, all we, wretches and sinners, Be then made rich by taking from the poor, Feed our lust with soft unlawful things, Crave the flitting flatteries of this world, Stroke the pale, vain softness of our flesh, And grieve alone, desiring for delight, While nevertheless expecting we will reign In life to come with Jesus Christ our Lord? Christ, when He was rich for us, was poor; Yet when we craven souls are strait and starved, Then there is nothing that we so much covet As to be seen, as rich and plenteous. Christ, when He was Lord of all, was servant; Yet we, whilst we are shiftless and unprofitable, Unworthy servants to our humble Lord, Yet would we in our hearts be lords of all. He who was greater God, became meek Man; Yet we, though we are sick and simple men, Because of pride, exalt ourselves as gods. He was conversant with the ways of men That He might better raise us to the heavens; Yet we, through all this life, cling to the earth. Therefore has it been shown, we love Him not; We struggle not to meek our will to His; And balk to have what ev’ry day we ask: Fiat voluntas tua sicut in coelo et in terra; ‘Your will be done in heaven as in earth.’ In vain forsooth we all make empty promises To join ourselves with them that have been chosen; But we have giv’n allegiance to the earthly, Who are not partners in Christ’s own redemption; The which, by sundry wicked, unclean works, Despise the blood by which we are gainbought, And freely take the bondage of the fiend. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:51 AM

Saturday, November 18th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVIII, i) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XVIII OF THE PRAISE AND MIGHT OF CHARITY: AND OF FORSAKING THE WORLD: AND OF THE WAY OF PENANCE TO BE TAKEN Charity is the very queen of virtues; The fairest star; the beauty of the soul; And yet she is the soul’s own intimate, That does all things by which the soul is wrought: That is to say, she wounds her, makes her languish, Moistens and melts her, and makes fair her face; She gladdens and enflames the need for caring, Whose ordinate deed is full fair loving habit. It should be without doubt that all of virtue, If any of it be truly called a virtue, Is rooted and it thrives in charity. No virtue can be truly held to be That has not found itself in love of God. They who toss forth their virtues and their deeds Without God’s love, cast as ’t were precious stones Into the bottomless privy of this world. Shown it is, and known, that all we do Will help us not at last to get our health, If it’s not done in charity of God. Wherefore, since it is char’ty makes us blessed, We should desire rather to lose our lives, Than mind, or mouth, or deed, defile that charity. In this, strivers with mighty sin enjoy; In this, sin’s mightier conquerors are crowned. Truly each Christian soul has imperfection, That cleaves with love to phantom earthly riches, Joining itself to any worldly solace; For she forsakes not, all she seemed to have, Yet if it be not shed, none find perfection. When any one aspires to love God perfectly, He learns to do away with all those things, Inward as well as outward, that are contrary To love of God, that hinder from God’s love. And ever, that anyone may do this truly, They have great business to rehearse themselves, For they shall find great strife in doing it; Before at length they shall find sweetest rest, In the purer intention that they seek. We have heard truly that the way is strait That leads to life eternal, after this. This is the way of penance that few find, The which therefore is called narrow, or strait; For by it, if it is right, the flesh is stripped From its unlawful solace of this world, The soul is leashed and her mouth is withheld From all shrewd pleasures, and all unclean thoughts, And she is only dressed to love of God. But this is seldom found in men or women, For nearly none can taste the whole of God: But they seek earthly joys and are delighted, Wherefore then, following bodily appetite, Despising any ghostly nourishment, They forsake the way that would be healthful, And they abhor that path as strait and sharp, Untenable for comforting their lust; And leave their souls to starve and suffer want. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:49 AM

Friday, November 17th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVII, v), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation Recreated as a book length poem in Modern Englsih, written and voiced by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Forsooth some men have loved each other so That they have nearly promised that they were Two bodies with one soul in them both. But truly, the man who’s poor in worldly goods, Though rich in mind, is far from such a love. For it were very marvel if one took That which he seldom or never can give back, And had a friend in which he might put trust, To have his trust returned in all such things. While others, therefore, judge him so unworthy, He has a steadfast friend in Jesus Christ; And of Him he can faithf’ly ask all things. Truly where man’s help fails to succor him, Without doubt God’s is near, and strong enough. Nevertheless it profits more the rich To choose a holy poor man as his friend, With whom he would share property in common And gladly give him ev’rything he had, Yea, try to give him more than the poor wills, And love him as his best and kindest friend. Therefore Christ said unto the earnest rich, ‘Make you friends,’ meaning, forsooth, the poor, Those who already are the friends of God; And gladly God gives true lovers of such poor, For their true love, the joys of Paradise. Soothly I promise that such rich should be Well pleased with their return upon that friendship! And yet this verse is ever true, that says: ‘Pontus erit siccus cum pauper habebit amicum;’ ‘The sea shall dry when poor folk find a friend.’ Some rich folk soothly I have found were giving Portions of meat out to the holy poor, Yet who would not give clothes or other necessaries, Saying it were enough if they gave meat; And so they make themselves half friends, or part; And make distinction, helping the good poor, Denying help to those, called evil poor. And all things any price that might be given, They save themselves, and give out to their children. Equal to these are others who give aught, That give the poor folk clothing or other goods, And yet, regardless, tell them which to wear, Attending to their needs, but with conviction That poor folk are great burden to the rich. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 2:07 PM

Thursday, November 16th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVII,iv), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. It is of love also to melt the mind; Anima mea liquefacta est, ut dilectus locutus est; ‘My soul was made to melt as my Love spake.’ As truly, a sweet and full devoted love Melts the very heart in God’s own sweetness, So is the will of man made one with God, Flowing together in a wonderful friendship. In which onehood such liking heat and song Is inshed sweetly into loving souls, In how great much, the feeler cannot tell. Love also has its own strength in its spreading, In knitting, and in turning, and embracing: It casts light beams out over all its goodness, Not only shining forth to friends and neighbors, But also lighting enemies and strangers. In knitting truly: it makes lovers one In deed and will; in children, in the flesh, In Christ and every holy soul, makes one. He that draws near to God is one in spirit, In grace and pow’r, and in onehood of will. Love has also a turning strength, for change, For love can turn the loving to the loved, Ingrafting branches to a single tree. Wherefore the heart that truly feels the fire Of the Holy Ghost, is burned all wholly And beating still, turns as ’t were into fire; And beating more, is shapen to that form That is most like God; else it were not said: ‘Ego dixi dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes;’ ‘I have said of you, that you are gods, and are all children of a higher God.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:11 AM

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVII,iii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. What is love, but such desire transformed Into the thing belovèd of the lover? Love is a great desire for fair good things, Which sends continuance of thought to go On to enjoy those things that it may love, The which, when it has found them, then it joys; For joy is not caused ever, save by love. All they who love they truly become love, And love makes them like to that, that they love. Truly neither God nor other creature E’er disdains, refusing to be loved, But gladly all things say they would be loved, And are made glad by love when they receive it. They who love are never sad in loving Unless in truth, they loved an unkind thing; Or if by circumstance they made a promise That they would have the one, they loving sought. This is never so with love of God, But ofttimes this may happen in the love Of objects in this world, or of a woman. I dare not say that ev’ry love is good, For that love that would more delight in creatures Than revel in the Maker of all things; That sets the lust of transient earthly beauty Before a ghostly fairness; such a love Is ill and futile, and it should be hated; For it draws effort from eternal love And turns to temporal things, which cannot last. Yet peradventure it shall be less punished; For we joy more, loving and being loved, Than in defiling or in being defiled. The fairer creature is that much more lovable. Therefore some are busily getting health, That to their shapely forms they will draw love Rather than repel from forms despised; Although in my experience of it, Both beautiful and ugly have occasion Through lechery, of bringing something ill. But nature teaches us, the fairer the thing, The more and sweetly is it to be loved. Nevertheless, an ordinate charity says, The greater the good, the more it shall be loved; For ev’ry fleshly beauty is as hay, Fair for a day, and lightly vanishing, But beauty of godliness more truly bides; And ofttimes does God choose the sick, misshapen, Housing within the despisèd of this world, And so forsakes the strong and straight and fair. Wherefore it is shown us in the psalm: Tradidit in captivitatem virtutem eorum, et pulcritudinem eorum in manus inimici; ‘Their strength he gave to bondage, and their fairness into the hands of all their enemies.’ Habens fiduciam in pulcritudine tua, fornicata es; ‘Having received a trust upon your fairness, you have given yourself to fornication.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:55 PM

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 The Fire of Love, by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book length poem in Modern English by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Lord Jesus, now I ask you, give to me Movement in your love without a measure; Desire without a limit; longing without order; Let me burn within, without discretion. Truly the better that my love of you is, The greedier it is, and without fetter; For neither by reason will it be restrained, Nor by dread distressed, nor by doom tempted. No man shall ever be more blest than he That for a greater love, can waste and die. No creature truly e’er can love too much. In all the other things of mortal ken, All that is too much turns into vice, But the more the strength of love surpasses, That much the more all-glorious it shall be. And I the lover truly languish here If I have not in me the Maker’s likeness. Therefore to comfort lovers it is said: Nunciate dilecto quia amore langueo, ‘Show to my love how that I languish for love.’ As who should say: ‘Because I have not love, For love I wax me slow also in body.’ Forsooth now turned to Christ with all my heart, I am tied first to Christ by true penance, And so forsaking things that long to vanity, After the taste of rare and ghostly sweetness, I am ravished to sing in godly praise: ‘Ego cantabo dilecto meo; In te cantatio mea semper.’ ‘To my precious love now I shall sing; In you my love is ever my love’s song.’ No marvel therefore they who lived God’s love, And sweetly burned inside that inward flagrance Without dread, in their death shall pass from light, And after death ascend to heav’nly kingdoms. Therefore it takes the mind to wound the flame, To fillet thus the flame of God’s true love. ‘I am wounded by charity, made to languish’; Amore langueo, ‘for this love I languish’; And it takes the heart to moisten it, That it goes out towards the true Beloved, That it forgets the self and other things. Therefore the lover in the psalm declares: Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum; ‘As a token set me on Your heart.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 4:31 PM

Monday, November 13th, 2006 The Fire of Love, by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef CHAPTER XVII HOW PERFECT LOVE IS GOTTEN BY CLEANNESS AND LOVE: AND OF IMPERFECT LOVE AND FAIRNESS, AND OF THREE MIGHTS OF GOD’S LOVE: AND OF THE RICH AND POOR: AND OF ALMS Clean of conscience, plenteous in ghostly gladness, Fully bathed with inward and Godly mirth, Rises the song of joy in loving minds, And rises the burning flame of endless love. I marvel not that, loving in this manner, I spoke my joy and was in great desire, With moving altogether dressed to God, And by no hindrance fended from His love; Without vain thoughts, constantly cleaving to Christ; In Jesus ever joying; never distracted; With ill not moved, nor with taint polluted. The world, the flesh, the devil do not noy him, They prick him; but he treads them underfoot, He sets their strength at nought; with heat he boils; He loves with great desire; he sings with sweetness; He shines with heat; he sheds a glowing love; He delights in God without gainstanding; He contemplates his way with strong upgoing. He vanquishes all things and overcomes; And of all things he likes, they all are his, And nothing will seem to him impossible. Truly whilst any man would follow Christ With all his strength, he feels it in himself: The greater sweetness of eternal life. We are already truly turned to Christ, If we strive to love with all our being. Certain, God is such a marvelous thing, So liking is this marvel that we see, I wonder that any man could be so mad, That he should take no heed, to leave His way, And lose the sight of God he may have had. He that does great things is not as great As he that loves God much; and he that is Beloved of God, is greater than all others. Philosophers forsooth have travailed heavy, And yet without remembrance they have vanished. And many that seemed Christian did great things, Showing forth marvels, yet they were not saved; For radiance of this, the heavenly crown, Is not for doers, but them who gaze on God. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:08 PM

Friday, November 10th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVI, ii) Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. O Death, how good your judgement is to me! My soul, in spite of death, made sweet by love; A man, forsooth, truly in love of Christ Ever contemplating heav’nly things, Sweetly burned with fire of the Holy Ghost. After death will I be took on high, Hearing the songs of angels in my soul; Because now being purged, and profiting, I dwell within the music of the spirit. And in melody marvelous shall I die, The which when living thought so pithily Upon that sweet and omnipresent Name; And with the companies of angels meet Him, With heavenly hymns and honors of a sweetness, I shall be taken to the Eternal hall, And rest among the heavenly dwellers there. To this has charity truly brought his soul, That she should thus receive inward delight, And should thus gladly suffer all that happens, And should think there on death, but not with bitterness, But with the sweetness of her own salvation. Soothly then he promises truly to live, When it is giv’n him to pass from this light. O Charity, you are the dearest sweetness; That catch and take a mind into your love; And so clearly you moisten it, that quickly You make it to despise all passing things, And marvelously to yearn for your desires. You have come into me, and now behold, Is all my inward soul complete, fulfilled By the sweetness of a heav’nly mirth, And plenteous fervour of a ghostly joy. Therefore and truly, now I long for love, The fairest of flowers awaits my outstretched hand, And I am inwardly consumed by fire. Would to God I might go from this exile! Thus it warms, and watchers think not how, Save that he feels some solace in himself; His heart sings ditties that he gives no voice; He’s taken captive with the charge of charity. Soothly now, this that I get is merry; I nearly die while it is thus made steadfast With burning, within, without, with burning love. Now grant, my best Belovèd, that I cease; For death, that many dread, shall be to me As heavenly music ringing through the spheres. Although I sit alone here in the wilderness, Yet I am now set stable in a Paradise, And there all sweetly sounds a loving song, Speaking delights my Love has given me. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:33 AM

Thursday, November 9th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XVI) Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XVI THE PRAYER OF THE POOR, AND THE LOVING AND DESIRING TO DIE: AND OF THE PRAISING OF GOD’S CHARITY When the devout poor man is all afflicted And called by God to account for his defaults, He can, if he will, offer up this prayer: Lord God, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, And vouchsafe to behold the grievous yoke That is put on my body by my sin, That tarries not to cast down this my soul. For my flesh truly fails under the grief; Wherefore my ghostly virtue is made weary. For all I had here, in or of this world Is ended; nought is left but that You come And lead my soul into another world Where my soul’s treasure will be the most precious, My substance richest, and may ever abide. Wherefore shall I live without default; And I shall joy, without thinking of sorrow; And I shall love without aught irksomeness; And loving, seeing, joying in your way, I shall be well, and endlessly well fed. You truly are my Treasure, the Desire Of all my heart and soul and mind together, And You ordained that I shall perfect see You, And that for my soul, I shall have You. And I spoke thus to death: O Death, where are you? Why come you late to me, living but mortal? Why kiss you not the lover who desires you? Who is holy enough to think your sweetness? You that are the end of any sighing, Beginning of desire, and gate of yearning? You are the end of woe, the mark of labors, Beginning of first fruits, and gate of joys. Behold I grow hot and desire to have you: For if you come I shall forthwith be safe. Ravished I will be, truly, because of love; I cannot fully love what I desire, Until I taste the joy that You shall give me. If it behooves me, while I am yet mortal— Because forsooth desire so befalls— To pass through you as all my fathers have, I pray you tarry not much waiting me; O Lord from me do not abide too long! Behold, I truly languish for your love; Now I desire to die; for you, I burn; Yet truly not for you, I burn for Jesus, In whom I pledge to be without an end. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:34 PM

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XV,iv) Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. In the meanwhile, wonder caught at me That I should be took up to so great mirth Whilst in my lonely exile before God; Wonder because God gave such gifts to me That I knew not to ask for, or to thank; Nor promised I that any, even the holiest, Could have received such things in this poor life. Therefore I promise this I got from God Is giv’n to none rewardfully, for praying, But freely giv’n it is to whom Christ will; Nevertheless I say, no one will have it Unless he specially love the name of Jesus, And in so much will honor this name, that He never lets it pass forth from his mind Except perhaps in sleep, and seldom then. I promise whom it may be giv’n do that, May sometime reach the same place I have been. Wherefore from the beginning of my change To the high degree of loving Christ, The which, God granting, I may now attain— In which degree I might now sing continually God’s praises with a joyful silent song— My soul was four years and about three months. Here forsooth, with the first flame of love Gathered in this degree, she bides with me To the very end of mortal life; And after death she shall sing yet more perfect: Because herein the very joy of love, Or burning of perfect charity is begun, And in the heavenly kingdom it shall find Its most glorious continuation. And though my soul, she profits not a little, Set in degrees whichever in this life, Yet she ascends not to another degree; But, as it were, she is confirmed in grace, As far as mortal can, and she finds rest. Wherefore without ceasing I desire To give all grace and praises to our God, The which both in disease and heaviness, And persecution, finds and gives me solace; And in prosperity and flatterings Makes me secure await an endless crown. Therefore, in Jesus joying, I yield praise; Who vouchsafed me, though I was least and wretched, To mingle with sweet ministers on high, From whom these songs of melody, yet heavenly, Spring forth through me to sing me of the Spirit. I give shall thanks continually with joy Because my Maker made my soul in clearness: Clearness of conscience, clearness of expression, Like to singers clearly singing of love; And whiles she loves and seethes in songs of burning, The changed soul rests, and being warmed by heat, And the true beauty of a loving virtue, Blossoms without a taint of vice or strife, Opening in the chamber of our Maker; And thus beats drums of praise within herself, Gladdens the longer with her merry song And refreshes all the angels’ labors. Many and great are these bright marv’lous gifts, But among the many along this way, None are as those which in their dearer figure Confirm the shapeliness of an unseen life In the loving soul prostrate before God; Or which so sweetly comfort the ravisht one, Which being comforted, ravishes him again, To reach the very height of contemplation, And the fuller accord of angels’ praise. Behold, brothers, I have told you how I came to be amidst the burning of love, Not so that you should praise me for my doing, But so that you should glorify our God, Of whom I got each good deed that I had; And you who think that all things under the sun Are vanity, may be stirred to follow here. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:48 AM

