“The surface meaning lies open before us and charms beginners. Yet the depth is amazing, my God, the depth is amazing. To concentrate on it is to experience awe—the awe of adoration before the transcendence and the trembling of love.” [i]—Saint Augustine
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Annie rested in repose reading in white robe reclined on back and rest of sofa, one knee raised high and foot near to body as other stretched long and graceful guide from foot to hip in lie across sofa’s form, sunlight catching over top of shin and thigh. In turn of pages and vagrancy of mind between formed and holding thoughts, she gazed beyond page and cover of book to view him, too, reading and in rest; a distance of feet in body presence, and in mind—God knew.
She listened to his breaths, slow and deep and steady as his focus held to page, and to his rhythm and body-dampened sounds, she felt her own respond in pairing resonance of rhythm, matched slow breaths, chest swell and rise and emptying exhalations as the tensions of her body left, a calm and sooth beginning as she became into greater peace of rest and sit.
She returned to book wandering in mind between reading and dreams and at finished page, let eyes to rise and seek and gaze on him again. Low butterfly flutter flushed when, meeting, she found his gaze returned, eyes above binding of book just as hers. Eyes held, and though she did not see, she knew his mouth had changed as she read the taughtness in his face as muscles raised high and knowing her face revealed the same even covered by her book.
They returned to read, as if gaze and stare was simple chance with no further spoken meaning, but in gaze and speaking through room’s silence, spirit and energy were affected.
She listened to his breaths, peaceful in the rhythm and hold of hers to his; and then came a change, a hold of breath and pause in pattern that, attuned, drew attention to the change.
After change of pause, a new-drawn breath. Hold of book moved from covering of face to lie over lap as she saw all of him in reposed rest, just as she, as through the silence James read passage from the page.
“The surface meaning lies open before us as charms beginners. Yet the depth is amazing, my God, the depth is amazing. To concentrate on it is to experience awe—the awe of adoration before the transcendence and the trembling of love…”
“I always find it interesting how near writings of the sensual and sacred read, where if drawn from the page the listener would be able to tell from which the passage read.”
Annie smiled, shifting body in contemplation, rolling from rest and body upward in its lie over and slight on side as she turned to better face and speak. Her high knee shifted, folding over that in length and lie as tails of robe covered light in fall on thighs above her knees, drape of cloth from shoulders over front holding loose in line of fair and freckled fall until sashed tying at narrow of waist.
“Why shouldn’t it?” Annie spoke. “Are they not both mediums and experiences of unity with spirit?”
Paul smiled, as it was his turn next to muse, shifting in seat, better seeing all of Annie, her form and lie, spirit and mind, as they communed. Paul thought his words, his forward into thought and as he searched for shaping of the saying, Annie spoke on that which rose in her.
“And why should we think of them as divorced, that one should be of God and the other sin, when both are elevations and enlightenment of the spirit—should you ever hit transcendence of revelations in their heights…”
Annie blushed, showing in warmed hue over openness of face and neck and taper of robe’s wear.
“What sadness it would be to live and never know the pleasures of hidden and waiting heights…” Paul replied.
Still in blush, Annie answered, “I agree.” She studied Paul as well, the change of his face and manners as they spoke in shared exchange. She wondered still, and asked, “Do you believe the experience of God grants too such ecstasies as the way its written?”
Paul studied Annie’s countenance, her eyes and windows into spirit. “I do,” he answered. He sought for further words, but how do you explain the unexplainable, an awe and experience beyond words and the means of man. He tried again, and failing for explanation spoke plain and true again, “I do.”
Annie rolled further onto side into direction and facing of Paul, her contemplations—more than curiosity—continued. “Why is it man seeks to damn the one, or give it shame, and the other it elevates high; even when the one draws and invites a lived intimacy and the other, so often, a distance and coldness to those surrounding a spiritual or religious soul?”
“Maybe both are incomplete in painting and perception,” Paul responded.
“How so?”
