A Grammar of Your Glory
O Lover,
Recently a clause has been coming to me, “Awaken Me to You,” which both escorts into prayer and helps to fend off distractions, even while pointing in a dedicated direction. While paradoxically including the function of “one simple word” of The Cloud of Unknowing (c.1385), the line is more a kaleidoscopic distillate of this stage of my faith journey. Ever within You, I here explore spirituality issues hinted at by grammatical components of this long-gestated clause. Admittedly an improbable mating of X and Y, but precisely such inconceivability is the constant of Your incarnational M.O. Pardon my pedantry: it is what I tend to do when in over my head in Your Mystérium.
The Type of Sentence -The “Awaken Me to You” prayer is a compressed expression of the imperative (including “You” understood), its function that of request, petition or command. The request in this case presupposes both needfulness and at least partial awareness of the same.
The Nuance of Verb – More than with cognitive or creedal words (e.g., “know,” “understand,” “believe”), the verb “awaken” has connotations bending toward “consciousness,” “awareness,” the “intuitive.” This reflects my experience that prayer inexorably finds us being drawn by You beyond the jurisdictions patrolled by our faculties of sense, intellect, and imagination.
The Voice of Verb – The action word (“awaken”) is in the passive form. While in my request I am exercising initiative and am thus never sans an active element, the use of this voice—that You cause me to be awakened—signs You as principal agent. However, the imperative clause’s passive/receptive/infused thrust never entirely eliminates initiative and should never to be confused with “inert.”
The Object of Preposition – In the clause the object of the preposition “to” is You, grammatically speaking. Here, however, language is clearly breaking down, for You are ever subject acting, never mere object being acted upon. All I experience as initiative is in reality response to Your previous actions upon me. For this reason Eckhart, for example, refers to You both as the Grunt (“Ground”) or “Depth” or “Abyss” of Being Itself rather than a being (among others), and as “No-thing” rather than a thing (among others).
The Number of the Person – The object of the clause’s verb “awaken” is the first person singular pronoun “me.” Rather than petitioning on behalf of all possible parties, the target of Your requested rousing is I myself. On the other hand, both the implied “You” of the imperative verb and the (inadequately expressed) object of the preposition (“You”) are in the second grammatical person. This reflects my mid-life decision to address You dialogically and personally as “Thou” (a la Buber), as subject (“You”) rather than object (“it”). Stated otherwise, while You are not a person like I am a person, Your boundarylessness both envelops and transcends all aspects of my personhood. I thus experience You personally: vis-à-vis (“face to face”). That I seek to employ the personal “You” despite Your uncontainability by the subject/object structure is yet another example of language found wanting when having to do with You, O Lover.
The Télos of Prayer – This heading references that toward which all is being convergently drawn. The clause intimates that prayer—indeed everything!—centers ultimately in You, O Lover, and only derivatively on “this or that.” Nothing, whether thought, word, argument, theology, image, imagining, affection, or emotion, is capable of adequately depicting You in and of Yourself. The core of prayer, finally, is this: Tu sólus (“You alone”)!
Thus once again, O Lover: Awaken me to You!