Monday, November 6th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XV,iii) Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation to Holiness, set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. I was sitting that day, in a dim chapel, And whilst I was this time so much delighted With sweetness of my prayer and meditation, Suddenly, I felt within me merrily, An unknown heat sprang up around my heart. At first I wavered, for a long time doubting What it could be that flared my blood within. I knew that it was not from any creature But came in me directly from my Maker, For it grew hot and glad with Godly strength. Truly in this unhoped for Godly heat, Ever in sense, wholesome and sweet-smelling, Nine months and some weeks had run their ways, Until came the inshedding and receiving Of a heav’nly silent, ghostly sound; The which belongs to praises everlasting, And sweetness of an unseen melody; Because it may not e’er be known or heard Except by blessed souls that may receive it, Whom it behooves to be already clean, And striving for departure from the earth. Whilst then I sat at prayer in this same chapel, In the evening, before I took my supper, And as I could, I sang aloud some psalms, I heard above me noise, as ’t were of readers, Or rather singers. Whilst I took heed praying, Looking to heaven with my whole desire, Suddenly, I know not in what manner, I felt in me upwelling noise of song, A surging, most liking heav’nly melody Which dwelt thereafter with me in my mind. For after this, my thought was forsooth changed To become continual song of mirth, And I had praises in my meditation, And praises in my prayer and saying of psalms; I uttered the same sound praying, yet henceforth, For plenteousness of inward song and sweetness, I burst out singing what before I said; But forsooth privily, for I was alone, Intent on meekness, there before my Maker. I was not known by them that saw me there; Peradventure, if they had seen in me, They would have honored me above all measure, And so I should have lost part of the flower, And might have fallen into desolation. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 4:10 PM

Friday, November 3rd, 2006 The Fire of Love (XV, ii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation, set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. I was wont forsooth to seek a rest, And I went supplicant from place to place. For hermits may leave cells with reasonable cause, And afterwards, turn them back to the same. Truly the holy Fathers have done thus, Although they suffered murmurings of men; Murmuring, nevertheless, not for the good: The evil, truly speak they ill of others; And if the Fathers had abode right there, The murmurers would still have said their say, For speaking thus is customary to them. Yea, if a privy’s cover is put by, Nothing but stink flies out and floats abroad; Ill speech is spoken from the heart’s own plenty, In which the venom of adders often lurks. This have I known, that the more men have raved Against me, with subtle words of backbiting, So much the more I’ve grown in ghostly profit. Forsooth, the worst backbiters I have known Are those which I knew first as faithful friends. Yet I ceased not because I heard their words, From those things that were profit to my soul; Truly, I used more study to continue, And ever after found God favorable. In this I called to mind what has been written: ‘Maledicent illi, et tu benedices,’ ‘They shall curse him, and then, you shall bless.’ And in time’s process ghostly joy was giv’n me. Forsooth three years, except three or four months, Were run from the beginning of the change, In my life, and of my soul and mind, To the first opening of the heav’nly door; So that, once open, and the Face being shown, The eyes of my heart might now behold and see By what way they might seek to find my Love, And unto Him continually desire. The heav’nly door, forsooth yet biding open, Nearly a year had passed until the time In which the heat of everlasting love Was verily first felt within my heart. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:32 AM

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 The Fire of Love (XV) Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation Recreated as a book length poem in Modern English by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XV HOW AND IN WHAT TIME I CAME TO SOLITARY LIFE: AND OF THE SONG OF LOVE: AND OF CHANGING OF PLACE When that I was prospering unhappily, And to my youth of wakeful age had come, The grace of my good Maker was near me, The which restrained my lust for temporal shape And turned it to unbodily embracing, That I above all other things desired; And lifting up my soul from lower things Took it to heaven, where I might truly burn In great desire for everlasting mirth, More than I ever was gladdened before By any flower of fleshly company, Or any coverlet of worldly softness. If I will truly show this my procession Then I must preach a solitary life. The spir’t forsooth has set my mind on fire To have, and love, this way of contemplation, The which henceforth I lead as best I can, According to the measure of my sickness. Nevertheless, I have dwelt out among them, They that have flourished in the fleshly world, And I have taken things to eat from them, Flatterings also, that ofttimes might allure Worthy fighters, from high things down to low. But these all out-cast by the grace of God, My soul was taken up to love my Maker; And I, desiring endless hot delight, With sweetness upon sweetness upon song, Gave up my soul so that in endless devotion She should love Christ and I no longer be. The which she has received of her Beloved, So that now loneliness appears most sweet, And solace, where the error of man abounds, She counts for nought, in binding her to Christ. I was wont forsooth to seek a rest, And I went supplicant from place to place. For hermits may leave cells with reasonable cause, And afterwards, turn them back to the same. Truly the holy Fathers have done thus, Although they suffered murmurings of men; Murmuring, nevertheless, not for the good: The evil, truly speak they ill of others; And if the Fathers had abode right there, The murmurers would still have said their say, For speaking thus is customary to them. Yea, if a privy’s cover is put by, Nothing but stink flies out and floats abroad; Ill speech is spoken from the heart’s own plenty, In which the venom of adders often lurks. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 12:08 PM

Monday, October 30th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIV, v), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation retold as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Soothly, heat I call it when the mind Is truly kindled into love e’erlasting; And the heart upkindles, the same manner, Not hopingly, but verily felt to burn. For the heart that has been turned to fire Gives me the feeling of a burning love. Song I call it, when in a soul the sweetness Of everlasting praise accords with burning, And thought is turned into a silent song; And the mind is changed into sweet sound. These first two are not got in idleness, But come after high devotion and ardor; To which the third is near, that is to say, Sweetness, appears unbid, in form unthought. For heat and song together truly cause The birth of marvelous sweetness in the soul; And are themselves caused by this full great sweetness. There is not any flaw within this plenteousness, It is the perfect ending of all deeds. Yet some, all ignorant of contemplation, And deceived by fiends in the midday hour Into a noisome, false, and feignèd sweetness, Promise themselves full high, when they are low. The soul in which the foresaid three great things Run together, bides together, impenetrable, By any arrows of our enemy. This soul, she is all times in thought of Him, With mind unsmit, who raises her to heaven, And stirs herself to love without adultery. And marvel not, if melody be sent Into the soul thus overcome in love, For she continually receives this music, Comfortable songs in tune with her Beloved; And she lives not as if for vanity, But as it were clad with the heavenly, Yea so that she may burn without an end In unwrought heat and never fall again. She also loves unceasingly and burning, And feels most happy heat throughout herself, And knows herself more subtly burnt with fire, The fire of endless love and pure communion, Plainly feeling her most beloved sweetness, Where meditation turns to songs of joy, And nature is renewed to its creation, And we enfolded in the heav’nly mirth. Wherefore her Maker whom she has desired With all her heart and will and thought and reason Has granted her to pass without a dread Or heaviness, from the corrupted body, That without any heaviness of death She may forsake this world, and find a better; The which now being closest friend of light, And foe of darkness, as loved nought but life. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 3:25 PM

Saturday, October 28th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIV, iv), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the book length Medieval Exhortation as a poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. As I, forsooth, in scripture, find and know, Christ’s high love stands complete in these three things: In heat; in song; in sweetness. I am expert, That these three cannot long remain with me, Without I give my body time to rest. For I could seek God standing, walking, lying, Although I lacked much for it, in myself, And, searching for help within me, found me desolate; Wherefore, constrained by need, and resolute, That I might find new life in high devotion, I chose to sit, and found whereof I sought. The cause of this, I know the answer well; For if a man is standing for some time, His body waxing weary, weights the soul, And his mind with some accord resents this, And will not allow him greater quiet; And, it follows, he is not in perfectness; For, it is wisely spoken by philosophers, The soul’s made wise in sitting or in resting. He therefore that as yet is more delighted In God, standing than sitting, should be told He finds not yet the height of contemplation. Whence truly in these three that are the tokens Of the most perfect love: heat, song, and sweetness; The highest perfection of Christian religion Without all doubt can faith and reason find; And I have now, our good lord Jesus granting, Received these three as meets my own capacity. Nevertheless I dare not make myself Even, to saints that have so shone in them, For they perhaps received them yet more perfectly. Yet shall I ever be busy in virtue That I may more the burningly Him love, More sweetly sing, and yet more plenteously feel, The sweetness beyond all sweetness of his love. You err, my brothers, if you promise that none, Now, are still so holy as the prophets. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:27 AM

Friday, October 27th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIV, iii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation as a book-length poem by Jabez L. VanCleef. Jeremiah commends life solitary And he says: ‘Good it is to be a man; When he has borne the yoke of God from youth, He shall sit solitary and in peace; For by desire and thoughtful contemplation Of things invisible but everlasting, He raises up himself above himself.’ Whence it is written in the holy scripture: ‘Natus non est in terra quasi Enoch;’ ‘None is born on earth as Enoch was,’ Because Enoch was taken from the earth: For contemplative men are higher than others Both in their excellent work and hearty love. Love lives in the heart of the solitary If he seeks nothing from vain worldly lordship. Alone, he utterly burns and longs for light, Whilst he thus clearly savors something heav’nly; And sings with honey-sweetness, without heaviness; As like to seraphim as he can bring himself— To whom he is like in his loving mind— He cries and calls out to his noble Lover: ‘Behold, I burn in love, all hot, desiring.’ Thus with a fire unthought and thirling flame The soul of the ghostly lover is burned on high. It gladdens all things there, and heav’nlike sparkles. And happily desiring, I make an end, Always going forward to that I love, For death to me is near, and sweet, and safe. The holy solitary, clad in rags, Because he suffered to sit in wilderness, All to express his love for his dear Savior, Shall receive a golden seat in heaven, And excellence amongst orders of angels. And because, for loving thus his Lord He was clad in vile and threadbare clothing, He shall do on a kirtle to his heels, An everlasting garment of pure light, Wrought with the clearness of his Lord and Maker. And because he, taming his flesh, shamed not To have a pale and lean and hungry face, He shall receive full marv’lous shining face; Fair mantle, woven in with precious stones, Will he wear, for his despisèd clothes, Among the mighty ones of Paradise. And truly as he voided any vice, Burgeoning not in jollity of this life, He has cast out the species of all sin, By ever burning love of God Almighty, And has received into himself a sound, Of all, most sweet and heavenly a sound; The sound of singing songs, all full of charity Worthily inshed, sweetly, to his mind. Therefore bodily, without dread, he goes, Out from this exile, hearing angels’ songs; And he that loved our Savior Christ, most burning, Now goes up to the Everlasting Hall, And there he shall full worthily be taken To a degree most joyful, with the seraphim. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:59 AM

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIV, ii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. The house of God established in the wilderness May thus be said to be the rest of sinners; For holy hermits lost in contemplation Are sundered from all worldly strifes and sins; And, Christ allowing, they receive the sweetness Of a clear conscience, through which shines His glory, And singing the joys of everlasting love, They rest, refreshed by the most merry heat; Although with sharpness they are pricked in body, Nevertheless they resolutely hold Within their souls, the voice of praise and burning. There is another wilderness of pride: Where man may see him rise above all others, Or what he has ascribed to his own might: The pow’r of his free will; of whom, ’tis said: Vae soli: ‘Woe to the man alone’; For if he falls, he has no helper up. In the very beginning of their turning— I speak not of wayward runners about That are the slander of a truer hermit— They are made weary with divers temptations; But after the early tempest of ill movings, God insheds the glow of holy desires, That if these hermits use themselves with vigor, In weeping and meditating, and in praying, And seeking only the sure love of Christ, After a little while they shall all seem To live more in delight within themselves, Than in weeping, or narrowness of labor. They shall have Him with them, whom they have loved; Him whom they sought; and whom they have desired: Then shall they joy and they shall not be heavy. What is it truly to have joy in a thing, Except to have the good that you desired? And of this good, to think; and in it, rest? No marvel mirth is sweet, where loves accord, And where a merry solace touches love; Truly the tongue of humans cannot tell The satisfied desire of burning lovers, And the sight and speech of each to th’ other Is sweeter to them, than honey or honey-comb. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:44 AM

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIV, i), by Richard Rolle Continuation of Medieval Exhortation made into a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef CHAPTER XIV OF THE PRAISE OF SOLITARY LIFE AND OF THE FIRST LOVERS THEREOF: AND THAT LOVE OF GOD STANDS IN HEAT, SONG, AND SWEETNESS: AND THAT REST IS NEEDFUL: AND THAT SUCH ARE SAVED FROM DECEITS, AND ARE NOT SET IN PRELACY Saint Job, in state of lowest tormentry, Was taught by Holy Ghost this commendation Of many manner of hermits knit to one: Quis dimisit onagrum liberum, ‘Who let the wild ass free, and loosed her bands?’ First, therefore, he commends freedom of grace, When he inquires, ‘Who let the wild ass free?’ Second, the putting away of fleshly desires; When he declares, ‘and his bands loosed.’ He praises solitary conversation: ‘To her he gave a house in the wilderness.’ He commends desire of endless bliss: ‘And his tabernacle in the land of salt,’ For salt slakes not, but it increases thirst; And so the more these hermits have received Anything of the sweetness everlasting, The more they strive to have, the more to taste. Forsooth John Baptist, who is, after Christ, The prince of hermits, eager in his desire, Chose solitary life for proclamation; And others also chose it, like to gadflies, The which, says Solomon, have no governor, But go by companies of gifts and virtues. For there are bands of nature and of sin, Which, though our Lord has loosed in supplicants, He still confirms in bands of charity. The house of God established in the wilderness May thus be said to be the rest of sinners; For holy hermits lost in contemplation Are sundered from all worldly strifes and sins; And, Christ allowing, they receive the sweetness Of a clear conscience, through which shines His glory, And singing the joys of everlasting love, They rest, refreshed by the most merry heat; Although with sharpness they are pricked in body, Nevertheless they resolutely hold Within their souls, the voice of praise and burning. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:44 AM

Monday, October 23rd, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIII, iii), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Epic Medieval Exhortation written as a poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Wherefore a heavenly noise now sounds within them, And full sweet melody makes them ever merry; For clatterings distract them ’mongst the many, Which seldom suffer them to think or pray. Of virtue solitary speaks the psalmist In the Song of Love, wherein he sings: ‘I will go up alone into the place, The marvellous chamber, into the house of God.’ And the psalmist tells the manner of going, Rejoicing with songs of praise, then self-denial: In voce exultationis et confesionis; ‘In voice of exultation and of shrift.’ That loneliness without a bodily song Is needful that they get their songfelt joy, And hold it long, in joying and in singing— The psalmist shows this in another place: Elongavi, inquit, fugiens; et mansi in solitudine; ‘Fleeing by myself, I have withdrawn, and in the wilderness I make my house.’ For in this life the postulant will burn In the very fire of Holy Ghost; And into joy of love he will be taken And, comforted by God, he will be glad. For perfect lonely seekers hugely burn Within the greater hugeness of God’s love; And in surpassing of their minds, are rapt Above themselves by singular contemplation, They are all lift up, and joying lightly Unto that sweet sound and heav’nly noise. And such a one is likened to the seraphim, A burning anchorite without comparison, Steadfast, whose heart is wrought by godly fire; And in full light and burning he is borne Up into his love where time suspends, And forsooth after this life he shall be Suddenly taken up to the highest seats, The seats where rest the heavenly citizens, That in the place of fallen Lucifer, Contemplative and singing silent inward, He may full brightly shine with them forever. For so great is the burning of his love And more than can be shown us by his burning; For he has sought only the Maker’s glory, And going meekly, made his soul pure light, And never raised himself above a sinner. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 2:01 PM

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIII,ii), by Richard Rolle These righteous hermits have a single purpose: They live in charity of God and neighbor, Despising ev’ry form of worldly praise; As much as they can flee, they flee man’s sight; They hold all else more worthy than themselves; They give their minds continually to devotion; They shun all inattention and mere idleness; They manly gainstand any fleshly lusts; They savor and they burningly seek heavenly; Earthly they covet not, but all forsake; In sweetness of pent prayer they are delighted. And truly some of them do come to feel God’s sweetness of refreshment overflowing; And with chaste heart and body they embrace it, With undefilèd eye of mind behold it, Truly see God, as citizens of heaven. Because before, by bitter drink of penance, They have so loved and learned to use great labor, They are now set afire with other love, The love of high and highest contemplation, And lone are worthy to take heed to God, And to bide living in the realm of Christ. Therefore great and good’s the hermit’s life But only if it’s greatly, goodly done. Truly the blessed Maglorius, full of miracles, Was from childhood gladdened seeing angels. Made archbishop to fulfill a prophecy, He long and worthily governed in God’s church; Then, cautioned by the visit of an angel, He left his place and chose a hermit’s life. And at his passing, Maglorius was sainted. Saint Cuthbert also lived as anchorite. Therefore if men of such a great authority Have shed it, for to have yet more reward, Who of good mind would ever be so hardy To set estates ’fore solitary life? Truly do these hermits weight themselves With nothing outward, only contemplation; That they may always warm to love of Christ, And set all worldly business perfectly after. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 3:25 PM

