Cloud Of Unknowing Quotes

The universes which are amenable to the intellect can never satisfy the instincts of the heart.

It is surely justice to share our natural gifts with those who share our nature.

She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers. (kindle location 2950)

Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith. Whatever was witnessed in the real world was unknowable in real time. It was the eye of the camera that captured the world as it truly was.

For I tell you this: one loving, blind desire for God alone is more valuable in itself, more pleasing to God and to the saints, more beneficial to your own growth, and more helpful to your friends, both living and dead, than anything else you could do.

Even the most ignorant person on earth can experience union with God in perfect love by practicing contemplation in the beauty of humility.

Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknowing, then, the father proceeds with his instruction.

And therefore take good heed unto time, how that thou dispendest it: for nothing is more precious than time. In one little time, as little as it is, may heaven be won and lost.

LIFT up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods.

At the heart of all truth lies a radiant cloud of unknowing, a glorious nugget of doubt, a shining core of impermanence.

You will see by this that no man should be judged by another here in this life, for the good or evil he has done. Deeds may be properly judged, whether they are good or bad, but not men.

I came into the unknown and stayed there unknowing rising beyond all science. I did not know the door but when I found the way, unknowing where I was, I learned enormous things, but what I felt I cannot say, for I remained unknowing, rising beyond all science. It was the perfect realm of holiness and peace. In deepest solitude I found the narrow way: a secret giving such release that I was stunned and stammering, rising beyond all science. I was so far inside, so dazed and far away my senses were released from feelings of my own. My mind had found a surer way: a knowledge of unknowing, rising beyond all science. And he who does arrive collapses as in sleep, for all he knew before now seems a lowly thing, and so his knowledge grows so deep that he remains unknowing, rising beyond all science. The higher he ascends the darker is the wood; it is the shadowy cloud that clarified the night, and so the one who understood remains always unknowing, rising beyond all science. This knowledge by unknowing is such a soaring force that scholars argue long but never leave the ground. Their knowledge always fails the source: to understand unknowing, rising beyond all science. This knowledge is supreme crossing a blazing height; though formal reason tries it crumbles in the dark, but one who would control the night by knowledge of unknowing will rise beyond all science. And if you wish to hear: the highest science leads to an ecstatic feeling of the most holy Being; and from his mercy comes his deed: to let us stay unknowing, rising beyond all science.

Prayer, said Mechthild of Magdeburg, brings together two lovers, God and the soul, in a narrow room where they speak much of love: and here the rules which govern that meeting are laid down by a master’s hand.

When he died, I felt like a dark, devouring force had been stilled at last. I wore his death like wings.

Don't you think he may be pursuing an ideal that is hidden in a cloud of unknowing — like an astronomer looking for a star that only a mathematical calculation tells him exists?

Don’t you think he may be pursuing an ideal that is hidden in a cloud of unknowing—like an astronomer looking for a star that only a mathematical calculation tells him exists?

The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide to contemplative prayer. "Be willing to be blind, and give up all longing to know the why and how, for knowing will be more of a hindrance than a help." This 1912 edition was edited by Evelyn Underhill, and contains her introduction.

Every earthly revelation has a spiritual significance. I believe that if we humans were more spiritual, we wouldn’t need visions. These are given whenever someone hasn’t quite grasped an invisible spiritual lesson and needs a visual to go with it. We must learn to pull off this rough husk and feed on its sweet kernel.

She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?

Let everyone beware lest he presume to take it upon himself to criticize and condemn other men's faults without his having been truly touched within by the Holy Spirit in his work. Otherwise he may very easily err in his judgments. Beware therefore. Judge yourself as seems right to you between yourself and your God, and let other men alone.

Time passed, unknowable amounts and I had no sense for it. There was just the blanket and grass, the cold of rain and the heat of Lilly like a small sun beside me, and we lay there until the clouds left and the SimStars reappeared.

knoweth things as they are and not as they are said or seem to be, he truly is wise, and is taught of God more than of men. He who knoweth

The Cloud of Unknowing was written by someone who was exceedingly tough-minded in the sense in which William James used the phrase. He was most unsentimental, matter of fact, and down to earth; and he regarded this habit of mind as a prerequisite for the work in which he was engaged. He proceeded upon the belief that when an individual undertakes to bring his life into relation to God, he is embarking upon a serious and demanding task, a task that leaves no leeway for self-deception or illusion. It requires the most rigorous dedication and self-knowledge. The Cloud of Unknowing is therefore a book of strong and earnest thinking. It makes a realistic appraisal of the problems and weaknesses of individual human beings, for it regards man's imperfections as the raw material to be worked with in carrying out the discipline of spiritual development.

disappeared,

Do this work until you feel the delight of it.

a craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech,

A curse is like a child, formed To grow to maturity: Accident is design And design is accident In a cloud of unknowing.

