"Look forward, not backward. See what you still lack, not what you have already; for that is the quickest way of getting and keeping humility. Your whole life now must be one of longing, if you are to acheive perfection. And this longing must be in the depths of your will, put there by God, with your consent. But a word of warning: he is a jealous lover, and will brook no rival; he will not work in your will if he has not sole charge; he does not ask for help, he asks for you...
...When you first begin, you find only darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing. You don't know what this means except that in your will you feel a simple steadfast intention reaching out to God. Do what you will, this darkness and this cloud remain between you and God, and stop you both from seeing him in the clear light of rational understanding, and from experiencing his loving sweetness in your affection. Reconcile yourself to wait in this darkness as long as it is necessary, but still go on longing after him whom you love. For if you are to feel him or to see him in this life, it must always be in this cloud, in this darkness. And if you will work hard at what I tell you, I believe that through God's mercy you will achieve this very thing...
...whoever hears or reads about all this, and thinks that it is fundamentally an activity of the mind, and proceeds then to work it all out along these lines, is on quite the wrong track. He manufactures an experience that is neither spiritual nor physical. He is dangerously misled and in real peril..so for the love of God be careful, and do not attempt to achieve this experience intellectually. I tell you truly it cannot come this way. So leave it alone...
...you will ask me, 'How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?' and I cannot answer you except to say 'I do not know!'...For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them - yes, even the very works of God himself - yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? because he may well be loved, but not thought. By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore, though it may be good sometimes to think particularly about God's kindness and worth, and though it may be enlightening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work now before us it must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness about you. Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.
Should any thought arise and obtrude itself between you and the darkness, asking what you are seeking, and what you are wanting, answer that it is God you want: 'Him I covet, him I seek, and nothing but him." Should he (the thought) ask, "What is this God? ' answer that it is the God who made you and redeemed you and who has, through his grace, called you to his love. 'And', tell him, "you do not even know the first thing about him.' And then go on to say 'Get down', and proceed to trample on him out of love for God; yes, even when such thoughts seem to be holy, and calculated to help you find God...
...When you feel by the grace of God that he is calling you to this work, and you intend to respond, lift up your heart to God with humble love. And really mean God himself...And think no other thought of him. It all depends on your desire. A naked intention directed to God, and himself alone, is wholly sufficient.
If you want this intention summed up in a word, to retain it more easily, take a short word, preferably of one syllable, to do so. The shorter the word the better, being more like the working of the Spirit. A word like 'GOD' or 'LOVE'. Choose which you like, or perhaps some other, so long as it is of one syllable. And fix this word fast to your heart, so that it may always be there come what may. It will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike. With this word you will hammer the cloud and the darkness above you, With this word you will supress all thought under the cloud of forgetting. So much so that if ever you are tempted to ask what it is that you are seeking, this one word will be sufficient answer. And if you would go on to think learnedly about the significance and analysis of that same word, tell yourself that you will have it whole, and not in bits and pieces."
5 comments:
Damn you're a good writer.......
You make unmanly moisture threaten to inundate my eyes sometimes.
How happy are the vagaries of fate that bring us to places we might not otherwise have known.
Capn....I'm very glad the words have touched you...in fact, I am strongly moved...but I must rush to say that these are not my words but the words of an unknown Christian mystic monk of medieval times, (late 14th century) who wrote a work called "The Cloud of Unknowing."
In the end, though, there's really only one Author..
I knew, too late (no sooner than I had posted), that I'd left room for confusion.
Though inappropriate for this entry, my remarks were intended to express my admiration and gratitude for the gifts you have given since last I put in my humble pennyworth.
A flower may have a coldly calculable, logical and entirely functional place within the framework of an ordered, synergistic ecological matrix.....but beyond it's beauty and it's delightful aroma....does it really need any other reason to exist?
Were it not for such as you,the entire blogoverse might be comparable to some vast beanfield....producing no more than a bland, though arguably necessary, provender, yet lacking in those elements that truly nourish and sustain a life beyond mere existence.
I have always been a bit ambivalent about The Cloud of Unknowing. On the one hand it somehow sounds right. And I'm sure it's a useful counterbalance to all of our facile and possibly impious certainties about what God is and what God means. But...I also sometimes think this writer was unnecessarily muddying the waters. According to the gospel of John, when the disciples at that last passover feast asked Jesus to show them the father he did not answer them with a rebuke about the baffling mysteriousness and ineffability of God. Instead, he basically told them (freely paraphrased): "Look at me. You've been with me all this time. You know what I'm like. That's what God is like. Because I'm in him and he's in me."
I have the uncomfortable feeling that my most recent comment here is obtuse. That I'm missing the point. If so, I hope someone will enlighten me.
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