John Michael Talbot - One Dark Night

[crookedfingers]

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From the album The Lover and the Beloved, this piece is translated from St. John of the Cross. He (John of the Cross) is known for his great work in theology with an emphasis on the nature of suffering (dark night of the soul). It was his belief that in order to form a perfect union with God that a mystic must endure suffering. I find this album at a time that I was enduring great suffering and found it comforting. Suffering is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of mankind, and certainly many of the great people of the church endured it including Mother Teresa.

One dark night
Fired with love's urgent longings
Ah, the sheer grace
In the darkness
I went out unseen
My house being all now still

In the darkness
Secured by love's secret ladder
Disguised
Oh, the sheer grace
In the darkness
And in my concealment
My house being all now still

On that glad night
In the secret, for no one saw me
Nor did I see any other thing at all
With no other light to guide me
Than the light burning in my heart

And this light guided me
More surely than the light of the noon
To where he lay waiting for me
Waiting for me
Him I knew so well
In a place where no one else appeared

Oh guiding night
A light more lovely than the dawn
A night that has united
Ever now
The Lover now with his beloved
Transforming two now into one

Upon my flowering breast
There he lay sleeping
Which I kept for him alone
And I embraced him
And I caressed him
In a breeze blowing from the forest

And when this breeze blew in from the forest
Blowing back our hair
He wounded my soul
With his gentle hand
Suspending all my senses

I abandoned, forgetting myself
Laying my face on my Beloved
All things ceasing, I went out from myself
To leave cares
Forgotten with the lilies of the field