And the voice spoke even more deliberately: '...but remember what is under the ocean of clouds: eternity.' And suddenly that tranquil world, the world of such simple harmony that you discover as you rise above the clouds, took on an unfamiliar quality in my eyes. All that gentleness became a trap. In my mind's eye I saw that vast white trap laid out, right under my feet. Beneath it reigned neither the restlessness of men nor the living tumult and motion of cities, as one might have thought, but a silence that was even more absolute, a more final peace. That viscous whiteness was turning before my eyes into the boundary between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. And I was already beginning to sense that a spectacle has no meaning except when seen through a culture, a civilization, a professional craft.

Look at your weaknesses, not at your strengths, and pay attention to what you still need to do, instead of rehearsing in your mind what you’ve already accomplished. This is the best way to get and keep humility.

So be very careful how you spend your time. There is nothing more precious. In the twinkling of an eye, heaven may be won or lost... Man will have no excuse before God at the Day of Judgment when he gives an account of how he spent his time.

A place has a curious quality when you have only a partial understanding of its language, and in those early months the sensation was especially peculiar. At first I moved in a cloud of unknowing, the speech around me impenetrable, but it quickly grew less elusive as I began to understand single words and then phrases and now even snippets of conversation. On occasion, I found myself stumbling into situations more intimate than I would have liked, the city was no longer the innocent place it had been when I arrived.

Too, if you’re a true contemplative, your life and words will overflow with spiritual wisdom, compassion, and fruitful insight, because you’re sure to measure out what you say carefully and calmly, eschewing lies and speaking without the shrill pretense of hypocrites.

See then how He returns, not in actual flesh and blood, but, as I have said, building the road of His doctrine, with His power, which road cannot be destroyed or taken away from him who wishes to follow it, because it is firm and stable, and proceeds from Me, who am immovable.

The exact science of one molecule transformed into another -- that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn't explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?

So take good care of your time. Watch how you spend it, for nothing is more precious. In the twinkling of an eye, heaven can be won or lost. Here’s

Remain with Him in thy chamber, for thou shalt not elsewhere find so great peace.

Prayer, said Mechthild of Magdeburg, brings together two lovers, God and the soul, in a narrow room where they speak much of love:

He is a jealous lover and suffereth no fellowship, and Him list not work in thy will but if He be only with thee by Himself. He asketh [p. 70] none help, but only thyself.

every page is an echo of Gregory the Great’s well-known phrase, “Love itself is a kind of knowing.”37

The author of the quaint old English classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, teaches us how to do this. "Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God.

It is pure love when you ask God neither for release from punishment nor for increase of reward, nor even for the sweetness of his love in this life – unless it happens that you desire the sweetness at a particular time, to refresh your spiritual powers so that they do not fail on the way – but when you ask God for nothing but himself. And you have neither care nor concern whether you will be in pain or in bliss, so long as you have him whom you love. This is pure love.

For spiritually heaven is as near down as up, and up as down, behind as in front, in front as behind, on one side as on the other, to such an extent that anyone who had a true desire to be in heaven would be there in spirit at that very moment.

All conflict arises out of a cloud of unknowing. The unknowing that all this is self* and that it is self which has conceived itself so to perceive itself as self differentiated so not to be by itself and this for but one singular purpose. The one singular purpose it is companionship, it is friendship, it is love. Hence one arrives at a solution for conflicts. The solution for conflicts is knowing. It is knowing we are not here to fight one another but to love each other. (*the one common good, the world, the word)

But you’re probably thinking something like this: “You call this ‘rest’? It’s nothing but uncomfortable and difficult. There’s no rest in it. When I try doing what you recommend, I find pain and struggling. It’s like I’m being attacked on all sides. A part of me always wants to quit. I don’t let it, but some facet of my mind is constantly trying to squash my best efforts. On the other hand, a part of me desperately wants to feel God and forget my self—be truly selfless—but I can’t.2 I’m still awkward, still self-conscious, and the conflict continues, overwhelming me. It’s agonizing. And this is the ‘rest’ you mean? If so, I think it’s a strange sort of rest.” My response to this is that you’re not used to contemplation yet and that’s why it seems painful. If you were familiar with this work and knew how much it could help you, you would never quit, not for all the physical joys and rest this world offers. Yes, I know it’s agonizing and strenuous. But I still call it “rest” for two reasons: When your soul is engaged in contemplation, it doesn’t worry or feel doubt. It’s totally at peace because it knows exactly what it’s supposed to do. Also, when practicing this prayer, your soul is purified and transformed. You become discerning. And you no longer want to wander from the path as much. Go forth and gently conquer, then. Be humble and passionate in this work. Persevere. Contemplation begins on earth but continues in eternity. Love never ends. Now I ask almighty Jesus to bring you and all those whom he has bought with his precious blood to this glorious, everlasting life. Amen.3

