De Heer heeft mij gezeen = You Gazed on Me, 1967 - 2001

Surprises - Taking Delight in the Unusual CS Lewis' classic book Surprised by Joy is a delightful meditation on the God of surprises, the Unpredictable One who wanders according to whim. But this is no pre-ordained divine plan, otherwise the element of surprise would be entirely missing. Of course we are completely incapable of knowing the mind or whims of God, or anything at all about God, since the One Who is for us is beyond description, beyond our reach, and therefore beyond definition.

I remember the 1889 pre-Vatican II Westminster Catechism of Christian Docrine, an impeccable summary of Catholicism. It asks the defining question in number 17 What is God?, and the answer to remove all doubts and plant absolute certainty in the mind of any 5 year old child with an enquiring mind, would answer, by rote, God is the supreme spirit who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections. Such is the answer, derived from a Thomistic quest for analogical reasoning, a biblical memory, and the experience of a short-lived life.

Yet despite this, a sense of wonder should always fill us with surprise, but in this case, surprise not about what we might discover but at what remains undiscoverable. Our growing capacity to comprehend the infinity of the Cosmos and smallest functionings of sub-atomic particles, falls short when it comes to the non-empirical. But what cannot be observed at the sensory level is all too clear at the level of intuition, deep inside the psyche,

The poet talks of a Being Who is experienced, Who is known because of what has long-been planted, a seed deep within. The context of this song is about a night time experience, about what happens to us in the depths of the night, and in our deepest dreaming; about what we will know with certainty in the clarity of the dawn light of our awakening. Oosterhuis plays fully on this concept of insemination, which may be startling because he uses unambiguous sexual imagery. In verse 2,Hij doet met ons, Hij gaat ons in en uit - He does (deals?) with us, goes in and out of us. This is an uncompromising reference to sexual intercourse, with Oosterhuis alluding to the imagery of incarnation, about how the Deity takes root in people. We awaken at dawn, from deep sleep, and The Ancient One, The First Voice ever heard, is embedded in us, the One we might call Always-Among-Us. The Dutch musicologist, Ad de Keyzer, refers to this whisper in the night as an Echo, a voice to which we respond and only in responding do we hear the Voice which the Echo anticipated.

No catechism might capture such a literary thrill. The Creator of the heavens and the earth, Who set the heavenly bodies in their orbits, Who separated dry land from the ocean, Who clothed the earth with fruit and all living beings, and yes, the One taught through syllogisms and analogous doctrine, is also the Delightful One who has claimed us and has become our dance master. With God so deeply imlanted in us, in us, the rhythm and the dance become one. It should be no surprise that the Creator of all that is should, in the way a man impregnates his loved one and a woman welcomes the seed of her beloved, would sow life within those who cherish the memory of Covenant.

Sexual imagery is no stranger to Oosterhuis, whose song Die om mij smeekt - And You Pursue Me should have been And You Seduce Me, a title which would make the American ear wince nervously! The English dictum, call a spade a spade, could well be applied here, since what could be more beautiful than this physical expression of the words of Genesis 1:26-28. Otherwise, what else is incarnation supposed to mean? And how else could we find God? Or God find us? - Tony Barr