Friday, October 20th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XIII,i), by Richard Rolle CHAPTER XIII THAT SOLITARY OR HERMIT’S LIFE PASSES COMMON AND MIXED LIFE. AND HOW IT COMES TO FIRE OF LOVE: AND OF SWEETNESS OF SONG. Some have been, perhaps are yet alive That always set the common life before, And never knew a solitary moment; They say we ought to run to gatherings If we desire to come to high perfection. Against them there is not much to dispute, Because they only grace that life with praise The which they have, and they covet to keep, Or at the least, know not how to condemn. Truly they praise not solitary life, For they know it not enough to praise. There is a life which no man now in flesh Can know, lest it is giv’n of God to have; And no man judges truly of this thing, Unsure what, and in what mann’r, it works. No doubt, I know that if they knew it more, They would praise it, even amongst themselves. Others err worse that cease not to reprove; They sneer and slander solitaries, saying: Vae soli; ‘Woe be to a man alone;’ Not expounding ‘alone’ as ‘without God’, But taking it to mean, ‘without a fellow.’ He truly is alone where God is not; For when he comes into his time of death Then he is tak’n alive to tormentry, And shut away from any sight of God. Who chooses living solitary life, And leads it in a conscientious manner, Is never near to woe, but fairer virtue; And here the name of Jesus shall delight; And the more they find the courage inward To undertake this life without man’s solace, That much the more shall it be given them To be regladdened with God’s comforting. Ghostly visitations they receive; The which, when set in comp’ny, they know not. Therefore ’t is said to a beloved soul: Ducam cam in solitudinem, et ibi loquar ad cor ejus; ‘I shall lead her into the wilderness, and there shall I speak love unto her heart.’ Some truly God has taught to love the desert And to desire the wilderness for Christ, To go there, and to hold a single purpose; The which forthwith, that they may converse there, More freely and devoutly serving God, Forsake the common clothing of the world, Despise and cast away all temporal things, And there excelling in great height of mind, Desiring only everlasting joy, With only their intent and contemplation, In every effort of their lives they strive, And cease not their abandoned love of Christ. Of whom full many stave off ghostly ruin, Because from worldly men they dwell full far; And yet they stumble not from heav’nly effort, Because they’re far from wicked conversation. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:50 AM

Thursday, October 19th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation, set as a book-length poem by Christian Poet Jabez L. Van Cleef. Lord God, have mercy on me, pity me! My youth was fond; and my childhood was vain; My young age willful, and a thing unclean. But now Lord Jesus see my heart enflamed With holy love, for now my reins are changed; My soul will not now touch for bitterness What flesh before was my food night and day: And my affections now are such that I Hate nothing but to sin or think of sin. Now I dread nought, nor fear, but to grieve God: And I joy not, nor mirth, but to please God: I sorrow not, but sins, not yet repented: I love not anything, except for God: For nothing joys my heart but Jesus Christ. Forsooth myself I now bring praise to God, Because by words of others He has saved me, And showed a sweeter way to come to him; With Christ’s grace so much working now in me, He shall not find me worthy of reproof In any way before the world’s temptation. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:21 PM

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XII, i) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation set as a poem in Modern English by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XII THAT NO ONE SHALL JUDGE ANOTHER, BUT ALL GIVE GOD PRAISE: AND OF EIGHT AFFECTIONS OF THE LOVE OF GOD: AND THAT WORLDLY COMPANY BE ESCHEWED If any person lives in holiness, Righteously, he despises not the sinner. Truly they, being tempted, fall away Because they have no friend to stand beside, Even if it’s by their own dark malice They turned themselves at first from good to ill. No person can work well, love God, be chaste, Except God gives the power for it to him. You swell in pride because you have done well, For you restrained yourself from fleshly lusts, And for your sins, you suffered sharper penance, Wherefore you took praise from the mouth of man: Have mind: without the goodliness of Christ Which overcovered and protected you, You should have fallen into many ills, Or into worse state than they that are fallen. Truly of yourself you had no grace, No helper, but the One, to Whom is said: Diligam te Domine, fortitudo mea; ‘You, O Lord my strength, You I shall love.’ Wherefore, if you have nought but what God’s grace, God’s infinite acceptance, offered you, And then were saved by that you have received, Why pride yourself as if it were your birthright? Daily do I do thanks to this my God; The which, without my merit, has me chastened— Restrained, governed, for my good and His honor— So made His servant fear, that it seems sweet To me to flee from all these worldly pleasures, That are in truth both few and too soon slipping; In so much restrained that I might be Worthy to escape the pains of hell, That are both many and shall never end. And yet again my God has so taught me, Giv’n to me the virtue of this teaching, That I should gladly bear this present penance; In so much that I might come full lightly To everlasting love and delectation. For if we will, lightly, without great sharpness, We can repent and cleanse ourselves perfectly; As long as we destroy vice where we find it; And if we are not cleansed here on this earth, Truly in times to come, we shall find cleansing As the Apostle warned us, with these words: Horrendum est incidere in manus Dei viventis. ‘How horrible is it to fall therein, into the hands of the one and living God.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:34 AM

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XI, 3) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation Recreated as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. DESIRING TO DIE, I WILL BE LOOSED FROM SIN For the death of ill affections lives In him that takes all heed to contemplation; Whose soul is therefore turned within his breast Into another joy and another form. For he lives now not only to himself, But Christ himself now truly lives in him; Wherefore he melts and languishes in love, And nearly failed for sweetness, scarcely lives: Nunciate dilecto quia amore langueo: ‘Show my Beloved, that I languish for love.’ Desiring to die, I covet to be loosed: Full greatly now I yearn to go to heav’n. Behold! For love I die! Lord, come to me! Come, my Belovèd, lift me from my heaviness. Behold I love: I sing: I am full hot: I burn within myself a burning fire. Have mercy upon me, I am wretched here; I beg you, I be brought before Your face. He that has this all-consuming joy, Is in this life thus gladdened by desire, He cannot err; inspired of the Holy Ghost, Whatever he may choose to do is lawful. No mortal man can give him counsel better Than that he has himself from God immortal. If others truly would give words to him, Without doubt they shall err because he follows Desire that cannot take the form of words, And because they have not known his mind; And if he would assent to use their skills, God who constrains him shall not suffer this, For God to His will holds him fast secure, And he must follow this and pass it not. Wherefore of such constraint is truly said: Spiritualis omnia judicat, et a nemine judicatur; ‘The spiritual person judges all these things, and will not be judged by any person.’ But no one is of such a great presumption That he suppose himself to be this one: Although he’s perfectly forsook the world, And leads a perfect solitary life, And therefore he cannot well be reproved; There may be them who claim they have gone up To utter contemplation of heav’nly things; Yet this grace truly is not meant for all; Contemplatives, but seldom; others, few: The which, taking great rest of body and mind, Are only drawn by strength of Godly love. Full hard it is to find us such a person; Because they’re few, full dear may they be held, Desirable, and belovèd of God and man. Angels joy when they pass from this world, Whom angels’ company these dead become. Many forsooth there are that oft would offer, In great devotion and sweetness, prayers to God; And praying and meditating they feel sweetness, The silent singing burn of contemplation, That comes from seeing God’s face very near; And these run not about, but bide in rest. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:05 PM

Monday, October 16th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XI,2), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation interpreted as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. THAT THE LOVER OF CHRIST KNOWS TOO MUCH BEFORE HE KNOWS TOO LITTLE Therefore it helps him that will sing God’s love, And in his singing great rejoice and burn, To find his silent voice out in the wilderness, And not to live too much in abstinence; Nor to be giv’n to superfluous strife. Nevertheless ’t were even better for him In little things to pass restraint unknowingly, Eating with good intent, to sustain nature, For too much fasting may lead him to fail, In feebleness of flesh he could not sing. Without doubt, he that chooses this way, Neither in eating nor in abstinence Is overcome by falsehood of the fiend. Truly the lover of Christ, well taught of Christ, With no less work of study and application, Knows too much before he knows too little. Without comparison he shall be more worthy, When with song and prayer, and contemplation, He eats and drinks well but does this discreetly; Than if he fast forevermore without this, Or eat a crust of bread alone, or herbs, And should continually pray and read aloud. I have eaten and drunk of what seemed best, Not only because I loved the pleasantness, But also so my nature would be sustained In service to God and praise of Jesus Christ; And in this I conformed myself in manner To them with whom I dwelt for Christ in God; And watched that I should not feign holiness Where none is, nor that men should give me praise Where I was all too little to be praised. From divers company, also, I have gone, Not because they fed me commonly, Starved or bedded me in harder measure, But because we differed in our manners, Or for some other reasonable cause. Nevertheless I say, with blessèd Job: ‘Fools have despised me;’ for then, I have seen, That when I’m gone they make a false report, And have backbitten and malignèd me; Nevertheless they shall be full ashamed When they see me after my privation, That have made claim that I would not abide Save where I might be delicately fed. It is better I see what I despise, Than to desire that which I may not see. No marvel fasting is a full good thing, To cast down the desires of the flesh, And to make tame wild wantonness of mind. Truly then, do fleshly desires lie prone In him who goes to heights of contemplation By silent song and th’inner burn of love. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:27 AM

Sunday, October 15th, 2006 The Fire of Love (XI,1), by Richard Rolle Continuation of 14c. English Mystic's Spiritual Exhortation, recreated in Modern English by Christian poet Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER XI THAT LOVERS OF GOD SHALL DEEM WITH HIM: AND OF THE LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE GOTTEN BY LABOR, AND OF GOD: AND THAT A TRUE LOVER ERRS NOT, NOR IS BEGUILED NEITHER WITH FASTING NOR ABSTINENCE, COUNSEL NOR PRESUMPTION The human soul is God’s own resting place; Anything less than God cannot fulfill it: Wherefore are earthly lovers not fulfilled. The rest therefore of Christ’s true loves comes, when Their hearts are fastened by desire and thought In love of God entwining flesh and spirit; And loving, burning, singing, contemplate Him. Sweetest of all is rest the spirit takes Whilst sweeter godly sound comes down to wake it, In which it is delighted and aroused, And in most sweet and playful silent songs The mind is ravishèd to sing delights. And forsooth praise of God sounds yet again In the mouth and breast of the blest Maiden, In whom it joys us more than may be thought. No marvel that this happens, whilst the heart Is utterly burnt with heav’nly singing fire, The flame all figured into God’s own likeness, From which is all more sweet and merry song, Moistening our hearts with heav’nly savor. So contemplation yields inward delights, In song and thought, and joys in burning love. This truly is a thing unpromiseable; Mortals may eat the bread of angels, but He that hears this, promises not that anything So passing sweet and ever full of sweetness Can be perceived by man, by any person, Being yet here in bodies that will rot, And grievèd with the fetters of mortality. They who perceive this marvel, they are gladdened, Because of goodness, which cannot be told, Of God, that gives His goodness plenteously, Stinting not them who would know what he is. Forsooth when supplicants want such great things— And truly these are callèd great because To souls still toiling here, they are unknown— God never yields himself in our prosperity, But always when we languish here in love; Then whilst I wake, I sing continually, My mind thinks all of love and of my lover, And if I am alone, more sweetly sing. Truly from the time that I received it, Never after, shall I go fully from it; But evermore for heat, sweetness, and singing— If all these be not near—I bide in wait. But all these truly bide together in me, Unless they are oppressed by full great sickness Of the head, or breast, or throat, or side; Or by great hunger or thirst that eat the flesh; Or by too much of cold or heat or travel. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:36 AM

Saturday, October 14th, 2006 The Fire of Love (X,2) by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation as interpreted in modern English poetry by Jabez L. Van Cleef. ON THOSE WHO FEIGN THEIR HOLINESS Yet when these actors, who abound in riches, Are fed with riches, sleep in the lap of riches, Then they say that they have eat but little, And that the greatness of their deprivation Gives them thought this world is only vanity; That, as they say, they scarcely breathe, for feebleness. Deceitful they are, and they have worldly wisdom; And they beguile the innocent with that, So they are not perceived as lying in wait (In as much as they are aware they are); They hide their covetousness under false title Of ghostly rest, midst sacred self-denial. The which do alms, or any deed they do, That it may well be seen of other men. And so their deeds provoke the wrath of God, For they want, not to be, but be seen holy; But such, although they lurk here for a time, Soon shall appear of what kind they have been, Before the end, or at least, in the end. Within, where God sees, wanting in true charity, They challenge their own share of joy, not God’s. Truly, full hard it is to have great riches, And not to love them; also it is hard To work for winning craft or offices, And not be covetous of the ones who have them. Wherefore ofttimes are priests defamed by people: That though they’re chaste, they are found covetous, Or if they’re gen’rous they are made out lechers. And ofttimes so it happens that in having The benefits of priesthood and position, They fall as much deep mired down into sin As the degree unworth’ly took is high. Truly, I have noticed not a few, Set all afire with noisome covetousness, Who under color of sickness or of poverty Will say that they must gather up their goods So that they may eschew some sudden wretchedness. But they, beguiled by fiends, have lost their goods, And run into the darkness they must dread, Because they heed not God and find humility, God that delivers His servants, in His sight: What is worst of all, that whilst within They are fulfilled with worldly covetousness, Without they seem in their own eyes to shine As tokens of pure love and holiness. Our Lord’s own servant trusts him in our Lord; And gives the goods which he has, over his need, To them that need he gives what he needs not. The servant of the world more truly studies To keep all that he has, because he covets, And his covetousness never is fulfilled: So great a niggard he, that he eats nought, Save foully, secretly, and ever scarcely, So that, being close, he gathers more of money. And these are they the psalmist shames, saying: ‘Inimici ejus terram lingent;’ ‘His enemies shall lick the very earth.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:51 AM

Friday, October 13th, 2006 The Fire of Love (X), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the book-length poem of medieval exhortation, adapted by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER X THAT GOD’S LOVER FORSAKES THE WORLD, IDLENESS AND IRKSOMENESS: AND OF HYPOCRITES AND THE COVETOUS Sing the Canticle: ‘Love is strong as death; And love is hard as hell;’ This also sing. Death truly kills the quick; and hell spares not; So, certainly, the love of God will kill, Not only quick’ning love of this ripe world In the good soul that it has perfect ravisht; But also, being slain to this dead world, And quickened once again to sit in heav’n, It stirs him suffer certain tribulation And worldly wretchedness to merit God. Wherefore all, whosoever you may be, That hope that you love Christ, now this take heed; For if you yet see earthly things delightful, And also find your soul too high to suffer The wrongs of earth, or else, down unto death, You show forsooth you are not God’s true lover. Such lover neither turns eyes to this world, Nor dreads to suffer all that seems so heavy Or hard upon his body, for his God; And whatsoever thing may come to him Yet he is never hindered from the thought Of Jesus his Beloved, waiting friendly. You also that expect to be God’s lover, Or with your whole mind you desire to be, Study alway, as much by grace you can, And learn not to be noyed by irksomeness, Nor to be taken off with idleness. And if it sometimes happen that sweet ease Be not to you in praying, or good thinking, And that you are not made ready in mind By the song of holy contemplation, And you cannot sing silent as you did; Yet cease not there, to read or pray, or else Do some other good deed, whatsoever, But slide not into idleness or sloth. Irksomeness has drawn many down to idleness, And idleness, to negligence and wickedness. Wherefore have zeal as much as in you is; And have not your desire bowed to other: Anything of this world that may be had. No man truly is perfectly knit to God, Whilst his desire binds any worldly creature. There are some, seeming outward oned to God, Who are within all given o’er to fiends. These are simulators and false men, That challenge with their masque the wrath of God. Feigners forsooth they are, with artful mien Despising the world with their lamenting words, As with their deeds they love it far too much. They will often be seen speaking of God, And are so much compelled by love of money That they strive for the weight of two halfpence. The which, when opening their mouths to God, Are utterly wanting any charity; And whilst they have no heat of faith and love, They show themselves most holy in their gait, Somber in clothing, and severe in speech. These also boast themselves right strong and steadfast When faced with light disease or deprivation, But when they come thereto where they should stick, There they are soonest broken, there they fall. Then, what before was hid, is widely shown. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:36 AM

Thursday, October 12th, 2006 The Fire of Love (IX,3), by Richard Rolle Interpretation of Medieval Exhortation by Christian Poet Jabez L. Van Cleef. HOW TO KNOW WHAT MEEKNESS IS Here let us tell what traits of meekness are: To hold the eyes down low, not lift them high; To have a meas’re in speech, and not to pass it; To hear gladly from betters and those more wise; To will that wisdom should be heard from others, Rather than prideful ranting from themselves. Not to be urgent and give speech too soon. Not to go too far from the common life. To set the needs of others before their own; To know their frailties and to judge themselves More closely than their betters would judge them. And if they wished to come among society, To ask that they might sit last in their number, And might be held least in the main opinion. In these things, all their joy should be in Jesus; And thus they should not heed the voice of praising, But with devotion should aspire to God. I see how many that would speak with me Were in their count’nance like to scorpions; For they have fawned and flattered with their head, And with backbiting tail they have me smitten; These from whose wicked lips and sorr’wful tongue God shall give my soul the joy of rest. But whence is come this madness to man’s mind That none are blamed, and none will be reproved, And all seek truly to be praised in all? They joy in honor, and they laugh in favour. They also bear the name of holier life; Such claim they are above all measure holy, Or else, deluding their companions, mad, Although they all be callèd wise and taught. For who of good mind is there leaves himself, Not taking heed to cover or feed himself, And gladdens in void words of vanity? Truly if they behold themselves right busily, To know what kind they are in thought and deed, They may soon understand their own demeanor, And find it worthy of praise, or of reproof. When therefore they see themselves and judge, In much blameworthy, and in little praised, They should not take this judgement with such gladness, Honor, or favor, of which they are not worthy; Unless they have gone mad or erred in mind. Truly, if I consider myself carefully, And find I’m waxing marvellously warm In the heat and sweetness of God’s love, And I rise highly into contemplation, And in this region continually I stand; And have in mind I have not done great sins, Or if I have, I promise they are cleansed: Then truly it behooves me not to sorrow For that I lost or gained honor of men. More worthy was the fellowship of angels. Whosoever is thus disposed to seek God’s love, Should no more joy to sit beside a king Than tarry and converse with a poor man; He takes no heed to riches and to honors, But finds life and rewards with every one. I praise not them who shine their breasts in gold, Or are enfolded with great panoply, Or go in purple and in glad array, As bishops in their vast processions do: But truly set myself a holier path: Conscience before, pleasures and riches after. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:31 PM