This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft. Mountaineers too know the sea of clouds, yet it does not seem to them the fabulous curtain it is to me.

Our union is in love, not in thought, “because he can certainly be loved, but not thought. He can be taken and held by love but not by thought. Therefore, though it is good at times to think of the kindness and worthiness of God in particular, and though this is a light and a part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this exercise, it must be cast down and covered over with a cloud of forgetting.”4 Even knowing this, however, we may still feel ridiculous when we can find no words to describe God after spending so much time in prayer. The author of the Cloud of Unknowing has learned to embrace his poverty when he can state it simply, “But now you put me a question and say: ‘How might I think of [God] in himself, and what is he?’ And to this I can only answer thus: ‘I have no idea.’ For with your question you have brought me into that same darkness, into that same cloud of unknowing.”5 In my human poverty, I must learn to accept prayer that seems useless, leaving me with nothing to show for it.

What did we talk about? I don't remember. We talked so hard and sat so still that I got cramps in my knee. We had too many cups of tea and then didn't want to leave the table to go to the bathroom because we didn't want to stop talking. You will think we talked of revolution but we didn't. Nor did we talk of our own souls. Nor of sewing. Nor of babies. Nor of departmental intrigue. It was political if by politics you mean the laboratory talk that characters in bad movies are perpetually trying to convey (unsuccessfully) when they Wrinkle Their Wee Brows and say (valiantly--dutifully--after all, they didn't write it) "But, Doctor, doesn't that violate Finagle's Constant?" I staggered to the bathroom, released floods of tea, and returned to the kitchen to talk. It was professional talk. It left my grey-faced and with such concentration that I began to develop a headache. We talked about Mary Ann Evans' loss of faith, about Emily Brontë's isolation, about Charlotte Brontë's blinding cloud, about the split in Virginia Woolf's head and the split in her economic condition. We talked about Lady Murasaki, who wrote in a form that no respectable man would touch, Hroswit, a little name whose plays "may perhaps amuse myself," Miss Austen, who had no more expression in society than a firescreen or a poker. They did not all write letters, write memoirs, or go on the stage. Sappho--only an ambiguous, somewhat disagreeable name. Corinna? The teacher of Pindar. Olive Schriener, growing up on the veldt, wrote on book, married happily, and ever wrote another. Kate Chopin wrote a scandalous book and never wrote another. (Jean has written nothing.). There was M-ry Sh-ll-y who wrote you know what and Ch-rl-tt- P-rk-ns G-lm-an, who wrote one superb horror study and lots of sludge (was it sludge?) and Ph-ll-s Wh--tl-y who was black and wrote eighteenth century odes (but it was the eighteenth century) and Mrs. -nn R-dcl-ff- S-thw-rth and Mrs. G--rg- Sh-ld-n and (Miss?) G--rg-tt- H-y-r and B-rb-r- C-rtl-nd and the legion of those, who writing, write not, like the dead Miss B--l-y of the poem who was seduced into bad practices (fudging her endings) and hanged herself in her garter. The sun was going down. I was blind and stiff. It's at this point that the computer (which has run amok and eaten Los Angeles) is defeated by some scientifically transcendent version of pulling the plug; the furniture stood around unknowing (though we had just pulled out the plug) and Lady, who got restless when people talked at suck length because she couldn't understand it, stuck her head out from under the couch, looking for things to herd. We had talked for six hours, from one in the afternoon until seven; I had at that moment an impression of our act of creation so strong, so sharp, so extraordinarily vivid, that I could not believe all our talking hadn't led to something more tangible--mightn't you expect at least a little blue pyramid sitting in the middle of the floor?

