Faith – Wisdom Chant

Seek for a sensible presence and God hides.
Seek by faith, that is for God’s self, and you shall find.

Listen

The words of this chant may be considered as a riposte to the cataphatic yearning of the chant ‘Thirst’. As we are enveloped by the Night of Sense where consolations we may previously have experienced dry up, the logical response, according to Fr. Thomas, is to stop expecting consolation. This, after all, is the direction in which God wishes to steer us.

This lyric is the closest I have yet come to fulfilling my original intention of setting Thomas Keating’s actual words to music. It is based on a couple of sentences that can be found in the summing up of Chapter 8 in the book Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love. I had earmarked these for attention but no musical ideas arrived until after I had had a conversation with one of my younger colleagues at the Holy Isle Wisdom School who told me that the use of masculine pronouns for God made her feel uneasy. Fr. Thomas was aware of this trend himself and modified his language to accommodate it as his audience grew. Accordingly, I was a little less nervous about taking the paring knife to the original words which contained no less than six masculine pronouns in two short sentences. What I produced was the lyric you see above and, almost as soon as I had done, this little scherzo put itself forward.

So, sing this chant light-heartedly. I like to think that the image conjured by the staccato notes of God tiptoeing away from some overwrought supplicant on an emotional binge is in tune with Fr. Thomas’ own whimsical humour.