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 The Fire of Love (IX,2), by Richard Rolle Continuation of book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef, based on the medieval exhortation of Richard Rolle, 14c. English mystic and hermit. HOW THEY WHO NOW LIVE IN WANT WILL THEN JOY IN HEAV'NLY GLORY Wherefore no tribulation, no disease, No wretchedness, no shame, and no reproach, Is to be dreaded by the righteous man As long as he sins not and always profits In contemplative life and love of God. Truly before we come into his mansion, In which we shall be glad, and filled with sweetness, With the angels of God and all His saints, It befalls us here to be reproved By flatterers, wrong sayers, fawners, praisers, By blamers and backbiters, pow’rs and toadies, So that, when all of us shall be examined, Our conduct may be righteous, always given To Christ’s precepts and His redeeming counsel, In patient meekness, and in charity; ‘Tanquam aurum in fornace probavit eos;’ ‘As gold he proved them in the fiery furnace,’ For they survived fire on whatever side, And He has found them worthy for Himself. Thus let us go through all adversity, Let us prosper us through fire and water, Unto the time we come to the refreshing And slake our thirsting of the heavenly life. Have in mind also that you never grumble, In all disease and need and poverty, Nor speak too fondly nor shout loud and willful— But in all things remember thanks to God. Thereby in truth you shall be lifted up More joyf’lly to the kingdom of the saints, If in this world you suffer these things gladly. O my soul, among all things before us, Praise you your Lord with liking and devotion; And praising, feel a sweetness and a singing; And taste the words of honeysweet devotion: ‘Laudabo Dominum in vita mea,’ ‘I shall worship the Lord in all my life,’ Whether I be diseased or eased in mind; Whether I get me earthly honor or shame; As long as I am, I shall sing to God. For if I rest, still I shall sing in Jesus; And still sing if I suffer persecution, I sing, forgetting not the love of God. Truly it is enough to sing my God, To come to Him; since I can do no other. And yet, I come not, with my love of God, With as great love as did my mother and father, Who also did so many another good thing; Whereof I shame myself, and am confused. Therefore, O Lord, make broad my heart again, That it may be quick to get Your love. For the more I am prepared to taste it, So much the more of charity I savor, And the less I care for this my flesh; But I deny myself with some discretion, So that it is with me, as this sentence: ‘Modicum mihi laboravi et inveni mihi multam requiem;’ ‘A little have I travailèd with myself, and I have found great rest within myself.’ For after years of life in moderation, The righteous have found rest for everlasting. The holy love of God so shows himself Neither too merry, nor full heavy in humor, As in this habitation of our exile We wait, in cheer, with gathering of ripeness. Forsooth, some reprove laughter and some praise it. Laughter therefore which is from lightness only, And vanity of mind, shall be reproved; But laughter that is gladness of a conscience, Laughter, ghostly mirth, is to be praised; The which is only in a righteous soul, And it is called mirth in the love of God. Wherefore if we be glad and merry, then The wicked look at us and call us, wanton; And if we be sad and heavy, hypocrites. Seldom, soothly, can anyone find in others A good that he finds not within himself; And he believes another has the sin That likewise into which, himself, he stumbles. Here is the deed foreseen of wicked souls: If any righteous follow not their life, They trust this one goes wrong and is deceived; This is because they have forsaken meekness. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:15 AM

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 The Fire of Love (IX,1), by Richard Rolle 14c. Medieval Exhortation interpreted as a book-lenth poem by Christian poet Jabez L. Van Cleef. The blog is updated every day. CHAPTER IX THAT GOD IS TO BE LOVED AND WORSHIPPED IN DISEASES: AND ALSO OF THE MIRTH AND MEEKNESS OF THE GOOD If temporal honor is destroyed by shame, And worldly praise withered by villainy, Then you may see, without a trace of doubt, Reproach is better for your soul than worship: Shame conquers high degree; and misery, praise. For by these worldly works we ofttime slide Into vainglory’s vast, deceiving web; By trial always, if we bear it patiently, We in this life shall be well taught of meekness, And in the time to come, suffer no pain— For God will never punish the righteous twice— And when they come on high they shall be crowned: The patience of the poor will never perish. Truly to holiness do these things belong: First, to think, and then to speak and do In no manner, what displeases God; And then, to think, and then to speak, and work What may please God in all your worldly way. Do this after the knowledge that you have, So that you neither fall into quick slander, Nor feign too much of holiness with others: It’s foolishness to show yourself as holy, And cruelty to seem evil, when you’re good. Some things there are that when one sees them right, In themselves, are neither good nor evil, For in their purest nature they are not Either rewardful, nor yet unrewardful; And if such things are done, displease not God; Nor if they’re left undone, they please not God. For much there is we may see, smell, and touch, And yet earn no reward or unreward. All sin truly is done to God’s displeasing, Our neighbor’s noying, or to our own harm. But many things there are, are none of these. Only, to be by earth despised, or lost, Makes souls ascend to reach the joy of angels. O my good Jesus, here chastise, here cut, Here smite, here burn; yea, whatsoever please Your goodness, do to me; so that in time, In time to come I find I have none ill, But still may feel Your love here everlasting. To be despised by all the rank of men, Lost in confusion, shamed and scorned for You, Is sweeter to me than to be called a brother By all these earthly emperors and kings, Or to be honored mongst all host of men. May wretchedness fall on me, whatever side In this life, so God spare me in the other. I will to be chastised, corrected here; And Christ my teacher, please that grant to me, If otherwise I void not pain to come. The truly proud, and those glutted of wrath, Seem to themselves so worthy in their blindness That they can suffer nothing; they are moved Ofttimes at light words, and without a cause. Therefore, by honest meek and mendicant, They should be fled more than be overcome; For what they take up, that they will defend, No matter if it be false or untrue; And neither with authority nor reason Will they in obstinance be overcome, For they are watchful they should not be heard To say a word that may be unaccording. And when they are untaught—and that they know— They will behave as if they were inspired In all things that they speak in God’s behalf, So that they may declare in every place Without the gainsaying of any person; And that they would prefer stay still in error Than be by others openly reproved. Brethren, leave proud madness and mad pride, And let us strive greatly to meek ourselves Whiles we are in this contemplative way: For it is better, lovelier, and sweeter, That after we find death, Christ says to us, ‘Friend, come uppermore,’ than that He say, ‘Churl, go downermore,’ at his long table. So truly shall it be of meek and proud. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:38 AM

Monday, October 9th, 2006 The Fire of Love (VIII,2), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the medieval exhortation interpreted as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. ON THE DIFFICULTY IN YOUTH OF AVOIDING FLESHLY ENTANGLEMENTS This also you may see without a doubt: That no young man stays holy among flatterings, Languishing in sweet words of fair young women, Scheming for plenteousness of liking things, Where so great things will stir so many to fall, And holy men have ofttimes lost their way; Unless, it is by unthought work of grace. Wherefore I promise, that it is a miracle When youth, by grace of God and love of Christ, Perfectly despises all these cherishings, And manfully passes twixt these enemies— Like swords, although they seem soft to the flesh— To reach the seat of heavenly contemplation. Each without fail, the holier he may be, The more he may be filled with God’s own love, With solace of the contemplating flame; Though set in worldly fire, he may not burn; And the foul lusts of any unclean life Off’ring themselves, he perfectly dismisses. It is no marvel, though it’s seldom seen, Christ works to bring his own beloved to Him: ‘Expandit nubem in protectionem eorum, et ignem ut luceret eis per noctem;’ ‘He has spread a cloud of God’s own grace, for their defense against fleshly desires, and the fire of great and endless love to give them light within their darkened mind, through the long night of this earthly life,’ That they may not be taken by th’ abandoned, The vicious, smooth corruption of vain beauty. Would that Christ’s love burn in all these innocents, With so great sweetness, that all fleshly liking May not only seem, but be unlawful; That they find it foul, and they despise it. Therefore youth, touch you not lecherously That which is lawful neither to want nor have. Have in mind also to withhold your hand, Your tongue, your body, your imagination; And displease not your conscience about women. Truly, stirrings of lechery are the array Of men and women striving for attraction; Also hot lectuaries, and other foods, That with their warmth too much enflame the flesh. O nourishers of bodies, stay your hand, That Pander makes you killers of their souls! Such meat should be eschewed by all the chaste. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:05 AM

Sunday, October 8th, 2006 The Fire of Love (VIII), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER VIII THAT THE PERFECT LOVER OF GOD HAD LIEVER RUN INTO GREAT PAIN THAN BY SIN ONCE GRIEVE GOD: AND WHY GOD TORMENTS THE RIGHTEOUS BY THE WICKED From the great fire of ghostly love unwrought, Such great beauty of virtue grows in souls That the righteous would rather choose to suffer All tribulation, than once to sorrow God; Although we knew we might rise up by penance And afterward God deem us the more holy. For each one perfect understands this thing: Nothing is more dear to God than innocence, Nothing more pleasing than unspoiled good will. For truly if we love God as we ought, We’d sooner lose our great reward in heav’n Than once sin venially by proud intention; It is most righteous to ask no reward Of righteousness, but being friend of God; The friendship, that of God, is God Himself. Therefore it is better, suffer tormentry, Than once, all wilfully and knowingly, Be led from righteousness to wickedness. Wherefore it is that they who follow Christ Will in no wise sin, and shall be free From pain, enjoying endlessly with angels. They truly that would serve their wicked needs, And think that world and fleshly solace is To be so loved, to have what they desire, Forsooth they lose the joy that they are after, And find the wickedness they should have lost. But it is likely to be asked by some, Why God almighty sees it fit to chastise The wicked and the righteous all together? You see under the flail, both corn and chaff; But in the winnowing, out the chaff is cast, And corn is busily gathered to man’s use. If all men lived right truly, there’s no doubt We’d dwell in peace and great tranquility, Flourishing without debate and battle; But since among few good are many evil, Diseases come that evil may be chastised: And thus do evil things fall on good men Because each kind is mingled with the other. The righteous also, are right keen to sin: So that their readiness be not brought to deed, They’re taught to take a lighter scrubbing here, That they may ’scape the bitterer scouring later. Therefore if you should suffer persecution, Wretchedness, oppression, and disease, You have just that you would expect to have From the narrow place in which you dwell. Is this world not still called the vale of tears? How would you now, therefore, be glad in prison? Flourish in all prosperity, in your exile? Or make your pilgrimage without diseases? Have mind what Christ and His apostles suffered, And you by bliss seek now to come in joy! Either now, that fire, that love of God, Shall loose and scrape the rust of all our sins, And cleanse our souls and give them wings to flee To bliss; or else, when this life ends, the fire Of purgat’ry shall purify our souls, So when death comes, we ’scape the fire of hell: If strength of Godly love be that much in us That fire would never altogether burn us, Then it behooves us to be cleansed and tried With tribulation, sickness, and diseases. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:11 AM

Saturday, October 7th, 2006 The Fire of Love (VII-2), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation interpreted as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. HOW CHARITY MAKES US PERFECT AND HOW THE POOR ARE GLORIFIED. He forsooth that loves greatest is greater, Loves less is less, and who loves least is least: After the size of charity within us, Shall we be praised when we stand before God. So it is not, before small human judgement, Where they that have most riches or fine goods Are most considered and especially dreaded; But they who think thus, ought not so to do, Instead most honoring and dreading them That they suppose be the best in knowledge. Truly the mighty of this world do nothing But for their bodies or their transient goods. Holy mendicants demonstrate more worthiness; For they have power to shut fast heav’n’s gate To them that did them ill and withheld penance: And they have power to open the lock of heav’n To those that honored them with charity, And fed them in the exile of this world; Who whilst they were arrayed with gen’rous deeds, Would not receive vainglory in return. Wherefore we should travail to get, to have, To hold to charity with all our might And all our strength, that when we meet temptation We may unstinting stand against the enemy; And when we shall be proved, we may receive The crown of life in heav’n everlasting. Charity truly makes us perfect souls; And only those who practice loving perfectly May come to th’ highest contemplative life. Truly the poor, although they may be clad With heaviness, uncleanness, dirt and stink, Yet they should never for this be despisèd; For they are friends of God, brethren of Christ, If they bear poverty with deeds of praise. Then surely persons you despised without, You honor in your heart as heav’nly citizens; And in so much you honor them for God, In so much He priv’ly works His Godhead; The which, to comfort them, He tells them: ‘Beati pauperes quoniam vestrum est regnum Dei,’ ‘Blessed you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.’ For the great need they suffer in this life, After they die, are purged of all their sins. For whilst the poor man suffers so with hunger, Thirst, and cold, and nakedness and other, He’s purged in soul from sin and worldly filth. And truly in the time to come, poor men Shall feel the sweeter rest of everlasting. And in as much as in this life they’ve borne Most grievous labors, they may truly say: ‘Laetati sumus pro diebus quibus nos humiliasti, annis quibus vidimus mala;’ ‘Gladdened are we for all the days of joy in which O Lord You have rewarded us, for the years in which we have seen grief.’ Wherefore embrace your poverty with joy, And have mind to bear goodly wretchedness; That by the sufferance of your tribulation You may be worthy to come to the joy Of everlasting peace, after you die! Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:57 AM

Friday, October 6th, 2006 The Fire of Love (VII), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation, interpreted as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. The poet declares and describes the mystery of the Holy Trinity. CHAPTER VII THAT IN THE GODHEAD WE OUGHT NOT TO SAY THREE GODS OR THREE ESSENCES, AS WE SAY THREE PERSONS: AND THAT EACH OF US SHALL BE CALLED GREAT OR SMALL AFTER THE QUANTITY OF LOVE WITHIN US If any, erring, say the Trinity Are three in Essence, for they are three Persons, Why should they also not declare, three Gods? We say truly that the Father is God; The Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God; The Father also is, His self-same Essence; The Son His Essence; the Holy Ghost His Essence: Yet not three Gods, three Essences, we say; But rather one God and three Persons are To be one Essence: this in faith we grant. One Godhead truly is there, in three Persons, Full and perfect; each one, in itself, Contains itself the whole of that one Godhead; Evenhood and onehood, all forsooth, Having after Substance of the Godhead; Not lacking in distinction of diversity After the property of the Person’s Name. They also are three Persons and one god; One Essence; and one Substance; and one Godhead: And, though each One is token of the Essence, And, though there are three Persons, and one God, Yet from this we see not three Essences. And as our God, the Father, and the Son, And the Holy Ghost, we call one Essence, So do we say of Holy Trinity: It is three Persons, and not one alone. The Father is so called, for of Himself He gat a Son whom we call Jesus Christ; The Son so called, because the Father got him; The Holy Ghost, is called because of both The Holy Fath’r and Son, He is inspired. The Father, Life, who got the Son, Life, Has giv’n to Him His whole and living Substance: So that the Father should be as much in th’ Son As the Father is within Himself, (The Son not less in th’ Father than in Himself). The Father takes His Essence of no other; The Son takes in His birth truly His Father; The Holy Ghost takes of the Father and Son; And with Them, and in Them, endlessly being, Is no more in Himself than is in them: For He is even, everlasting with Them, Of whom He is; since He is of same Substance, Of the same Essence, and of the same Godhead; And the third Person in the Trinity. Truly the everlasting Son of God the Father Is become Man, born of a maid, in time, That He might gainbuy from fiendish power These souls and bodies of God’s willful creature. This is our Lord whom we name Jesus Christ: The which we fasten in our minds secure; As He for us was nailed upon the cross. Nothing is so sweet as to love Christ. Therefore we ransack not too much those things That we in this life may not well conceive. Truly in heaven they shall be clear as light, If we give all our hearts to loving God. For we shall ready then be taught of God; And we shall joy in marv’llous melody, And in high mirth we shall then praise our Maker, In full sweet easiness, without constraint. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:53 AM

