Abstract
The notion of patience is, however, inseparable from the virtue of trust which every proficient lover must learn to cultivate. This chapter constitutes a commentary on the metaphor of the “lilies” which can be read as hinting to the other women that the man cannot help noticing and desiring. Yet, accompanying this reference is the woman’s three-fold faithful affirmation: “My lover is mine and I am his.” This statement occurs twice accompanying the reference to lilies, but the third time the lilies are gone: The man seems to have committed. What made the difference? What happened for the man to commit? The key, I argue, lies in the formulation of the woman, “My lover is mine and I am his.” Therein lies her secret! This whole chapter constitutes, as such, a meditation on trust and its power to inspire love and commitment.
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Notes
- 1.
André Lacocque, Romance She Wrote, 128.
- 2.
André Lacocque, Romance She Wrote (Salem, OR: Trinity Press International, 1998), 190.
- 3.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 92.
- 4.
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 176.
- 5.
Ibid., 182.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Ibid., 184.
- 8.
Ibid., 185.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 55.
- 11.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004), 265.
- 12.
Luce Irigaray, To Be Two (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2001), 18.
- 13.
Ibid., 93.
- 14.
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (New York: Harper Perennial, 1964), 281.
- 15.
Such is in my view the very definition of forgiveness: The refusal to react to the wrongs committed against us, whether in words, thoughts or actions, thereby not allowing the toxicity of the evil done to us to penetrate into our hearts. In Hebrew, the word for forgiveness, nasa, means “to carry.” To carry the wrongs done to us means to receive them without retaliation, thereby protecting our hearts from being contaminated by the evil done to us. For it is never the wrong done to us which damages us, but rather our toxic reactions to is, whether in thought, word or deed, when we choose for example to close our hearts in resentment, or to enact revenge upon the wrongdoer, thereby becoming exactly like them.
- 16.
Ibid., 28.
- 17.
Ibid., 28.
- 18.
Revelation 21:5.
- 19.
Cf. the story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1–12).
- 20.
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 27.
- 21.
As such, no time is ever wasted by loving. For to love is to live in tune with the dimension which Kierkegaard calls “the eternal” over which time has no power. Again, the dimension of the “eternal” which we mentioned in an earlier note has nothing to do with the popular Christian concept of “eternal life,” but rather constitutes a metaphysical dimension present in the here and now and accessed through love. To speak then of “wasted time” however is to remain on the level which Kierkegaard calls temporality, which is the realm of human finitude, and as such, the lieu of human anxiety with regards to the passing of time. But to love and to abide in love is to live in the time zone of eternity which, as such, knows no decay, no limitations and no interruptions. Thus, for those who dwell in the shadow of the eternal, to love is to live according to other laws than those decreed for the temporal. As such, the one who loves, because they have passed on to the dimension of the eternal, will find that the laws of temporality, of finitude and of aging do not apply to them anymore. In the dimension of the eternal there is no wasted time, only infinite time and possibilities.
- 22.
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 235.
- 23.
Ibid., 233.
- 24.
Ibid., 283.
- 25.
Ibid., 291.
- 26.
I am reminded here of Kierkegaard’s powerful commentary on the betrayal of Jesus by Peter in which he describes this divine love as more powerful than betrayal (cf. Works of Love, 153–170).
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Doukhan, A. (2019). Infidelity’s Dark Night. In: Womanist Wisdom in the Song of Songs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30052-4_5
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