By reading these three writers I feel I am learning a foreign language. But at the same time it feels like a language I have always known but rarely used.
It is like a foreign language to me in the sense that, even among these writers separated by centuries, there is a common visual vocabulary. Animals such as lions, lambs and eagles seem to signify similar things to all three writers as do natural events like earthquakes, smoke and rushing streams. At times, I find I need my HarperCollins Bible Commentary or the endnotes of my Hollander translation of the Divine Comedy to unlock the code or, better, to have my imagination enter the same playing field as the author.
At other times, no such translation is neccesary. At both Bible Studies, we are in the custom of reading long passages of the scripture outloud. I have found it helpful to close my eyes as chapters from Daniel and Revelation are read aloud, and simply try to picture what the author is describing. It requires concentration and imagination to follow the text because I have never seen creatures with a hundred eyes or lakes of fire. Neither have I heard a loud voice from a throne assuring me that 'death shall be no more.'
And yet, as I hand myself over to the experience of listening to the text and then visualizing what it describes, I find that the experience is as familiar as the experience of dreaming in my sleep. By mind naturally knows how to do this! Like when I am dreaming, I find that I am by turns moved, scared and reassured. And somehow, through it all, I know I am learning. If nothing else I am learning to talk with these spiritual giants. I am slowly learning to be in spiritual conversation with the unknown writer of Daniel, with St. John the Divine and with Dante Alighieri.
At the same time, I feel as though I am opening up in myself a new, exciting and indirect way to know God. As a twenty-first century American I have been formed to be a rational and pragmatic creature. Furthermore, my education has taught me the value of words as the primary vehicle for connection with others and for understanding.
This literature, more often than not, chooses a different rout to convey its wisdom. The words are there to serve images and the images are not rational. And, I should add, the experience of coming up with the images in my mind is different than the more passive experience of watching a movie or playing a video game. A deeper muscle of my brain must be called into service if I am to experience the images of these texts.
I am now at the top of the mountain of Purgatory with Dante. His guide, Virgil, has 'crowned and mitred' Dante as lord over himself. Virgil's gesture means that Dante, having successfully climbed the seven stories of the mountain, is now free to wander around the earthly paradise, which is the garden at the flat top of this mountain.
As he wanders through this perfect garden he sees, on the other side of a stream a procession. Ultimately, he will see one hundred and forty four creatures in this procession to include elders in robes, animals like a lion, an ox and an eagle and a man with a sword so sharp and bright that even across the stream it made Dante feel fear. Dante is writing in the language of Daniel and Revelation.
In the midst of this procession are three beautiful dancing women. Here are Dante's words:
Then came three ladies dancing in a round
near the right wheel, one so flaming red
she hardly would be noticed in a fire.
Another seemed as though her flesh and bones
were made of emerald, while the third
seemed white as new fallen snow.
Sometimes it seemed the white, and now the red,
led in the dance. And from the red one's song
the others took their movements, quick or slow.
These three women have always been understood as representations of the three theological virtues- faith, hope and love. It is a common place that red is love, faith is white and hope is green. But why? And why does hope never lead the dance?
I picture these things in my mind and, as though praying through dreams, wonder and learn.
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