Thursday, October 5th, 2006 The Fire of Love (VI-2), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation interpreted as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. The mystic tells of the incomprehensible nature of God, and of how this limit to our understanding commends us to perfect humility. Nothing can be perfect known, unless The cause thereof, how it has come to be, Were perfect known and also clearly said. In this life here, we know only in part; We understand in part, less than we know. In the life to come we shall know fully, As may be lawful or may help such creatures. Forsooth he that desires to know of God, Above what may be helpful, lawful, useful, Without doubt falls that much the farther off From perfect knowledge of Himself and God. You ask what God is? And I answer shortly: Such a one, so great is He, that none Other is or ever may be like. If you know properly to speak of God, You’ll never find an answer to this question. I have not known; the angels, they know not; Archangels, pow’rs, dominions, have not heard. Wherefore how would you know what is unknown Cannot be spoke, and is unteachable? Truly, God almighty may not teach you What He Himself is, howso you may plead. For if you knew what God is, you should be As wise as God is, not just think you are; And that, not you nor other creature may be. Friend, be strong therefore in your degree, Desire not high things which you may not have; For if you want to know all that God is, You would be God; the which becomes you not. Know that God knows Himself, and God knows you. And truly it is not of God’s unpower For God to teach Himself as is Himself, For all of His inestimable worthiness; For such a one as He is, is none other. And if He might make Himself truly known, Then were He not incomprehensible. It is enough for you, therefore, to know That God is; and it were that much ’gainst you If you would strive to know more, what God is. Yet you shall be praised to know God perfect; That is to say, in spite of your own limit, Although He cannot be fully conceived: Yet what we know of Him we love in Him; And what we love in Him we sing in Him; And as we sing, we come to rest in Him, And by our inward rest, find endless rest. And let it not move you to protest here, That I have said to know God perfectly, And yet denied that God may be full known: Because the prophet in the psalm has said: ‘Praetende misericordiam tuam, scientibus te,’ ‘Your mercy show to them, who know of You.’ Thus understand this psalm and do not err: ‘To them, who know of You,’ that is to say: ‘To them, O God, who love, and praise, and worship, And glorify You, Maker of all things; Above all things, and through, and in all things; That may be blessèd in the world of worlds.’ Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:54 AM

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 The Fire of Love (VI), by Richard Rolle CHAPTER VI CONCERNING HERETICS: AND FAITH IN THE TRINITY The mystic explains the mysterious unity of the the Holy Trinity. CHAPTER VI The bounty and the whole of holy truth Shows itself to them that seek in earnest; And to the children of that Unity Hidden mysteries are easily open. Wherefore, soothly, springs the heretic, But from an untaught and inordinate mind, Blinded by desire of its own excellence? For truly they cease not resisting God Within themselves, by forming vain desires; But it is also by their getting praise, When with their open arguments they strive To gainstand truth and speak out falsehood plain. When the Christian religion cuts away All that is contrary to its truth, And fully accords, in unity of love, The manner of the heretic and proud Is to get themselves some new opinions, And speak abroad to make known sundry questions, Unwont and counter to the holy church; And all those things that Christians hold most holy They joy to scatter with their vanities. Now we these errors cast away, declaring: Truly the Son of God, even the Father, Who is without beginning, nor an end, Is evermore now thought and understood; For if the Father had not begotten Him Without beginning, then the entire Godhead Should not have been in Him when he appeared. Soothly if God had been at some time Father Yet then He had no Son, it is no marvel That then He was less than He became afterward, When He had gotten for Himself a Son; And that, no man of good mind shall now say. Therefore God, Father and unchangeable Begets God Son, also unchangeable; And whom He has begotten from eternity He ceases not now, also to beget. For neither might the substance of the Son Be called at any time thus, unbegotten, Nor might the being of the Great Begetter Ever be conscious of Himself without His only Son, begotten of Himself. And as Godhead’s beginning is not found Of reas’n or wit, for it has not beginning, So does the generation of the Son With God forev’r, unchangingly abide. When truly shows itself the marv’l and worship Of God, so clearly and into the infinite, Almighty, without beginning nor an end, To what end shall our folly raise itself In striving to make known to ears of mortals, A sacrament unable to be spoken? Who truly knows God perfectly, feels God Incomprehensible, not to be known. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:07 AM

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 The Fire of Love (V-3), by Richard Rolle HOW THE POOR ARE JOINED IN HEAVEN BY SOULS OF ALL THE FAITHFUL DEAD Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation by Richard Rolle in the the form of a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. The reader is warned not to engage in too much learning and disputation at the expense of true charity and love of other people, which proceeds from meekness and faith. And though now they behold the cheer of truth, And they are moistened with delectable sweetness Of the Godhead, yet it is no marvel That soon they shall be made more marvellous: At judgment, when the bodies of these saints, That are from all time holden in the earth, Shall be raised up, enfleshed, from all their graves, Their souls reknit in th’last examination; Then shall they be princes of the peoples, Th’ unrighteous shall they judge them to be damned; And they shall show that all the meanly good Were blessed by God to come to blissfulness. The general judgment, when it thus is done, Soothly they shall have everlasting song, Go up with Christ to find the height of truth, Enjoying the face of God in love, no end. That everlasting sweetness in their minds Binds the bands of char’ty round their souls, Entwined within, unable to be loosed. Wherefore let us seek, for love of Christ, To burn within us, kindled by such sweetness, And not take heed to learnèd disputation. Whilst truly we take heed to such a seeking, We know no sweetness of the eternal savor. Wherefore so many now so much find heat In the flame of knowledge, and not of love, That plainly they know not what love is for, Or of what heat, or savor, it is made; Although the labor of persistent study Ought to help them understand this love, That they might burn more in the love of God. Alas, for shame! Study, dispute at leisure! An old wife is more expert in God’s love, And less conversant in her worldly pleasure, Than great divines, whose study is in vain. For why? For vanity they study books, That they appear more learnèd, and be known, And so they may get rents and dignities: The which are worthy fools, and not the wise. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:48 AM

Monday, October 2nd, 2006 The Fire of Love (V-2), by Richard Rolle Coninutation of the medieval exhortation here interpreted as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Today's passage comments on the intrinsic holiness of the poor and how they will find their place in Heaven. Truly sinners find delights aplenty Here where the way is slippery and broad; Where is no place of gladness, but of labor, Wherefore in torments without stop, they sorrow. Then the poor, which were arrayed with virtues, Shall be reborn to everlasting peace, Shall be made glad in knowing your delight, Full face to face in worshiping your Godhead; And in that ghostly heat they happily flourish, Although these poor had never found their solace In the worthy heights of this mixed world, Nor had sown pride among some high authority; But they have borne their griefs from wicked men, And have excluded from their souls, temptations, That here they might be holden in this peace, Before the throne of th’very Trinity. And in their simple lives they truly voided The old unthriftiness of venomous life, Clearly and gladly praising ghostly beauty; The plays of softness, which brash youth accepts And unwise worldly men desire, and purchase, These poor have right judged worthy of reproof, Thinking to make continuance of their song Filled with charity, rising to our Maker: All we, receivers of the joy of love, Conceiving heat that may not be consumed, Join now together, singing in clear chorus; In lovely harmony and friendly mirth, We set a heav’nly shadow as a shield Against all heat of lechery and sin. Wherefore upon our flame of sweetest love Our souls are taken up into beholding The face of God, and in this flame we flourish; And in the contemplation of our Maker, Our minds, now changed, now pass to melody; And from henceforth our thoughts become all song, And heaviness, and dearth, are all cast out; The great hall of our soul is filled with music, It has entirely lost its former torment, And evermore abides whole, in high sweetness, And singing, in sweet heav’nly meditation. So, when they rise and go from earthly hardness, And shed the diseases that they suffered here, Then the time comes that they shall all be taken, Borne without sorrow to abide in God, And have their seats among the seraphim; For they are altogether set on fire And know the most high fire of love in God, Burning on within and without their souls. So sweetly and devoutly have they loved, That whatsoever they felt in themselves Was ghostly heat, and heav’nly song, and sweetness. Herefore it is, truly, that they may die Without heaviness, soothly, brimmed with joy; They are lift up so high in endless worship, That they are crowned in perfect contemplation Of God’s glory, singing with clearest choirs; All one, more burningly desiring after Th’ eternal God, creator of all things. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:48 AM

Sunday, October 1st, 2006 The Fire of Love (V-1), by Richard Rolle Continuation of Medieval Exhortation set as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. In this section it is shown that the joy we seem to take in being quick or learned about religion is nothing, compared to love of God and the way we show this love without exception, in our dealings with our fellow human beings. CHAPTER V WHEREFORE IT IS BETTER TO TAKE ENTENT TO THE LOVE OF GOD THAN TO KNOWLEDGE OR DISPUTATION In all things that on earth we work or think, We should take heed to loving God with diligence, More than to practicing learnèd disputation. Love delights the soul, makes conscience sweet, Diverting us from dark things here beneath, And from desire for our expedience. Knowledge without a source in charity Builds not to endless health, but leads us off, Puffing up pride to get a wretched undoing. Our souls shall therefore be held strong enough, Taking hard labors on themselves for God; If they are wise in things heav’nly, not worldly. I would be lightened with that endless wisdom, And I would be inflamed by that same fire With which some souls are stirred to love God only, And might’ly are made strong, to the despising Of all those comely, transitory things. Let them not count their greatest solace here In garb and creatures that do not abide, For with these things they have no dwelling place; But let them seek a place not made with hands: ‘Mihi vivere Christus est, et mori lucrum.’ ‘Christ to me is life, great winning to die.’ True love of God consents to nothing wicked; And you are just as far from loving God As you delight yourself in worldly things. Wherefore, if you love God, your work reveals it; For you make poor example for God’s love, If you consent to follow wickedness. Therefore to all that are in exile here I dare show this: you shall be cast in darkness, All you that will not love your own Creator. And you that would not here be filled with light, Or have the love of your wounded Redeemer, Will feel the burning without any end Of fire in hell, from God in isolation. You shall be sundered from the company Of those who sing in char’ty with their Maker; And busily shall you sorrow there in hell, Cast out from the mirth of those who sing, Wanting in all the clearness and the joy Of them that shall be crowned in heav’n forever. For you would rather tarry a little while In worldly softness, moist with sliding flesh, Than suffer penance that your sins be cleansed, And then come full of piety before The great Defender of all good there is. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:35 AM

Saturday, September 30th, 2006 The Fire of Love (IV-3), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the medieval exhortation as a book-length poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Truly, the one who stirs with busy love, And sees Jesus continually in his thought, Full soon perceives his own deceits and faults, The which correcting, henceforward he heeds them; And so brings righteousness in time to birth, Until he is led certainly to God, And sits with heav’nly citizens everlasting. Therefore he stands now clear in his own conscience, And is steadfast in all good ways on earth, And is not noyed with worldly heaviness, Nor gladdened with vainglory for his works. Truly those obstinate in their unclean works Know not the love of Christ, for they are burned With other fire, the flame of fleshly likings; And they may yield devotion not to God, Because the burden of their heavy riches Thrusts them down continually on the earth. They who will not have delight in paradise, Go on in obstinacy toward their death; And therefore, worthily, their heaviness Shall not be lessened as they near their goal, Nor shall damnation’s grief be kept from them; Because they wilf’lly walk in lusts and sin, And have recklessly, for a falser love, Lost them the love of their One endless lover. Wherefore after, in perpetual pains, They plaintively repent that they have sinned; And yet they never shall be cleansed from sin, But endlessly consumed by other fires. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:21 AM

Friday, September 29th, 2006 The Fire of Love (IV), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation as a Book-Length Poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. We update this blog every day. Therefore no one should ever dare presume, Nor rise himself by pride when he’s despised To his reproach, or when insults are cast him; Nor should a sinner mouth his own defense, For ill words, giving back more ill again; But all things, praise as well as sore reproof, The mind that’s turned to God bears evenly. Truly, only by doing in this wise, Shall we, without an end, with Christ be glad, If in this life we love Him without ceasing; Whose love, rooted within and made secure, Makes each of us like to His very likeness. One other joy, a godly joy, He puts in us: Mirthing our minds complete with burning love, For his love is a fire, and makes souls fiery, Purging each one from all degrees of sin, Making the soul alight within and burning; Which fire, flamed up in them that have been chosen, Ever makes look up, the eyes of mind, And hold fast the desire for knowing Him. Wherefore, whilst still we know the chance of sin, Let us then charge ourselves to flee in haste This world’s prosperity, and bear want gladly. An evil mind in joy is lost in joy, And while it seeks its gladness in a creature, It kills itself as ’twere with flattering venom, Whose contagion we would well eschew, Eating the ghostly food that is ordained At heav’n’s board, to nourish burning lovers. And so, Christ granting, we are comforted By sweet consuming songs of charity, And are delighted in so sweet devotion; While the wicked sleep in horrible darkness, And after, full of sins, go down to pain. Great marv’l it is that mortal man may come, Be taken up to such high love for God That he feels nothing but a heav’nly solace, A comforting in his most privy substance; And after, as if he were noise of an organ, Ascend on high to contemplate desire. And that which may have seemed to others, sorrow, Then turns to joy, and joy is turned to rest; So that he seems, he cannot suffer pain; Cannot be troubled with the dread of death, Nor moved from rest to unease in his soul. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:54 AM

Thursday, September 28th, 2006 The Fire of Love (IV), by Richard Rolle Continuation of the Medieval Exhortation, Set as a Book-Length Poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER IV THE DIFFERENCE BETWIXT GOD’S LOVERS AND THE WORLD’S: AND THEIR REWARDS CHAPTER IV The human soul felt nothing of the burning Of the endless love of Jesus Christ, Which, before this, had not perfect forsaken All worldly vanity and love of opulence, Studying busily only heavenly things, Thirsting for God’s love, and never ceasing, And mannerly loving creatures to be loved. For truly if we love all things in God, We love the God in them, more than love them; So not in them, but all in God we joy, Whom to enjoy we shall be glad always. The wicked truly love things of this world, Setting within their lust, their delectation; And without ceasing do the wicked covet Things that belong to this world’s errant joy; How may a person do a love more fondly, More wretchedly, or in the ending, damnably, Than fully to love, and seek for themselves only, These transitory, ripe and failing things? The Trinite God is loved for Himself only. We put therefore our mind full into it, Busy to bear all thoughts unto that end, That without end we may be gladdened by it; So that ourselves and all things that we love, We love for that alone, the Trinite God. The sinner lies, that says he can love God, And yet, is not afraid to follow sin. Each person truly slave to God is free, Nor binds himself to bondage under sin, But steadfastly he serves in righteousness. Whilst we love earthly things or sometime comforts, We love not God, and we serve not God’s pleasure; And if we are delighted in such creatures, So that we set our God behind, below them, And will not follow things that are eternal, We shall be judged in time, as hating God. Full willful truly is it for the soul, A token of damnation, endless death, When a man falls entirely to this world; And in divers desires and fleshly whims, He goes out bluntly as his lust may list. Thus, no marvel, many a wretch is lost; Who, while he seems to sail an ocean’s pleasure, Hies to the everlasting pit of hell. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:33 AM

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 The Fire of Love, by Richard Rolle Modern Retelling of the Medieval Exhortation as a Book-Length Poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef CHAPTER III THAT EACH ONE CHOSEN OF GOD HAS BEEN SEEN BEFOREHAND (continued) Truly all saints have not done miracles, Either in their lives or after death; Nor have all damnèd souls lacked miracles, Either in their lives or after death. God’s judgement is not known before it comes, Lest sinners by seen tokens be made worse, And lest the chosen would despise those things That they may have in common with the sinners, That help them to discern the love of God. Some damnèd souls forsooth have wrought good deeds; Not God’s, but man’s, the honor they have sought; And this sparse laurel perishes when they die, Only attaining what they sought: man’s praise. Ofttimes, it happens that the meanly good And less than perfect have done miracles; Full many of these, spotted, yet devoted, Are placed in heav’nly seats, before God’s majesty, And altogether they are resting there, Having their high reward among the heav’ns; For is Saint Michael not so specially honored? Was he not once the highest of the angels? Some also, turned to God and doing penance, Forsaking worldly errands, joy in mind If, after death, their name may be remembered; To which Christ’s servants should supply no heed, As they by this may lose all that they work for. Truly those things common to good and ill Are not to be desired by the saints; But charity and ghostly virtue planted To flourish without ceasing in their hearts; The which not only keep the soul from sins, But in the time of judgement, raise the body To life again, and endless memory. All things done here on earth soon cease, and flee. There truly, either in honor or confession, All things that are, shall last without an end. The active therefore, and conniving prelates, Eminent for their cunning and their virtue, Should set contemplatives before themselves, Acknowledging them their betters before God; Not promising themselves as worthy, yet, To take themselves the yoke of contemplation, Unless God’s grace inspire them to this work. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 12:34 PM

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 The Fire of Love, by Richard Rolle Modern Retelling of the Medieval Exhortation as a Book-Length Poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef CHAPTER III THAT EACH ONE CHOSEN OF GOD HAS BEEN SEEN BEFOREHAND Contemplatives are the ones most fully burnt With raging fire for everlasting life, And therefore hottest in their ghostly flame, And most belovèd of Jesus everlasting; So that they seldom go to worldly business, And get no dignity of grants and honors; But they withhold themselves within themselves, With silent song of praise, intent on Christ, For truly here the soul makes haste to follow The hierarchy of angels and their ways, In which the highest reaches go not outward, But are kept evermore nearest to God. They are held high in Christ’s own contemplation, And, kept so busy in sight of God alone, They take not to sovereignty mongst men; Pride in earthly mindfulness is for others, That are more turnèd toward business of man, And so enjoy less of inward delight. For each of our souls is chosen in degree, Ordained before we knew it, from our God; So, whilst this one turns to prelacy, This other takes a heed to God within, And God within uplifts the soul thereto, Leaving behind all outward occupations. Surely such are made most precious holy And yet of worldly men are held the lowest, Because they only dwell and move within the mind, And seldom they go outward to do miracles. Others may submit themselves both ways, To service God and govern sundry subjects. Others may live their lives in fleshly penance, And are unseen by any sight of men; And ofttimes they are granted or shown tokens Of coming bliss, before or after death, And may be punished for a time in purgatory. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:09 AM