“Maybe, of the first, the risk and sin comes when it is for the experience, the sensation, and not in the will of shared and exchanged spirit that becomes…Isn’t experience, and after, changed by priority of purpose. You know when it is love; and you know when it is not.”
To know, is to have lived and learned deceits and belief in pursuit of ideals and hopes we find are not: to learn not all spirits are the same, and that—for affinities, love, and enduring affections—flesh is not enough. Man, and woman, are more; and the more is life in spirit.
Paul turned the page, slow and searching, thought moving to further quote that he had found. Finding, he shared:
“Pleasure pursues beautiful objects—what is agreeable to look at, to hear, to smell, to taste, to touch. But curiosity pursues the contraries of these delights with the motive of seeing what the experiences are like…out of a lust for experimenting and knowing…”[ii]
“Does such sin hold solely to wrongful passions?” Annie asked.
“No.”
“And what makes them wrong, and when are they right?”
“Does it sound foolish to say, we know as our spirit tells?”
“No.”
“Is curiosity and a desire to learn then sin if written as he says? Is it wrong for man and woman to seek to learn and better understand: themselves, another, the world around them? Do you have no further curiosity to learn and know me?” Emma asked, curious to see and read way and sign of his response.
“It is not a sin to be curious, but when to know is for no other reason than that in and of itself, a novelty of experience and not of more, maybe it needs checked. To know and grow and better understand, this is the mark of a forward growing spirit; but again it’s marked with purpose.
To the last, desire to learn and know supersedes curiosity of a moment-experience. I want to learn. I want to know; but to stay in bound and connection, still, with spirit.”
James returned to reference of the page. He read in continuation of the passage:
“The same motive is at work when people study the operations of nature which lie beyond our grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and the investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake. The motive is again at work if, using a perverted science for the same end, people try to achieve things by magical arts. Even in religion itself the motive is seen when God is ‘tempted’ by demands for ‘signs and wonders’ desired not for any salvic end but only for the thrill.”[iii]
James smiled thinking again to way written of sacred and the sensual, absorbing in awe and adoration all of Annie’s presence and communion in energy, words, and aura. He thought of temptation, signs and wonders and thrills.
His eyes warmed with a new-shown light of moment, coalescence of thought and way he wished to say. “You are more than a novelty to be known. You are more than a curiosity to be learned for one’s private entertainment and experience of a moment’s thrill.
You are so much more, and greater, than that…” He repeated then from memory, drawn and attracted to her surface beauty and even more to revelations and penetration of her depths in invitation and revelation of oneness in spirit and all. He gazed on the charm and enchantments of Annie in rest, her eyes in study and stare, body long and fine in lay and repose, fold of knee over leg still long, and the wear and hold of robe over hue and glow of skin warmed in higher day light.
He admired her completely, desired and attracted beyond the shallows of simple sight; to mind and spirit and energy found and learned and known only in invitation of welcomed oneness and understanding.
Her’s was a sacrist spirit.
He gazed still, eyes holding in smile and adoration to Annie’s, “The surface meaning lies open before us and charms beginners. Yet the depth is amazing, my God, the depth is amazing. To concentrate on it is to experience awe—the awe of adoration before its transcendence and the trembling of love…”
Annie listened still, eyes still in fix and studying of him, draw too beyond curiosity of transient experience. His voice began from a place in chest, deep and near to heart, and she felt it in his tone. Attuned, she sensed each inflection and subtle change of his voice—poetic—in flow of words felt and not simply shared.
Annie warmed in stir and expansion of spirit emanant beyond body’s bounds. Soft pang took, keeping and holding low, as she desired, again, for hold and unity in oneness; for awe and adoration, and the trembling of love in expression and share of spirits in ascension—transcendence—beyond limits of bodies, into unity and revelation of attained together-one.
[i] Saint Augustine, Confessions XII xiii (17)
[ii] Ibid X xxv (55)
[iii] Ibid