SURELY YOU SEE from this that you shouldn’t take your own experience as the rule of thumb by which you judge other contemplatives. For example, those who must work really hard to reach the peak of contemplation, and then only get there occasionally, might make the mistake of using their own experience as the standard for other contemplatives. We must remember that not everyone has a difficult journey to the exceptional ecstasy. Some walk a simple path, routinely meeting the miraculous in the ordinary. On the other hand, these contemplatives must not make the opposite assumption that their experience is universal. Not everyone feels the joy of contemplation whenever they wish. Avoid both close-minded ways of thinking, for you can’t judge another’s unique contemplative experience by your own. Besides, you can’t know God’s wisdom; someone who has struggled a long time with prayer only to know the extraordinary transcendent moment may one day have these moments whenever they want and as often as they want. Moses is a good example of this. To start with, he only rarely caught a glimpse of the Ark’s form and not without first working awfully hard on the mountain. But later, when the Ark was kept in the valley, Moses could see it as often as he liked.1

And our soul by virtue of this reforming grace is made sufficient to the full to comprehend all Him by love, the which is incomprehensible to all created knowledgeable powers, as is angel, or man's soul; I mean, by their knowing, and not by their loving. And therefore I call them in this case knowledgeable powers. But yet all reasonable creatures, angel and man, have in them each one by himself, one principal working power, the which is called a knowledgeable power, and another principal working power, the which is called a loving power. Of the which two powers, to the first, the which is a knowledgeable power, God that is the maker of them is evermore incomprehensible; and to the second, the which is the loving power, in each one diversely He is all comprehensible to the full. Insomuch that a loving soul alone in itself, by virtue of love should comprehend in itself Him that is sufficient [p. 77] to the full--and much more, without comparison--to fill all the souls and angels that ever may be. And this is the endless marvellous miracle of love; the working of which shall never take end, for ever shall He do it, and never shall He cease for to do it. See who by grace see may, for the feeling of this is endless bliss, and the contrary is endless pain.

No greater love exists than when you sacrifice your very life for those who are your brothers and sisters by grace and by blood. God is the essence of your soul, as your soul is the essence of your body; therefore, just as the soul is more valuable than the body, so the union of the soul to God by the heavenly food of love is far more valuable than the union of the body to the soul by any earthly food in this life. Feeding your body healthy food is a good thing to do, but if you don’t nourish your soul also, it will be forever hungry. Do both, then, but remember that feeding your soul is most important. Merely feeding your body with good food doesn’t help you achieve salvation, but when your soul is well-fed, even when food for the body is scarce, your soul not only wins salvation but also knows the peace of God as it advances along the path of contemplation.

Darkness: I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

May 12. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and I feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited. Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might almost say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Forces, whose mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the best of spirits, with an inclination to sing in my heart. Why? I go down by the side of the water, and suddenly, after walking a short distance, I return home wretched, as If some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me a fit of low spirits? Is it the form of the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colors of the surrounding objects which are so changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that surrounds us, everything that we see without looking at it, everything that we touch without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it, everything that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid, surprising, and inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and through them on our ideas and on our being itself.

See? I long to be your spiritual guide. I really do, and I will. Love is my motive, rather than any elevated belief in my own knowledge, contemplative work, experience, or maturity. And may God correct what I get wrong. For he knows everything, and I only know in part.1 Now to satisfy your proud intellect, I will praise the work of contemplation. You should know that if those engaged in this work had the linguistic talent to express exactly what they’re experiencing, then every scholar of Christianity would be amazed by their wisdom. It’s true! In comparison, all theological erudition would look like total nonsense. No wonder, then, that my clumsy human speech can’t describe the immense value of this work to you, and God forbid that the limitations of our finite language should desecrate and distort it. No, this must not and will not happen. God forbid that I would ever want that! For our analysis of contemplation and the exercise itself are two entirely different things. What we say of it is not it, but merely a description. So, since we can’t define it, let’s describe it. This will baffle all intellectual conceit, especially yours, which is the sole reason I’m writing this letter. I want to start off by asking you a question. What is the essence of human spiritual perfection, and what are its qualities? I’ll answer this for you. On earth, spiritual perfection is only possible through the union between God and the human soul in consummate love. This perfection is pure and so sublime that it surpasses our human understanding, and that’s why it can’t be directly grasped or observed. But wherever we see its consequences, we know that the essence of contemplation abounds there. So, if I tell you that this spiritual discipline is better than all others, then I must first prove it by describing what mature love looks like. This spiritual exercise grows virtues. Look within yourself as you contemplate and also examine the nature of every virtue. You’ll find that all virtues are found in and nurtured by contemplation with no distortion or degeneration of their purposes. I’m not going to single out any particular virtue here for discussion. I don’t need to because you can find them described in other things I’ve written.2 I’ll only comment here that contemplative prayer, when done right, is the respectful love and ripe fruit that I discuss in your little Letter on Prayer. It’s the cloud of unknowing, the hidden love-longing offered by a pure spirit. It’s the Ark of the Covenant.3 It’s the mystical theology of Dionysius, the wisdom and treasure of his “bright darkness” and “unknown knowing.” It takes you into silence, far from thoughts and words. It makes your prayer very short. In it, you learn how to reject and forget the world.