Monday, September 25th, 2006 The Fire of Love by Richard Rolle CONTINUATION OF MEDIEVAL EPIC POEM ADAPTED BY JABEZ L. VAN CLEEF O God, ravish Your lovers from earthly things! Take them above desire of worldly things! Make them takers of Your perfect love! Show them full great workers in their loving! Wherefore in ghostly song, burning up, bursting, To You they ever offer up their praises, And with such sweetness feel the dart of love. Hail therefore, lovely Everlasting Love! Love that raises us from these lowly things Presents us with so frequent ravishings Here in the sight of God’s own Majesty! Come into me, come in, my Beloved! All that I had I gave it out for You; What I should have, for You I have forsaken, That You might have a mansion in my soul! Never forsake You him that You feel now So sweetly glow desire within for You; So that of this, my most pent-in desire, Its flame may ever burst in Your embrace. So grant me grace to love You in this fire, And in You rest, that here I may be worthy To be so joined in You without an end. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:57 AM

Sunday, September 24th, 2006 The Fire of Love by Richard Rolle CON TINUATION OF CHAPTER II OF THE POETIC ADAPTATION BY JABEZ L. VAN CLEEF Nevertheless it is more marvellous That any contemplative soul should be perceived As striving for another way to God; For the psalmist sings so of the soul, Transformed into the person contemplative, ’Transibo in domum Dei in voce exultationis et confessionis,’ ‘I shall go into God’s house in the voice of gladness and shrift’; Singing the song of him that feasts, that is, Singing of him made glad with heavenly sweetness. The perfect ones, forsooth, now taken up Into surpassing plenteous endless friendship, Imbued with sweetness that shall not make strife, Live anew there in the clear high chalice Of full sweet charity and endless love; And in the holy counsel of God’s mirth They draw into their souls a happy heat, And greatly gladdened, there have greater comfort Of ghostly lectuary than our thought can know. This pure refreshment is their heritage The food of them who have become all love, To whom, in earthly exile, came disease, That in the meanwhile did not seem an evil, Notwithstanding they be punished here, For they would be lift up on high to sit, Without departing, in a heavenly seat. Of all flesh are they chosen as most dear In sight of God, there to be clearly crowned. So as the seraphim in highest heaven Truly are they made sublime, and burnt, Who sit forgot, in solitude of body, Yet their minds walk out among the angels To Christ Beloved, whom they have desired: The which also most sweetly have they sung This prayer of endless love, in Jesus joying: O honey sweet heat, than all delight sweeter, than all riches more delectable. O my God! O my Love! into me glide; with Your charity thirled; with Your beauty wounded: Slide down and comfort me, heavy; give medicine to me, wretched; show Yourself to Your lover. Behold! In You is all my desire, and all my heart seeks. After You my heart desires; after You my flesh thirsts. And You open not, but turn Your Face. You spar Your door, and hide Yourself; and at the pains of the innocent You laugh. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:41 AM

Sunday, September 24th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE CONTINUATION OF THE FIRE OF LOVE, ADAPTATION OF MEDIEVAL MYSTIC POEM BY JABEZ L. VAN CLEEF--Chapter II Truly it has been shown to ghostly lovers, That no one may attain to high devotion, Moist with sweetness of new contemplation, In the first years of their sweet spirits turning. In these years, scarcely true, surpassing seldom, And as it were in the twinkling of an eye, They chance to feel somewhat of heavenly things; Then, profiting from devotion, little by little, At the long last they are made strong in spirit, And afterward receive sadness of manners, And so far as their changeableness suffers, At length, attain stability of mind. With great travail is some perfection gotten, That they may feel some joy in Godly love. Nevertheless it is not seen that all, However so they may be great in virtue, Anon feel verily the actual warmth Of uncreated, unwrought charity, Nor melt in the unmeasured flame of love, Nor sing within themselves the song God’s praise. This mystery from many now is hidden, And to most special few it may be shown; For the higher a degree exalts, The fewer finders has it in this world. No marvel that we seldom find a saint, Nor one so perfect in this life of soil, And rapt with so high love of God and song, That in his contemplation he might be Lifted to sweetness of pure charity; That is to say, that he might find himself Become the heav’nly sound shed into him, And as it were in his own melody, Should yield himself again in praise to God, Making many notes in ghostly praising, And feel himself the heat of God’s great love. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:16 AM

Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE CONTINUATION OF THE FIRE OF LOVE, ADAPTATION OF MEDIEVAL MYSTIC POEM BY JABEZ L. VAN CLEEF Wherefore, as the chosen, taking heed To the worldly or the fleshly things, Yet always have their mind still busy on God; So the rejected, seeming to service God Are busy with the world and with the flesh And to those things that still pertain therein, Where they are greatly ravished in their hearts. And as the chosen may displease God nought When they relieve their need for something earthly, So the rejected please not God withal In the good deeds they may be seen to do; For these few good are fraught with many ill. The fiend has many promising such good: They claim to be alms givers, chaste, and meek— They claim their virtues show them virtuous— Clad with hair and lashed by genteel penance: Under such health, oft, deadly wounds are hid. The fiend has also not a few of them Hasty to work their will and busy to preach; But doubtless all these want to lie with him That have been sometime warmed in charity, (For they are eager to show love of God), Yet slowly they gestate an infant vanity: A wicked lust for viler delectations; And soon lie dead to ghostly exercises; Or else they are cast down to feebleness Whose love has ever been inordinate; For they loved temporal things more than eternal, And pleasured bodies more than strengthened souls. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 12:01 PM

Friday, September 22nd, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE Continuation of Chapter II of The Fire of Love, a medieval classic exhortation by Richard Rolle, adapted as an epic poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER II Truly it has been shown to ghostly lovers, That no one may attain to high devotion, Moist with sweetness of new contemplation, In the first years of their sweet spirits turning. In these years, scarcely true, surpassing seldom, And as it were in the twinkling of an eye, They chance to feel somewhat of heavenly things; Then, profiting from devotion, little by little, At the long last they are made strong in spirit, And afterward receive sadness of manners, And so far as their changeableness suffers, At length, attain stability of mind. With great travail is some perfection gotten, That they may feel some joy in Godly love. Nevertheless it is not seen that all, However so they may be great in virtue, Anon feel verily the actual warmth Of uncreated, unwrought charity, Nor melt in the unmeasured flame of love, Nor sing within themselves the song God’s praise. This mystery from many now is hidden, And to most special few it may be shown; For the higher a degree exalts, The fewer finders has it in this world. No marvel that we seldom find a saint, Nor one so perfect in this life of soil, And rapt with so high love of God and song, That in his contemplation he might be Lifted to sweetness of pure charity; That is to say, that he might find himself Become the heav’nly sound shed into him, And as it were in his own melody, Should yield himself again in praise to God, Making many notes in ghostly praising, And feel himself the heat of God’s great love. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:10 AM

Thursday, September 21st, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE Continuation of Chapter I of The Fire of Love, a medieval classic exhortation by Richard Rolle, adapted as an epic poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Certainly then, Christ’s lovers shed themselves, Leaving behind things of the world and flesh, As lovers of this world have shed themselves Of Christ, the food and health of their own souls. They who belong to God may eat and drink, But all their mind on God they make intent, And in all earthly things strive not to lust, And only seek therein as they may need. Of earthly things they speak with care and anguish, But passingly, nor in them making tarry; And then in mind they sojourn still with God; Harvesting time and yielding to God’s service; Not standing by the side in idleness, Nor running off to gape at plays and wonders— For these are tokens of a faith rejected— But rather they behave themselves right honestly, Irk not either to speak or do or think, And practice all those things that long to God. And they who see themselves by God rejected Behave themselves dismissively towards God; They hear God’s word with sharp or latent hardness, They think of God without the least affection, Enter the church and sidle toward the walls; And if they knock their breast and yield up sighs, Their noise is plainly feigned, because it’s meant To reach the eyes of men, not ears of God. In church in body, with minds as yet distracted By worldly goods, which they desire to have, Wherefore their heart and soul is far from God. They eat and drink not serving need, but lust; Only in lech’rous food do they find savor. They may moreover give bread to the poor, And clothing peradventure ’gainst the cold; But whilst their alms is done in deadly sin, Or for vainglory, of things untruly gotten, No marvel if they please not our Redeemer, But unto vengeance they provoke our Judge. Wherefore, as the chosen, taking heed To the worldly or the fleshly things, Yet always have their mind still busy on God; So the rejected, seeming to service God Are busy with the world and with the flesh And to those things that still pertain therein, Where they are greatly ravished in their hearts. And as the chosen may displease God nought When they relieve their need for something earthly, So the rejected please not God withal In the good deeds they may be seen to do; For these few good are fraught with many ill. The fiend has many promising such good: They claim to be alms givers, chaste, and meek— They claim their virtues show them virtuous— Clad with hair and lashed by genteel penance: Under such health, oft, deadly wounds are hid. The fiend has also not a few of them Hasty to work their will and busy to preach; But doubtless all these want to lie with him That have been sometime warmed in charity, (For they are eager to show love of God), Yet slowly they gestate an infant vanity: A wicked lust for viler delectations; And soon lie dead to ghostly exercises; Or else they are cast down to feebleness Whose love has ever been inordinate; For they loved temporal things more than eternal, And pleasured bodies more than strengthened souls. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:46 AM

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE Continuation of Chapter I of The Fire of Love, a medieval classic exhortation by Richard Rolle, adapted as an epic poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. Although they seem in their wide-eyed devotion, (A thing not holy, but a simulacrum), To feel in their discomforts, awe and wonder, A part of some felicity to come, Yet truly to this foul pit of presumption They far have fallen from that state of sweetness In which God’s lovers are made soft and melted; They are made sickly sweet because of greed, And have unmannerly loved worldly money. All love that ends not where God is, is sinful, And so it makes the falser lover evil. Wherefore they, loving worldly excellence, Are set on fire with heats of sinful love, And they are further from a heav’nly heat Than is the space betwixt the highest heaven And the lowest water of the earth. They surely are made like to muck of love, Because, conformed to wanton concupiscence, And holding to old clots of wickedness, They grasp life’s vanities before a holier love. Wherefore they change a clearness incorruptible To wantoned beauty that shall never last. This would they never do lest they were blinded With the shook fire of their own wayward love, The which then stunts the burgeoning of virtue And nourishes the noisome plants of vice. Many of them, not set on womanly beauty, Nor similar lechery, nor yet scheming for it, They trust themselves for this that they are saved, Thinking to please God, in their self-denial, By their chastity only, showing outward, That they surpass all others of the saints. But wickedly, they thus suppose in vain, When covetousness, the root of sin, is there. For truly, it is written, there is nothing Worse before God than the love of money. For whiles the love of such a temporal thing Occupies the heart of every person, It altogether strangles their devotion. Truly the love of God and of this world May never be together in one soul: Whichever love is stronger kills the other. That thus may openly be shown to all Who loves this world, and who will follow Christ. And this is so because the heat of love Breaks out in works, which are by people seen. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:26 AM

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 The Fire of Love by Richard Rolle THE FIRE OF LOVE, an exhortation to simplify living and find love of God, adapted from the work of Richard Rolle, as a poem by Jabez L. Van Cleef. CHAPTER I Let it be known to every living soul In this most wretched temporal dwelling place: All of you here, in wood of exile biding, None may be found with love of endless life, Nor may they come to taste a heav’nly sweetness, Unless they truly turn themselves to God. It behooves truly they be turned to Him, Together turned from every earthly thing, Before they may be expert in one thing, Which is the very sweetness of God’s love, Even in the small and littlest things. By ordinate love is this, their turning, done; So that they love that, worthy to be loved, And love not that, not worthy to be loved; And that they burn in love of what is worthy, More than they burn in love of that unworthy. Mostly is God what they should worthily love: Much are heav’nly things thus to be loved: Little, except for need, are earthly things. Without doubt thus, are we all turned to Christ, Whilst nought is sought by us, but only Christ. Truly, when turning ourselves to shed those goods That in this world deceive their ardent lovers, The many things we own defend us nought; They flame, instead of slaking, fleshly desire, Whilst shrift instils a hatred of all wickedness; So that we savor not our earthly things, Nor seek for worldly things past narrow needs. For truly they that heap their riches high Know not for whom they get and gather them; And they that trust in having such crass solace, Are not yet worthy to be sometime gladdened In the high mirth abundant, heav’nly love. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:18 AM

Monday, September 18th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE END OF THE PROLOGUE TO THE FIRE OF LOVE Therefore to questionaries I’ve not written, Excepting they, all other things forgetting And putting aback, that long to know this world. They’re giv’n only to th’desire of God. First truly they must flee all earthly dignity, And hate all pride of knowledge and vainglory, And at the last, conform themselves to shrift, Scarcity, praying, straint and meditation, And constantly giv’n to speak the love of God. Thus now no marvel comes the fire within: An unwrought char’ty shall appear to them; Dressing their hearts they will receive its heat, The flame with which all darkness is consumed, And it will lift them up into that air, That place most lovely, and that merry burning, So that they shall all pass these temporal things And find themselves the seat of endless rest. And the more knowledge any of them have, Truly the more they will know to love rightly, If they’re glad to be despised of others, And if they gladly will despise themselves. Since I here stir all mann’r of folk to love, In its heat and supernatural desire, This book shall bear the name: “The Fire of Love.” Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:19 AM

Sunday, September 17th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE 14c. English mystic Richard Rolle exhorts the faithful to find humility in isolation from the world: Moreover, sleep gainstands me as an enemy; For no time heavies me to lose, save that In which, constrained, I yield to thoughtless sleep. Waking, truly, I busy warm my soul, Thirled as it were with deader cold, the which, When settled in devotion, sets afire, And with full great desire is lifted high, Like praise of God, above all earthly things. Truly, affluence of everlasting love Comes not by me in languid idleness, Nor might I feel this ghostly food of heat While I was weary bodily for travel, Or occupied unmannerly with mirth, Or giv’n without restraint to disputation; But I have felt myself wax cold, until, Putting aback all things which might me take, I strove only in my Savior’s seeing, And I dwelt there in my full constant burning. Wherefore I offer this book to be seen: Not to philosophers, wise men of this world, Nor great divines lapped in their infinite questions, But to the simple, boist’rous and untaught, Busier learning to love their God aright Than to know many things unused to them; For truly not disputing God, but working, Is better to be known and loved in heav’n. And I promise, these things herein contained May not be understood from questionaries, In all their science, be they high in wisdom, If they in love of God are scant, and low. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 3:21 PM

Saturday, September 16th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE 14C. HERMIT RICHARD ROLLE TELLS HOW TO GET CLOSER TO GOD O who is there, encased in mortal body That all this life may suffer such great heat, Or may indeed bear long its discipline? Truly it behooves me fail for sweetness And faint for very greatness of desire After so passing high an outward love; No marvel many, retreating from this world, Full greedily would catch such flame and yearn for it Hungering with hot desire to have it; Thinking that for this sweet, honey-sweet flame, They might yield souls and wond’rous gifts of mind, And so be taken, and so forthwith enter The companies of them that sing their praises To their Creator, world without end, Amen. Some things there are that hinder charity: For filth of flesh creeps tempting to the mind; Or bodily need, or mankind’s frail affections, Graven with anguish of this wretched exile; Sometimes these hobbles lessen us our heat, And the flame in figure, I called fire Because it burns and lightens, slakes and heavies. Yet truly, such weight takes it away not fully, But leaves that which may not be took away: For it adheres, enfolding all my heart. And in within it, this most happy heat, Pent up by such things, soon appears again; And I, as ’twere abiding grievous cold, Think myself desolate till it come again, Whilst I have not, as I was wont before, That feeling of upspringing ghostly fire Lit gladly in all parts of body and soul, And in the which I know myself secure. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:34 AM

Friday, September 15th, 2006 THE FIRE OF LOVE THE FIRE OF LOVE 14c. Christian Mystic Instruction of Anchorites and Hermits PROLOGUE OF RICHARD ROLLE More have I marveled than I showed, when I First felt my beating heart wax warm, in truth; Not in a heat of my imagination, But as it were, burned with a heat-felt fire. I was amazed as flame burst in my soul, Enfolding her within an unwont solace; Ofttimes, because I knew not such abundance, I groped and gripped at my own rib-cage, seeking Whether this burning were from bodily cause; But when I knew that it was kindled inward, Not from this world, but from a ghostly source, And had of this swift burning in it nought Of fleshly love or mounting concupiscence; In this I knew it was gift of my Maker. Gladly therefore I melted toward desire Of my yet more delight and ghostly sweetness; The which, within that instant ghostly flame, Has the more pithily comforted my mind. Betimes before this comfortable heat, Sweetest in all devotion, flared in me, I plainly thought that such a heat could happen To no one, man or woman, in this exile: For truly so its tongues enflame the soul As if a fire were kindled, burning, hot. There are some burn so, in their love of Christ, And we see them despising so this world, And giv’n entirely to the thrall of God. If you should try, ’t would be just as it were If you your finger put into the fire, And it be clad with clinging sense of burning; So, as beforesaid, souls set fire with love, Truly they feel most bright and clinging heat; Sometimes the more and sometimes less intense, As the frailty of their flesh may suffer. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 3:20 PM

