Jeremiah 31:12 Meaning They Will Come and Sing

Sotāpatti: Entering the stream Stream entry is the first turn that cannot be undone. Water goes downhill without being pushed, and a mind that has made that turn moves toward the good the way this crowd flows to the goodness of Yahweh, carried more than driven. The effort is all in reaching the bank; after that the current does most of the work of getting home.

Pīti: Rapture Rapture is the gladness that lifts the body, goosebumps and a catch in the throat. Singing breaks out on the height because joy of this size will not stay inside; it has to go somewhere, so it goes into the voice. It comes when a mind stops bracing for the next blow, which is what a people back from deportation can finally stop doing.

Santuṭṭhi: Contentment Contentment is being satisfied with what has come. Grain, new wine, oil, the young of the flock and the herd: a household's plain stores, with nothing rare among them. Whoever has stopped measuring the pile is full on very little, and an ordinary larder begins to read like abundance.

Bhāvanā: Cultivation Bhāvanā is the growing of the mind, the word a farmer would use for a crop. Someone dug the channels of that watered garden and someone opens the gate each morning, and a heart goes green by the same patient work. Water it daily with attention and it holds through the dry months; leave it a season and the desert comes back over the wall.

Asoka: Sorrowless Asoka is the condition in which grief has no root left to grow from. Sorrow here does not arrive and get comforted, it stops arriving, which is further than any wound closing over. The sorrowless stand on the height and look down on a plain where weeping still goes on, quiet for a reason no one below can see.