' He is fullness '...

"O my Lover, what will Beguines say
and religious types,
When they hear the excellence
of your divine song?

Beguines say I err,
priests, clerics, and Preachers,
Augustinians, Carmelites,
and the Friars Minor,
Because I wrote about the being
of the one purified by Love.

I do not make Reason safe for them,
who makes them say this to me....

I have said that I will love Him.
I lie, for I am not.
It is He alone who loves me:

He is, and I am not;
And nothing more is necessary to me
Than what He wills,
And that He is worthy.

He is fullness,
And by this I am impregnated,
This is the divine seed and Loyal Love.


-Marguerite Porete
from Ellen Babinsky
Marguerite Porete: Mirror of Simple Souls (Classics of Western Spirituality)
Paulist Press, 1993