Monday, September 11th, 2006 100,000 HITS!!!!!! “SPIRIT SONG TEXT” PASSES 100,000 HITS IN FIRST YEAR ON iSOUND.com Spoken word recordings of Jabez Van Cleef’s verse gospels, listed under the artist name Spirit Song Text, have reached a total of over 100,000 hits and 67,000 song plays. For the past two months the featured song on Spirit Song Text’s page has averaged #9 on iSound’s daily song “Top Song” playlist, over thousands of mp3’s playing on the site. Jabez Van Cleef has written epic poems based on the four new testament gospels. All four poetic gospels (89 tracks) are available free on iSound as mp3’s for listening and downloading. His spoken word recordings are enhanced with royalty-free dramatic music from various sources. Jabez encourages the use of these lyrics by other artists. Composers and singers interested in using any of these texts should contact him to obtain rights for free and unrestricted usage providing that credit is given to the source. The text of the epics removes false and sinful condemnations of Jews which have historically contributed to the practice of eliminationist anti-semitism. There are more references to women among the followers of Jesus, and the narrative has often been changed to allow interpretation as descriptive of either sex. iSound is a leading online resource for independent musicians and rock-and-roll bands. www.theworshipwell.org, a resource site operated by The Episcopal Church, offers links to Van Cleef’s verse gospels and to the iSound site. Spirit Song Text recordings are also available on iTunes, emusic, download.com, purevolume.com and other sites. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:44 AM

Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 Thanks to all... Well we didn't quite make it, but maybe we really did (the stats reporting has been totally screwed up for the past three weeks) and I just wanted to thank any and all for listening to my songs. Keep the faith out there. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:13 AM

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 Help me get there Hey all you fans of mine out there. Please help me get to 100,000 hits by September 1st. We're almost there. Thanks and God bless you all. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:32 PM

Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 Why choral singing is so great Check out this link to find out why choral singing is so great... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5159728 Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:56 AM

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 THE PALIMPSEST OF HUMAN RIGHTS Introduction for iSound Listeners History of Palimpsest For those who have never heard the word palimpsest: before printing was invented, monks in the Middle Ages would copy texts onto sheets of parchment, stretched sheepskin. If they ran out of new parchment, the scribes would keep copying on the sheets they had already used, writing on top of what was already written. Repeated overwritings created documents called palimpsests that may have been mostly illegible but that nevertheless came to symbolize the doggedness and devotion of the scribes. The physical palimpsest is here extended to an aural experience. The work is an aural palimpsest because when it is read aloud it encodes some part of the utterance of each reader, while concealing some part of the others. In the physical palimpsest, if the last overwriting completely effaced the earlier ones, then it wouldn't be a palimpsest. That is, it is defined partly by what is retained from the earlier writing, not entirely by what is intended or seen of the latter. Just as the mind of the reader struggles to decipher what is underneath, the ear of the listener works harder to discern the meaning of the intentionally obscured speech. Here is how this book was written: from various sources I assembled prose writings of Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, and Henry Thoreau, making sure that the selected passages of each were about the same length as the others. I adapted these prose source materials into a common format by paraphrasing the text into metered lines (iambic pentameter), once again tailoring the length of each thread to match the others. I took the three parallel documents and, placing them side by side on my computer screen, inserted alternating lines from each source, to create three-line stanzas in a single unified master document. I call this process text weaving. The result is a long poem in which the successive lines are bound rhythmically but not always by meaning. In each stanza the first line is from Thoreau, the second line from Gandhi, and the third line from King. Individual vs. Collective It should be clear that I am trying to create an esthetic experience that draws on both choral singing and the spoken word. The purpose of text weaving, which is the underlying force behind this effort, is to allow an expression of the text which is simul-taneously individual and collective. Whatever performance practice is used, I think it should preserve some element of the chaotic (aleatoric) to represent the formless sum of human consciousness from which our ideas concerning human rights have emerged. Strictly speaking, I would like the audience to be anyone who senses that the notions of personal human rights and acts of civil disobedience to assure them are person-ally important. Perhaps this means that the performers are the most important audience. They are invited to take the text I have presented and express it so that it arouses awareness and commitment to the preservation and protection of our rights. If this means selective deletion of parts of the text, or tripling of voices on a line to give it emphasis, or transformations of passages into hip hop speak, or whatever, then let them go, so long as the main message is conveyed. The main message does not adhere to any one line of narrative, it is in the connectedness of the commitment, the influence across generations of one person's ideas on the actions of another person, and the compelling power of the justifying expressions whereby these persons describe and disseminate their ideas and their actions. I think that choral speaking, an art form that is nearly extinct, offers rejuvenating possibilities to other kinds of experimental performance as well as popular music like hip-hop. The undefined area between spoken recitation and singing is bounded by many avenues that creative performers should explore, especially if their intention is to teach. Performance with Music or Dance As I was writing (paraphrasing) this book, I often heard a kind of musical background. It was either a continuous “wall of sound” backdrop to the text during recitation, or interludes such as one hears in productions of Shakespeare. The wall of sound I heard was rhythmic and repetitive with elements of percussion or other instru-ments treated as percussion in the manner of Philip Glass. The point of the music is to support or reflect the pulsing of the recitation. I also heard a kind of chant, assigning one musical chord and having each reciter chant the assigned lines on the respective note in the chord. After employing that chord for a stanza or more, the performers would move together to a new chord. The music then becomes about both the pulse and the chord progression. If the performers choose to follow the red text and to add music, then the performance becomes more operatic and would require some kind of composed recitative music. Such a performance would probably benefit from having other visual elements like tableaux vivants or dance. God is in three persons. Whenever three persons are gathered together in the name of God, God is there. The three persons who wrote this text did not live in the same place or at the same time, but now they are together. They are together in the mind of God, and they are together in your hand and your eye as you look here. The Palimpsest of Human Rights I am not a visionary person. You cannot deny we face a crisis “That government is good which governs least;” I claim to be a practical idealist. In race relations all across our nation. But I should like to see it carried through, My faith in satyagraha is not meant A force of liberation has collided And thoroughly and rapidly be done, Merely for the rishis and the saints. With another force, of domination. That, at the last, it finally portends It is a practice for the common people: One expression of this crisis is To yet another kind of government, Nonviolence is the natural human law Resistance to the highest court's decision “That government is best which governs not;” As violence is the natural law of brutes. Outlawing segregation in the schools; That, when the people are prepared for it, The spirit lies there dormant in the brute It has come to ominous proportions… Will be the kind of government they’ll have. Who knows no law but that of physical might. The old ideal of racial segregation, The state at best is an expedient; The dignity of man requires obedience Fostering paternalistic rules, But mostly states and governments present To a higher law, the law of spirit. Has exhausted credibility, A paragon of inexpedience. The rishis who unearthed the law of spirit, And now the whole society is seeking, Many are the protests brought to bear… Nonviolence in the midst of violence, How to know the soul of integration; Against supposed needs for standing armies; Were greater geniuses than Newton was. The conflict of our personal relations, However weighty these objections are, They were themselves trained in the use of arms, Has become the crisis of our age. Or how these ideas may yet prevail, They realized the uselessness of killing, When a crisis comes to a society They may at last be also brought against And taught a weary world that its salvation People always try to see the problems Supposed needs for standing governments. Lay not through violence but through satyagraha. Resulting from the crisis, if they can, Lest we forget, the standing army is I know one way – we call this way ahimsa. And try to end precipitating forces. Only a portion of the standing state. The way of himsa goes against my grain. I know that many who have been oppressed, Just as an army is an instrument I do not want to cultivate the power The victims of the force of domination, Likely to be misused by the state, To foster himsa in my followers. Are seeking ways to remedy this crisis. The state itself, as it is deaf and blind, My faith sustains that GOD will help the helpless, There are three ways to grapple with oppression: Or chooses not to hear or do our will, That GOD will come to answer your despair, One method is the way of acquiescence. Is just as liable to abuse itself, When you throw yourself before God’s mercy. There are those who feel the only way Perverting what the people might intend. It is because of what I call my faith Is to resign themselves, accept their fate. See the recent warlike entertainments, I confidently hold the hope that God They accept conditions as they are. Works devised for many by the few, Will one day show the true and even path… They feel that it is better to accept Using the guise of warfare to transact Which I may commend to all the people. Even the worst, than go through the ordeals A show that most of us would not consent to, I have been a ‘gambler’ all my life. Of changing the old order to the new. If we had been consulted in the matter. My passion is for finding out the truth, I knew a man who lived down in Atlanta: This government, our eagle and our pledge, Relentlessly asserting my nonviolence, Some years ago he used to play guitar What is it but American tradition, Never counting any stake too great. And one day people heard him sing a song More recent than the names we give the weekdays, If I have erred at all in doing this, Been down so long that down don't bother me. Trying to transmit itself, intact, I think I find myself in company I guess he had achieved some kind of freedom, Unimpaired, from past into posterity, With the most distinguished scientists A freedom of exhausted resignation, But at each instant of negotiation, Of any age or creed, or field, or clime. He had given up what struggle he had. Shaving off some dust of its integrity? My wife taught me the lesson of nonviolence, This is the final goal of acquiescence, No State has the vitality and force When I tried to bend her to my will. But it is not the way to change the world. Of a single living, breathing person... Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:20 AM

Monday, January 9th, 2006 Luke 1 The story of how John Baptist is conceived and born by Zachariah and Elizabeth; visitations by angels; and the conception of Jesus with Mary and the Holy Ghost. We hear the song of Mary (Magnificat) and the song of Zachariah. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:59 AM

Sunday, January 8th, 2006 Matthew 10 Jesus instructs his followers about what they should teach and how they should comport themselves; then, he sends them out into the world to heal and bring his message. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:41 PM

Saturday, January 7th, 2006 Matthew 9 The religious authorities build a case against Jesus because he either heals at forbidden times or consorts with the wrong people. The followers of John come and resolve differences with Jesus. Jesus transforms the lives of all the afflicted and conveys his powers to his followers also. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:01 AM

Friday, January 6th, 2006 Matthew 8 Jesus heals a leper, the servant of a Roman centurion, Peter's mother-in-law, and two wild and domonic men who live in a remote graveyard. He comments on his healing and advises his followers, finally arousing the hostility of a Gerasene crowd. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:30 AM

Thursday, January 5th, 2006 Matthew 7 Jesus completes his presentation of the new dispensation of the law. Matthew provides a commentary on the meaning of the reinvigorated law for the lives and souls of God's children. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:38 AM

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 Angels They say the same bright angels Words by Jabez Van Cleef Music by Michael Mendoza Sung by Harmonium They say the same bright angels come to hover, In every place where human bloodlust burns, And towers fall, and dying breath is spent. Their calm, bright eyes behold the drifting smoke; With wings outstretched they come to heal the dust. Their careworn voices whisper: "Peace On Earth.” O you who sorrow, offer us your hands, Your deeds of grief, moved by the angels' will, And you will build a tower of your spirit, Of truth and justice, love and tolerance; So now we pray, all people with one voice, For us and for our children: "Peace On Earth;" No longer bent and huddled in the dark, Seeking an angel's voice from far on high, But armed with perfect love amid the fear, Each soul will stand its vigil to declare This message to all people ev'rywhere: "Good Will To All God's Children! Peace On Earth!" Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:28 AM

Monday, January 2nd, 2006 Matthew 6 Jesus teaches the people about the need to avoid overly zealous displays of piety in an effort to influence or impress other people. He denounces religious people who base their authority on adherence to dietary law and the like. He assures the poor and humble that they will be honored by God regardless of their exactitude of observance, and he tells them not to worry about their material needs because God will provide for them. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:50 AM

Sunday, January 1st, 2006 Matthew 5 The advice of Jesus often called "The Sermon on the Mount," beginning a summary of the law as it represents a new dispensation from Jesus to replace or augment the law in the Pentateuch. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 4:31 PM

Saturday, December 31st, 2005 Matthew 4 The temptations of Christ in the desert, the attraction of Jesus for the followers of John Baptist, and the calling of the apostles to follow Jesus. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:51 AM

Friday, December 30th, 2005 Matthew 3 The coming of John, a hermit who calls the people to confess their sins, and who washes them with water to forgive them. Jesus appears before John and insists that he too must be washed. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:50 AM

Thursday, December 29th, 2005 Matthew 2 Mysterious figures of wisdom come from the east, searching for Jesus. Herod the King is enraged and tries to kill all the babies to forestall the infant usurper. Jesus escapes with his family down into Egypt. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:57 AM

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 Matthew 1 The announcement of the coming of the baby, and the conflict it engenders within Joseph, who nevertheless decides to stay with Mary and the child. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:59 AM

Monday, December 26th, 2005 There Is No Age The collective life of a chorus, singing, brings with it the eternal awareness of our shared spiritual life, in the present with each other, and with all the souls who have ever been born. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:12 AM

Sunday, December 25th, 2005 John 21 In a visionary moment, Jesus meets with his disciples after he has risen from the grave. Together they eat and talk on the beach, and Jesus has Peter ask and answer three questions. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:13 AM

Saturday, December 24th, 2005 John 20 The followers of Jesus discover that his tomb is empty. He appears before them as a living person and reassures them. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:11 AM

Friday, December 23rd, 2005 John 19 The Roman authority conducts a sham consultation with the people and then engineers a public humiliation, display, harrowing and execution of Jesus, who is nailed to a scaffold as an example for any who might contemplate rebellion against the authority of the empire. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:12 AM

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 John 18 Jesus gives himself up to the Roman authorities and is taken before judges. He is condemned by the Roman Procurator and and his followers disperse. Outside the court, Peter denies any connection with Jesus, fearing that he will also be taken and killed. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:22 AM

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 John 17 Jesus prays to his father in heaven, to glorify him and to love and support his followers here on the earth, during the coming time of trial and forever after. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:49 AM

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 John 16 Jesus gives his followers a sermon to advise them about what will happen and how they should behave after he has died. He asks them not to be too confident or proud in their own ability to face the trials of persecution; and to regard the birth of their salvation as would a pregnant woman weep and then celebrate the birth of her child. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:32 AM

Monday, December 19th, 2005 John 15 Jesus offers his followers an extended prayer in which he uses the metaphor of the vineyard, the vines and the fruit to reveal their relationship to each other and the world. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:00 AM

Sunday, December 18th, 2005 John 14 Jesus promises his followers that an invisible counselor will come and care for them after he has died. He tells them that their salvation will appear in their love for each other. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:12 AM

Saturday, December 17th, 2005 John 13 Jesus and his friends eat supper together for the last time. He washes their feet to show his humility and obedience to them. Then Judas reveals his betrayal, and Jesus prays for them. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:02 AM

Friday, December 16th, 2005 John 12 An air of foreboding prevails as Passover approaches. Jesus is anointed and foretells his own death; then he fulfills a prophecy by entering Jerusalem at the head of a procession, mounted on the back of a donkey. He engages in inflammatory teachings and arguments in the Temple, heedless of making or taking offense. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:59 AM

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 John 9 The story of the blind man who was healed by Jesus, whom no one would believe was healed; and about the way that people, who believe they see most clearly, are blind to what they do not know. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:41 AM

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 John 10 In an extended metaphor, Jesus likens himself to a shepherd (and also to the gate of the sheepfold) and likens his followers to the flock of sheep in his protection. This arouses further conflict with the religious authorities. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:37 AM

Monday, December 12th, 2005 John 8 Jesus rescues an adulturous woman from being stoned to death. Then he engages in discussion with the religious authorities in the temple, arriving at a point of danger for himself because of the perceived anarchy and heresy of his teachings. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 3:42 PM

Sunday, December 11th, 2005 John 7 Jesus arouses a world of trouble by declaring his own divinity before a crowd in the holy temple. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:02 PM

Saturday, December 10th, 2005 John 6 Jesus feeds a multitude with very little food. Then he rescues his followers from a storm at sea, walking across the water to do it. He answers challenges from the religious authorities and declares that adherence to his teaching is the true way for people to find salvation. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:35 AM

Friday, December 9th, 2005 John 5 A crippled man is healed by the side of a magic pool -- but this happens on the holy day, and the priests object. Jesus justifies his healing and shows how his message will upset the established order. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:42 AM

Thursday, December 8th, 2005 John 4 Jesus encounters a woman by a well, where he reveals his coming as the salvation of all people, and thereby makes all women, especially those who have fallen, heirs as children of God. Then he furthers his teaching and healing by bringing a boy back from the brink of death. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:49 PM

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 John 3 Jesus meets at night with Nicodemus, a religious leader, and explains his message. Then Jesus tells the crowd how he is the follower and fulfillment of the message of John the Baptist. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:16 AM

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 John 2 Jesus starts his work on earth by miraculously transforming wine into water, to help celebrate a wedding. Then he leads his followers to Jerusalem and drives cheaters and sharp merchants forth, out of God's temple. He announces that he has come to transform the religious observance of the Jewish people. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:03 AM

Monday, December 5th, 2005 John 1 The birth of Jesus is depicted by John as the creation of human consciousness and language, which illuminates the world and overcomes evil. The earthly arrival of Jesus is announced by the prophet, John the Baptist, in the desert of Judea. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:35 AM

Sunday, December 4th, 2005 Luke 24 Jesus appears before his followers after he is supposed to have died. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 4:40 PM

Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 Luke 23 The execution of Jesus by the Romans is followed by his burial in a sealed stone tomb. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:40 AM

