God as Lover

At Sacred Eros last night, we talked about language, and one of the topics we got onto was language for God. The facilitator mentioned America's Four Gods: What We Say about God--and What That Says about Us and the fact that one model that wasn't present was God as Lover.

One participant mentioned that she was raised Catholic and she thinks many of the greatest saints understood God as Lover. I was dubious/surprised and asked whom she would list. (In my head I thought, "Julian of Norwich? John Donne?")

She listed:
* St. Francis of Assisi
* St. Thérèse of Lisieux
* Thomas Aquinas (I might be remembering this one wrong -- could be another Thomas; edit: though another person has since confirmed his inclusion in this list)
* St. Catherine of Siena
* St. Faustina

The facilitator mentioned Milton.

In conversation today, bff listed:
* Gregory of Nyssa
* Teresa of Ávila

I'm now really curious whom else people might list -- and they don't have to be canonized saints (or even operating within the Christian tradition -- we discussed Sufi mystics a bit last night).

Feel free also to just discuss the concept of God as Lover -- historically, personally, whatever (bff and I discussed nuns as Brides of Christ, for example, which moved into discussion of women's sexuality and self-understandings thereof).

Edit: Running list of mentions by other people:
* Margery Kempe
* Hildegard of Bingen
* St. John of the Cross
* "My Beloved Is Mine and I Am His" by Francis Quarles
* St. Augustine
* Patti Smith
* Mechthild of Magdeburg
* Gertrud of Helfta
* Agnes Blannbekin
* Heinrich Seuse ("who is particularly interesting as one aspect of how he understands his relationship with Christ in terms of a knight serving a lady")
* the "Jesus is my boyfriend" subset of contemporary Christian music
* Robinson Jeffers's "Roan Stallion"

"In filling a role that is part pastor, scholar and community organizer..."

Seen on facebook:

"Hendricks Chapel's first female dean is committed to social justice"

Jeremy: "Yea for T.L.!!"

Jeremy: "And wow...the comments are RIDICULOUS on that article."

Jeremy: "Oh man. Comment of the day RE: Cambridge Welcoming Ministries : "this group appears to be an informal front group for various labor unions and environmental groups." LOL!!!!"

Sean: "This is one of the best thing anyone has ever said about my church!"

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I told my housemate, who literally went \o/ and said, "Yeah! You're a socialist front!" and told me I needed to blog this :)

requesting a timeout to say grace?

I'm mostly good at asking whomever I'm eating with for a timeout so I can say a silent grace over my food -- when I'm in a one-on-one situation, anyway. I've mostly stopped telling the other person that they can go ahead and eat, because people always reply by insisting that no they'll wait. I'm not good at timeout-requesting when I'm with a group, though -- which is problematic because I'm really bad at tuning out noise around me. I went to a luncheon today, and when I arrived, a couple people were already talking, and I sat down and bowed my head and folded my hands in front of my face and the longer I sat there trying to say grace, the more I wanted to either pick up my food and move to a quieter part of the room to say grace or literally ask them to stop talking for a minute.

So the question I posed to facebook: Is it gauche to, in a secular setting, ask the people eating with you to stop talking so you can say a silent grace over your food?