You could have just asked.” She straightened up from Murphy and looked at me. “Instead, you took advantage of me and never said a word.” “I didn’t take advantage of you. I was just doing what I thought was best.” “Well, you don’t get to decide what’s best for me!” Her voice rose, and Murphy paused in purring to look up at her. “I don’t get a say?” I shot back, trying to hold on to my temper. She took a deep breath. “Of course you do. But you didn’t say anything. You just did. Just like at dinner. You just announced I was getting a restraining order. There was no conversation.” I opened my mouth, but she kept talking. “How am I supposed to trust you when you do things like this without me knowing?” “You don’t trust me anymore?” I said the words with quiet calm. Surely this wasn’t enough to ruin the trust between us. She blew out a breath and paced across the room. “I didn’t say that.” She spun away from me and looked at the wall. “I’m just upset.” I strode across the room. It was darker where she was. The lights were off in here, and from this position in the room, the crackling fire in the bedroom didn’t cast much light. My feet stopped when I was directly behind her. Usually, I would touch her without thought. But right then I paused. Fuck. That. I wrapped my hands around her wrists, then loosened my grip to slide my palms up her arms to rest at her shoulders. I felt her exhale, and I wrapped one of my arms across her chest and pulled her back against my front. “I could tell you I’m sorry,” I whispered in her ear. “I could whisper how much I love you and that I won’t ever do something like this again.” The back of her head hit my chest as I spoke. The silky strands of her perfectly straight hair tickled my lips as I talked, and the scent of her shampoo enticed me closer. “But I’m not going to apologize.” She stiffened, but I strengthened my hold, unwilling to let her pull away. I kept my voice whisper soft and my lips right beside her ear. “I’d do it again, in a friggin’ heartbeat if that’s what I thought you needed.” The frustration in her body was evident, but I ignored it. “Do you know how much I love you?” I whispered. “I love you so g**damned much that it scares the shit out of me. You have no idea the kind of power you wield, how much of me you own. Knowing you were completely vulnerable, that you were locked unknowingly in a bathroom with someone who literally lurked around while you were naked, while you were washing yourself, makes me sick. He could have raped you.” My voice broke on the last part because I had to force the words out of my mouth. “He didn’t,” she said quickly and tried to turn to face me. I wouldn’t let her. I liked her where she was. It was easier to bare my heart when she wasn’t staring into me with her eyes. “No, he didn’t. But he’s put bruises on you. The way you looked in that pool last night. The way your body just kind of stopped. You sank to the bottom with a dark cloud of hair obscuring your face. I knew you had to be reliving what happened. It broke me, Rim. Loving me has cost you so fucking much. Too much.” This time, she wouldn’t let me hold her. She spun around and tipped her chin up to look at me. I let her see. I let her see the bleakness in my eyes. “Loving you has given me way more than I imagined.” She reached up and brushed the backs of her knuckles across my cheek. I dragged my fingers through her hair. “It scares me too,” Rimmel whispered. “How much I love you.” “I’m going to protect you. I’m going to protect us,” I said. “I won’t ever stop.

Prayer is like practicing the piano or ballet or writing: you have to bring your body for a very long time, in spite of your body’s frailties and conflicts and general revolt, and then one day your body is not separate any more. You’ve in a sense become the piano or the dance or the word or the prayer. The prayer is in your heart. The prayer is your heart.

I also want to make this clear. In the contemplative work I’m describing, you don’t need to scrutinize the infinite characteristics of God any more than your own complicated nature. No name, no emotion, no thought is more like the everlasting nature of God than the experience you have, see, and feel in the blind and loving observation of the word is. Call God what you like: Good or gentle Lord; sweet, merciful, or righteous; wise or all-knowing; mighty or omnipotent; learning or wisdom; courage or strength; love or charity, or anything else, and you’ll find that all of these are hidden and included in this little word, is. God’s very essence is each of these and all of them together and also any other descriptions you could choose for him.3 You could add 100,000 similar loving words for God to this list, as many as you want, but altogether they’re not as good as is.4 If you say them all, you don’t add to is, and if you say none of them, you take nothing from is. So be as simple in your loving contemplation of God’s being as you are in the naked contemplation of your own self. Don’t analyze his being or yours. Let go of thinking, push it from you, and worship God with all that you are, as you are, embracing him as he is, for himself only, nothing more, because the happy essence both of God and of you is God.