Friday, December 2nd, 2005 Luke 22 Jesus is betrayed by one of his followers. Before the Romans come to seize him, he celebrates Passover with his friends and tells them how he will die. He anguishes over his fate at night, in a garden, and then enters captivity without a struggle. Peter denies knowing him when the townsfolk ask after him. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:56 AM

Thursday, December 1st, 2005 Luke 21 Led by the harbinger of the widow who gives all she has to support the great temple, Jesus delivers a long oration describing the end time of human days on the earth. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:23 AM

Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 Luke 20 Jesus is repeatedly challenged by the religious authorities of Jerusalem, and refutes their assertions, but with a dark foreboding of his own fate and the fate of the city. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:18 AM

Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 Luke 19 This chapter starts with the story of Zaccheus, a short man who has to climb a tree to see Jesus preaching. Jesus tells the story of the slaves who in a better or worse way invest their master's money. Then Jesus and his followers prepare for the Passover holiday, and Jesus fulfills a prophecy by entering Jerusalem on the back of a little donkey. He grieves for the impending betrayal of the city to the Romans, and then, in a rage, drives the merchants out of the tample grounds. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:28 AM

Monday, November 28th, 2005 Luke 18 Jesus tells the story of a persistent widow who wins her case with a judge; a priest and a penitent barkeeper who come to pray in public; and he counsels a wealthy man to give his goods away if he wants to find righteousness. Finally he foretells his own capture and death at the hands of the Romans. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:02 AM

Sunday, November 27th, 2005 Luke 17 Jesus commends to his followers the ways that strengthening faith will also strengthen the spirit. He heals ten lepers, and points to the one, a foreigner, who expresses his thanks and praise for the healing. Then he speaks a sermon on the nature of the end time, with a grim vision at the last, "where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:00 PM

Saturday, November 26th, 2005 Luke 16 Jesus teaches about the futility of accumulating property and riches, telling the story of a dishonest farm manager, and then the story of the wealthy man, Dives, and Lazarus,the poor, leprous man who lay on the ground outside his door. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:46 AM

Friday, November 25th, 2005 Luke 15 Here is the story of the prodigal son who returns and rejoices the heart of his father. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 3:38 PM

Thursday, November 24th, 2005 Luke 14 The chapter starts with Jesus disparaging close practice of dietary law without charity and love in the heart. He explains how his salvation comes for all classes and types of people. He illustrates this by telling a story about a wedding to which nobody came. Then he exhorts them to understand the value of completing what you start. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:30 AM

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 Luke 13 Jesus makes an extended plea to his followers and the religious authorities to leave behind their slavish observance of dietary and ritualistic laws and find salvation in faith, hope and charity. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:02 AM

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 Luke 12 Jesus warns against the scrutiny of the official priests, refuses to judge the legal issues presented to him, and counsels his followers not to be led astray by concern for their own possessions. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:58 AM

Monday, November 21st, 2005 Luke 11 Jesus teaches his followers how to pray. Then when one asks for a sign of his divinity, Jesus questions a need for any sign in the evil and adulturous society that he has come to heal. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 11:20 AM

Sunday, November 20th, 2005 Luke 10 Jesus sends out 70 followers and then joyfully welcomes them back from their travels. He preaches about the story of "The Good Samaritan" and offers advice on the contemplative life to Martha, sister of Mary Magdalene. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 5:09 PM

Saturday, November 19th, 2005 Luke 9 Jesus sends his followers out into the world to heal and teach. When they return, he miraculously feeds a crowd with fish and bread. He asks his followers who the people claim him to be. Then he enters into a divine manifestation on the side of a mountain, and God speaks. Again in the world, Jesus heals an epileptic child and commends children's understanding as the model for human religious thought. He expresses his renunciation of property with the phrase, "Foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:11 AM

Friday, November 18th, 2005 Luke 8 Women join the followers of Jesus. He stands before the crowd and teaches the parable of the sower who reaps according to where the seed has fallen to the earth. His own family comes to look for him and he declines to see them for the sake of his teaching. He takes a boat across the lake with his followers, and when a storm threatens to swamp it, he calms the waves. On the other shore he heals a madman by sending devils out of his body into a herd of pigs. Having come back across the lake, he heals a woman who is afflicted with bleeding, and then visits the house of Jairus, where he brings the man's dead daughter back to life. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:27 AM

Thursday, November 17th, 2005 Luke 7 From a distance, Jesus heals the servant of a Roman soldier, and praises the Roman for his faith. Jesus brings back to life the dead husband of a woman at Nain. He offers a long sermon comparing himself and John the Baptist. He encounters a "fallen woman," whom he forgives, and when challenged by the religious authorities, delivers the long story now known as "The Good Samaritan." Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:09 AM

Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 Luke 6 After once more arousing the suspicions of the religious authorities becasue of his interpretations of the dietary and holy day laws, Jesus formally completes the calling of his followers and delivers to them an exhortatory sermon about all those in this world who will be blessed, and those who will suffer woe. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:00 AM

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 Luke 5 Jesus begins to find and call followers, whom he teaches to heal and preach among the people. The religious authorities take note and inquire about his motives and origins. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:38 AM

Monday, November 14th, 2005 Luke 4 Jesus goes into the desert and meets with Satan, a personification of the evil present in every human soul. Jesus is tempted three times and resists the blandishments Satan offers him; then, returning to his native town, he is first regaled and then rejected by his childhood acquaintance. In a nasty moment, they threaten to pitch him off a cliff. He escapes and begins his career as a healer of the sick and afflicted. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:02 AM

Sunday, November 13th, 2005 Luke 3 The story of the coming of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 5:31 PM

Saturday, November 12th, 2005 Luke 2 The second chapter of Luke tells the traditional story of the birth of Jesus, followed by his blessing and acceptance into the Jewish community, and childhood days. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:54 AM

Thursday, November 10th, 2005 Mark 16 The story of how Jesus comes back from death and then leaves his followers to continue his work. Many people believe this chapter was added to the original book at a later time and by a different author; thus the original ends with the discovery of the empty tomb and the flight of the women. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:12 AM

Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 Mark 15 The judgement, execution and burial of Jesus. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:26 AM

Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 Mark 14 Mark Chapter 14 tells the first part of the "Passion," which includes the last supper, the struggle in Gethsemane, the assurance and denial by Peter, the capture of Jesus by the soldiers, and his judgment by the religious authorities. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:48 AM

Monday, November 7th, 2005 Mark 13 Jesus expresses his enduring and rhapsodic vision of the end of days. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:07 AM

Sunday, November 6th, 2005 Mark 12 Mark chapter 12 begins with a transparent exemplary story foretelling his execution at the hands of the Roman client authorities. When he is questioned by the religious leaders on finer points of the law, Jesus refutes them with lessons about appropriate allegiances in payment of tribute, sanctity of marriages, and the simplification of law to meet the understanding of ordinary folk. He concludes by showing the example of a widow who gives all she has to glorify the temple. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 2:10 PM

Saturday, November 5th, 2005 Mark 11 In Mark 11 we see the quaint but triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, we witness the cleansing of commerce from the great temple, and then Jesus teaches his followers how to pray. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:57 AM

Friday, November 4th, 2005 Mark 10 Chapter 10 of Mark shows Jesus disputing the interpretation of marital law with the authorities. He counsels fairness and compassion as touchstones for understanding the law. Then he foretells his own death as a consequence of this belief. James and John, seeking to understand succession after he is gone, ask if they can gain preference -- but he offers the paradox that the one who is least among them all will be their leader. Then he heals a blind man by the road, a man who speaks only what we call the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus, pity me, I am a miserable sinner. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:11 AM

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 Mark 9 Chapter 9 of Mark begins with the story of a supernatural transformation of Jesus into a divine form, on a mountainside, also known as the transfiguration. This is followed by an episode where Jesus heals an epileptic boy and his reference to the healing as a motivator for faith in the boy's father, and in his followers. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:26 AM

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 Mark 8 In Mark 8 Jesus confounds his followers with the seemingly miraculous feeding of a multitude, and the more intimate healing moment with a blind man. Jesus challenges his followers to say who the crowds claim him to be. Then he urges them to renounce all other claims and follow him with faith. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:56 AM

Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 Mark 7 In Mark 7 Jesus delivers a sermon about the sources of corrupt or selfish behavior and the relative irrelevance of dietary laws and other religious codes. To stress the importance of native charity over customs and codes, there follow two stories about healings that lead Jesus to extend the scope of his own thinking. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:01 PM

Monday, October 31st, 2005 Mark 6 Chapter 6 of Mark's gospel sees Jesus sending his followers into the world to heal and teach. While they are gone, word comes of the execution of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas, as an indication of the moral corruption of his regime and his family. When the emissaries return, Jesus shows them how he can feed the multitudes from scant supply, and then how to make the wind and storm obey his will. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:18 AM

Saturday, October 29th, 2005 Mark 5 In the fifth chapter of Mark's story, Jesus visits a country across the lake where he heals a man possessed by many devils, sending the devils into a herd of pigs. Returning home, he is on his way to the house of a child who has died, when he stops to heal a woman with a bleeding disorder. Then he continues on, and brings the child of the man called Jairus back to life. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:26 AM

Friday, October 28th, 2005 Mark 4 Chapter 4 of Mark's story shows Jesus preaching to his followers the story of the farmer who casts seed in different places and sees it grow or die depending on the nature of its earth. Jesus explains the meaning of his story with a passionate and eloquent picture of the future for the elect. Then, as they all sail on the lake, Jesus commands the winds to stop, and they find an uncertain peace. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:20 AM

Thursday, October 27th, 2005 Mark 3 In Mark's chapter 3, Jesus finds so many people asking for healing that he cannot heal them all -- so he calls followers to help him. When they are challenged on the legality of their acts, he preaches to the authorities and defines his mission on earth. This requires a renunciation of all earthly ties, even his family. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:10 AM

Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 Mark 2 Chapter 2 of Mark's gospel demonstrates Jesus' commitment to healing as his primary teaching or ministry. He commends a party which is so committed to healing their friend that they lower him through the roof of the house. The healing however arouses suspicion and disapprobation from the local authorities, whom Jesus rebukes with a summary of their position and his. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:01 AM

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 The Song of Mark, Chapter 1 In the first chapter of Mark's gospel we quickly pass from the foretelling of Jesus by John the Baptist, to the baptism of Jesus, to healings, temptations and callings, and finally, to a fuller understanding and prayerful withdrawal by Jesus as he assumes his mission. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:21 AM

Monday, October 24th, 2005 Matthew 28 In the last chapter of Matthew's story, the women come in the morning to find an empty tomb and an angel, who tells the message of Jesus rising to life again. They see Jesus and he urges them to go out into the world and bring his message to everyone they meet. In this story there is no rising into the sky, only at the last a disparaging plot where the religious police are foiled in their effort to create a false version of the events surrounding his escape from the tomb, and death. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:10 AM

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 Matthew 27 Jesus is publicly executed by the Roman overlords, by having his body nailed to a scaffold where he dies from loss of blood and suffocation. His friends take his body off the scaffold and place it in a closed stone tomb. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:34 AM

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 Matthew 26 As the end of Jesus' life on earth approaches, events take on an otherworldly aura. A woman anoints him, he is betrayed by one of his followers, and he foretells what will happen to them all at their last gathering for supper. He is reassured by Peter, with what proves to be little truth. He suffers alone in a garden, and is thereafter captured and led before the religious police. They condemn him and he is beaten, to humiliate him before his death, and to create a more frightening form of terror for the crowd. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:32 PM

Friday, October 21st, 2005 Matthew 25 We sense impending doom as Jesus tells two stories: the story of the wise and foolish virgins, and the story of the lazy slave who did not invest his master's goods wisely. Events converge to make a time of choosing. Then Jesus tells his followers how the souls will be sorted and chosen at the time of judgment: those selected for saving would be those who had shown compassion on all the least and poorest of humanity here on earth. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:20 AM

Thursday, October 20th, 2005 Matthew 24 Chapter 24 of Matthew presents Jesus as he comforts his followers for the adversities they will face after he has gone from them. This is a long and rhapsodic description of all the terrors that will come to them, leading to a description of the end of the physical world and an exhortation to be alert and therefore prepared. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:10 AM

Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 Matthew 23 In chapter 23, throwing caution to the winds, Jesus delivers a long sermon to the religious authorities expressing his disgust with all their sin, greed and deceit. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 6:48 AM

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 Matthew 22 In chapter 22 Jesus tells an exemplary story about a king who asks his friends to a wedding feast, but when none of them attend, sends his servant into the streets to ask all and sundry to come. Then Jesus is challenged by the religious authorities, who ask if they should pay the Roman tax, and if Jesus can solve a riddle derived from the marital law. Jesus gives them his final statement on all the laws by simplifying their expression into one memorable statement. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 12:34 PM

Monday, October 17th, 2005 Matthew 21 In Chapter 21 of Matthew's story, Jesus assumes a deeply ambiguous authority, riding a small donkey into Jerusalem and leading a ragtag cowd of children and the dispossessed. They enter the great temple and Jesus drives out the merchants who have thrived under protection of the religious police. Then, Jesus preaches on the ways of holiness, telling stories about two brothers who are equally rewarded for dissimilar labors, and about vicious tenants who kill the messengers and the owner's son. The authorities are enraged to hear his words, but fearful of seizing him yet, and waiting until they can imprison him in secret. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 12:13 PM

Sunday, October 16th, 2005 Matthew 20 Chapter 20 of Matthew is a dark and foreboding glimpse of the murder that follows Jesus, starting with the story of a vicious tenant who kills the landlord's son. Jesus then warns his followers what is to come, and heals two blind people. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 5:36 PM

Saturday, October 15th, 2005 Matthew 19 In Matthew's 19th chapter Jesus is challenged by religious police to explain his teaching about divorce and adultery. After speaking about this, he counsels blessing the children. Then a wealthy man comes and asks for salvation. Jesus offers him this, but only if he gives away all his wealth. The man is disappointed and goes away. Jesus comments on the corrupting power of wealth and teaches that the poorest on earth will be the first in heaven. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:04 AM

Friday, October 14th, 2005 Matthew 18 Chapter 13 of Matthew begins with Jesus teaching his followers that children, and the innocence of children, represent the greatest aspiration of humanity. He tells them that they have to understand and follow his teaching as children would. Then he comments on the nature of life in a community, the need for forgiveness over retribution in resolving our conflicts with each other. He illustrates this teaching with an exemplary story about an ungrateful slave who is forgiven a debt by his master, and who nevertheless mistreats another slave who has owed him money, and is therefore punished by the master. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 10:02 AM

Thursday, October 13th, 2005 Matthew 17 Chapter 17 of Matthew begins when he leads several of his followers up on a mountain and there is transformed into a divine entity in their eyes, with God adressing them all from the sky. Then they come down, and Jesus heals an epileptic child, and chides the child's father for not showing faith. Jesus describes his own approaching capture and death, and instructs his followers with a curious fairy tale not to pay the religious tax. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:35 AM

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 Matthew 16 In Matthew chapter 16, Jesus is challenged by the religious authorities and refutes them, warning his followers not to be swayed by their arguments. Peter declares that Jesus has come to save all people from their wrongdoings. Jesus foretells his own death at the hands of those who do not believe in him, and tells his followers to renounce all other ways lest they not be saved. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:41 PM

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 Matthew 15 Matthew 15 shows Jesus getting into more trouble with the religious authorities, when he criticizes their lust for money and their tendency to use their greed and their escessive enforcement of dietary laws as red herrings for their own refusal to act as advocates for the poor and dispossessed. Then Jesus is involved in a curious incident with a foreign woman where he refuses to heal her sick daughter and compares her to a begging dog. She persuades him to heal her daughter anyway, and we see that Jesus in his humanity has made a mistake and admitted he was wrong. After this he again feeds a hungry crowd with loaves and fishes. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 9:48 AM

Monday, October 10th, 2005 Matthew 14 Chapter 14 of Matthew tells the story of Herodias, who danced to seduce her own father Herod Antipas, so that he would cut off the head of John the Baptist. When Jesus hears of this, he leads the crowd that follows him off to a lonely place, to teach. And when they get hungry, he feeds the whole crowd by having them share five loaves and two fish. After this, he sails out on the lake with his followers and calms the wave and storm by force of his will. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 7:24 AM

Sunday, October 9th, 2005 Matthew 13 In chapter 13 Jesus tells the story of the planter who throws seed in different places and watches to see where plants actually thrive. His followers ask for the meaning of the story and he gives them a detailed interpretation. Then he tells several stories intended to compare the afterlife with experiences on earth: planting seeds, making bread, finding buried treasure, seeking to buy a pearl, catching fish, and seeking after the truth. In the end, they visit Nazareth and Jesus discovers he finds the least welcome from those who know his family best. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:35 PM

Saturday, October 8th, 2005 Matthew 12 Jesus finds trouble with the religious authorities because he breaks their laws by violating sabbath rules: he eats forbidden foods and heals people including a man with a withered hand and a mentally ill person. Jesus explains his powers as a new order of religious law, and asserts that a "kingdom" divided against itself cannot stand. The authorities ask for a "sign" of his powers but he repudiates them and also denies the ties of custom and family. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 1:19 PM

Friday, October 7th, 2005 Matthew 11 In chapter 11 of Matthew's gospel Jesus is visited by followers of John Baptist. He preaches to the crowd about John's mission and bewails the negligent reponse of the people to it. He repudiates the cities that have rejected both John's message and his own. Then he gives thanks for the simplicity of the message and it's suitability for all kinds of people, and prays that they will come. Posted By Spirit Song Text @ 8:28 AM