…For it sufficient enough, a naked intent direct unto God without any other cause than Himself.

Did the gods once mingle with humankind, or is Homer a visionary madman, or, what is worse, a mere poet, a maker-up of beautiful falsities, an elegant liar? I shall grapple with that perplexity, only to emerge as I went in, in a cloud of unknowing, if perhaps a little the wiser.

Since every evil is found in sin, either as a consequence or as the sin itself, when we want to pray wholeheartedly to get rid of evil, we should say, think, or mean this little word—sin, nothing else. No other words are needed. On the other hand, if we pray intently to get anything good, we should cry out in word, thought, or longing nothing but this word—God, nothing else. No other words are needed; for God’s very nature is goodness, and he’s the source of everything good. Don’t spend time wondering why I chose these two words over all of the others. I looked into it and found none better. If I had, or if God had taught me different ones, I would have chosen them over these, but I can think of no shorter words that so well represent everything good or everything evil. Follow my example. Don’t analyze words at length because studying them isn’t the same as doing the work of contemplative prayer. Only grace gives this gift.

From deep in the tradition, from The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century text from an unnamed English monk: “You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God.” The words slap. Busyness is not much of an excuse if it only takes a minute or two to move toward God. But the monk's words console, too. For, of time and person, it seems that scraps are all I have to bring forward. That my ways of coming to God these days are all scraps.

For love may reach God in this life, but knowledge may not.

And indeed a soul is as truly in the place where it loves as it is in the body that lives by it and to which it gives life.

For time is made for man, and not man for time.

if by grace you can make love your own, do. For the experience is eternal joy;

I assure you, there is plenty of logic and reason with God, but it does not stop there. If all we had was logic and reason, we would never penetrate that Cloud of Unknowing that keeps most people from truly knowing God. We make a grave error when we approach such a subject as an expert. The church is full of experts these days, and they have only added to the confusion of our perception of God. The only way to approach the subject is as a worshiper.

This is not something that comes from textbooks or lectures or any of the technical aspects of religion that are so prominent today. This confidence in God can come only when we begin to know God as He really is. It is my contention that only a true worshiper can know God. Religion can teach you about God. Cold, textual theology can teach you about God. But neither can really bring you into the presence of God, where you begin to know God and have confidence in the God that you know. I contend that our faith in God comes naturally and automatically as we begin to know Him personally—not just know about God, but have a personal encounter with the living God, an encounter that is not boxed in by reason or logic. A true encounter with God lifts us above everything we can know, and we begin to pierce that Cloud of Unknowing and come into the presence of God.

But what happened is that as I jogged I felt all my questions leave me, for no reason. It was like entering a warm cloud and coming out the other side changed. I think it was profound. One minute I was tremendously vexed and the next I was dead certain the correct thing to do was leave Denoon alone. I had passed through a cloud of unknowing of some kind. It was crystal clear to me that I had delved enough, full stop. The everyday man he was was fine, full stop. I should stop evaginating him, to use a term I had gotten from him and demanded he stop using the second time I heard him do it, because it was stupidly provocative and not funny, even though all it means technically is to turn something inside out.

THERE ARE OTHER strategies, but I won’t go into them right now, because when, by grace, you try these two and prove their worth, I believe that you’ll have more to teach me then than I could ever teach you.

Having a gentle spirit means making peace with the cloud of unknowing. It means accepting that it’s OK not to know what you’re doing or where you're going, what your soul purpose is, why you made a mistake yesterday or how it’s all going to work out.

As you accept the conditions of living in the cloud of unknowing, you let go and allow your soul to lead the way, past the sharp edges of your ego, into the light of unconditional acceptance for all that is.

Believe God There are times when all we can do is believe God and what He says. Believe Him in love. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing says, “God Himself can no man think. . . . He may well be loved, but not thought.” Almighty God created the universe, and His presence overflows into immense degrees and can never be surrounded by that little thing we call our head, our intellect. He knows that all we can do is seek but never arrive at God.

Judge yourself as you want—that’s between you and God or your spiritual director—but leave others alone.

Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy’s death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. “This is my history,” he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: “Boy, was I loved.

I carefully kept myself in a cloud of unknowing.

In a recent Christian book entitled The Dangers of Growing Up in a Christian Home, psychologist Donald Sloat (1986) discusses individual differences at length and points out that some people are more prone to struggle with their Christian lives than others who are less sensitive by nature. This book is a good source for information on personality factors in a religious family. He also describes the way families and churches can unknowingly hinder emotional and spiritual growth by practices such as the following: Instilling a fear of God rather than a love for him Using guilt to manipulate Failure to “practice what they preach” Neglect of feelings and individual personalities Refusal to listen to questions and doubts Forcing a list of do’s and don’ts that cloud a true understanding of God and sinfulness

The Cloud of Unknowing.

If your mind lets in any sort of thought about any particular thing outside your naked blind being (which is your God and your goal), it gets sucked into and trapped in the tricks and curiosity of your intellect, distracting your mind and alienating you from yourself and God. That’s why you must persevere in contemplation. Do it as often as you can. Grace will help you. When you persist in it and don’t give up, wisdom strengthens the inner poise you need to hold your soul whole and focused. Remember that contemplation is not an interruption to your daily life. Instead, as you focus on this unseeing seeing of your naked being uniting you with God, keep doing what you always do: eat and drink, sleep and wake up, walk and sit, speak and be silent, lie down and get up, stand and kneel, run and ride, work and rest. But at the hub of it all, you’re also offering God the most precious sacrifice you can make: this blind awareness. It’s the most important of all of your activities, active or contemplative.

Original sin left him wounded and blind so that he is easily deceived by appearances and chooses an evil which has disguised itself as good.

In a sense, we should always be open to an “audit” from the ones we care about. If we are truly serious about growing, we want to know if we are unknowingly doing something wrong (Ps. 139:23– 24). Hidden sins and problems are destructive to us, and if we long to grow, we would want them exposed and healed.

You have to operate, at least some of the time, in the world of mystery, beneath that great and terrifying cloud of artistic unknowing

The condition of active life is such, that it is both begun and ended in this life; but not so of contemplative life. For it is begun in this life, and shall last without end. Why? That part that Mary chose shall never be taken away. Active life is troubled and travailed about many things; but contemplative sits in peace with one thing.

There is a quiet ache in the solitary darkness of a poet’s soul, which is unfathomable for many, but an unsuspected treasure at the same time. The treasure is in a silver casket, created with the ash of burnt shadows and the blazing fire of eternal struggles. It contains the ultimate secret – the secret of the cloud of unknowing flickering the purest transparent flower in bright but brief flashes of lightning.

Sometimes I think that it is a passing comfort to listen to his tales. He will sometimes make me weep heartily for pity of the Passion of Christ, sometimes for my wretchedness, and for many other reasons that I think are holy and have done me good. And therefore I think that he should in no way be evil; and if he is good, and with his sweet tales does me so much good, then I have great marvel why you ask me put him down and away so far under the cloud of forgetting?

the work of perfect love, the pure reaching out to God that begins here on earth, is exactly the same love that will last eternally in the joy of heaven. It is all one love.

[This dismantling of the false self] …that is something that is done to you. You don't do it. That is key. And that's why our mystics talked so much about surrender, or kenosis - self emptying. It's not a learning, as much as it is an unlearning. As the Cloud of Unknowing would have said and Dionysus would have said: it's much more an unknowing than a knowing. And I was just reading Meister Eckhart early this morning… my, that guy was brilliant. He says it in, you know, dozens of ways. The line you're familiar with is: ‘I pray God to rid me of God’. Which naturally a dualistic thinker thinks is heresy. He's just pure genius - because your notion of God is never adequate. And you've got to get rid of your present one to allow God to be bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. You know we've created Western atheism and agnosticism by peddling this puny, puny usually violent image of God. It's heartbreaking.

The cloud of unknowing prayer is apophatic and very simple. Imagine a cloud above you. Place your sense of conscious awareness in a location floating just below the cloud. The cloud represents God. It is called the cloud of unknowing because we acknowledge that no image is sufficient to depict God. Since you cannot know God fully through image or reason, you undertake the opposite—unknowing. All things pale in comparison to God’s infinite reality. For that reason, you give yourself a diffuse object to which to direct your attention—a cloud. Then, knowing that distractions inevitably will come, you are counseled to imagine a “cloud of forgetting” hovering beneath you. Whenever you notice that you are distracted, gently, without struggle, see the distraction drift beneath the cloud of forgetting. Then, return your attention back to the cloud of unknowing. But there is one more thing: You do not pay attention just to the cloud. In addition, you “direct your naked longing” to the cloud above you. As you direct your naked (unabashed, unhidden, vulnerable, humble, unhindered, unashamed) longing and need, you will feel a humbling and an opening of your heart. Eventually, you may begin to feel the radiance that is recognized as the energy of God. When you do, rest there and fill up your being with the rivers of living water.63 It truly satisfies. Notice that this is like the Prayer Therapy group in the study, Prayer Can Change Your Life. They reported, “We listen and wait for a sense of victory, a feeling of Presence that tells us, ‘I AM here. All is well.

than it is not to exceed in word.

The Cloud of Unknowing: “By our love, the divine may be reached and held; by our thinking, never.

he was surely lost in a cloud of unknowing; but at least it was a peaceful cloud at present and sailing through a milky sea towards a possible though unlikely ecstasy at an indefinite remove was, if not the fulness of life, then something like its shadow.

Ask yourself what will most strengthen you, what will best meet your needs, and what will most help you and all humanity mature. Blind, ordinary contemplation will. When with purity and integrity you practice this spiritual exercise, it’s always better for you than any thought, no matter how holy.

Be content feeling moved in a delightful, loving way by something mysterious and unknown, leaving you focused entirely on God, with no other thought than of him alone.

Those of us who have been awful, chronic sinners all our lives must embrace a cataclysmic, life-altering sorrow and regret.

Depart unclean spirit; put on shame, miserable one; horribly unclean art thou, who bringest such things to mine ears. Depart from me, detestable deceiver; thou shalt have no part in me; but Jesus shall be with me, as a strong warrior, and thou shalt stand confounded. Rather would I die and bear all suffering, than consent unto thee. Hold thy peace and be dumb; I will not hear thee more, though thou plottest more snares against me. The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom then shall I fear? Though a host of men should rise up against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid. The Lord is my strength and my Redeemer.' (Psalms xxvii. 1-3; xix. 14). 8.

Finally, to read the Middle English Cloud of Unknowing and Book of Privy Counsel is to practice contemplation.

We all got used to living in the cloud of unknowing.

Science does not see beyond the atom interacting with atom, the chemicals interacting with chemicals. The scientist cannot see the impressive existence of himself. Academics will never learn the meaning of life because they don’t feel it; they can only accept its existence as fact. “I think therefore I am.” And yet, thought is a cloud reflecting the impressions of a consciousness. I am therefore I think. The academic mind does not appreciate life in the festive sense therefore—derailed to love by a numb perspective. Life is an unknown, death is a mystery; no, life is a mystery, death is the unknown—in the sense that I will un-know my self in death. Science ignores the ultimate question in pursuance of the distant things, the most superficial things. One must discover from the inside out to discover he is made of nothing, and in that supreme emptiness, he is connected directly to everything that he studies.

But most of us have not had much training in waiting—or at least not enough to prepare us to help others wait in times when they feel highly threatened. Richard Rohr calls this waiting place “liminal space”; liminal comes from the Latin word limina, which means threshold. Liminal space, the place of waiting, is a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run . . . anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing. In solitude we learn to wait on God for our own life so that when our leadership brings us to the place where the only option for us as a people is to wait on God, we believe it all the way down to the bottom of our being. Because we have met God in the waiting place (rather than running away or giving in to panic or deceiving ourselves into thinking things are better than they are), we are able to stand firm and believe God in a way that makes it possible for others to follow suit. It is a sobering thing to ask ourselves this question: Have I learned enough about how to wait on God in my own life to be able to call others to wait when that is what’s truly needed? Have I done enough spiritual journeying to lead people on this part of their journey?

One branch after another of chemistry, physics, and cosmology has merged in the majestic river as it approaches the estuary-to be swallowed up by the ocean, lose its identity, and evaporate into the clouds; the final act of the great vanishing process, and the beginning, one hopes, of a new cycle. It has been said that we know more and more about less and less. It seems that the more universal the 'laws' which we discover, the more elusive they become, and that the ultimate consummation of all rivers of knowledge is in the cloud of unknowing.

So long, therefore, as the object of the mystic's contemplation is amenable to thought, is something which he can "know," he may be quite sure that it is not the Absolute; but only a partial image or symbol of the Absolute. To find that final Reality, he must enter into the "cloud of unknowing"--must pass beyond the plane on which the intellect can work. "When I say darkness," says the same great mystic, "I mean thereby a lack of knowing. . . .

So, work diligently in this nothing, which is nowhere.