Advent Day 24: The Cloud of Unknowing
Lift your heart toward God
He kindled your desire with the greatest grace, and attached to it a leash of longing…
Advent Day 24: The Cloud Of Unknowing (c. 1375)
No contemplative Christian text of the past thousand years has been more influential than the spiritual guide The Cloud of Unknowing. Yet, virtually nothing is known of its author other than he was probably a monk who lived in the East Midlands of England during the late fourteenth century, making him a contemporary of Julian of Norwich. In form, The Cloud is a letter, most likely written in response to a younger monk who had reached out to this master for spiritual direction. Mysterious origin stories aside, The Cloud, with its practical wisdom and method, has inspired centuries of Christian contemplatives, down to our present time.
At the core of The Cloud is the belief that God can best (some would say only) be met in silence. To do this, the author recommends a meditation technique that, in modern times, has come to be called Centering Prayer.
The instruction for this technique is deceptively simple. Due to its surface simplicity, The Cloud warns that it is easy to misunderstand and likely to be misinterpreted or misused by those not yet ready to receive its wisdom. For this reason, the author counsels the recipient of the letter to keep it secret.
Do not, he says, share it with the loud-mouthed or flatterers or busybodies or cantankerous, or even just the simply curious. To them, The Cloud will mean nothing. (Note that the author may have had in mind some of the church gatekeepers who’d spent the previous thousand years building increasingly hierarchical institutions that controlled the hows, wheres and whens of access to God.)
How did the novice monk know if he was ready to undertake this kind of journey? How do we know if we are?
The Cloud points to several signs you may be ready:
You have a passion for silence, and
An intense longing to have a relationship with God, but
Formulaic prayers are no longer stirring anything in you, and
Nor are any of the other ways you’ve typically practiced your faith, all of which leave you cold.
For the monk who received this letter—and for any of us longing and ready for a deep connection with God—the first caution about this method is that it proceeds along the via negativa, the mystical path of unknowing. At the trailhead of the via negativa, we humbly set down our cultural, religious and mental baggage which have given us limited concepts of God. The Cloud calls this entering the cloud of forgetting. Passing through this stage, unburdened by the weight of having to have answers, and accepting that the fullness of God is unknowable—and with a curious and open beginner’s mind—we enter the cloud of unknowing. Like all great paths, the mystical one is about the journey not the destination. In contemplation we wander mindfully, without rushing, through the misty cloud of unknowing. Yet, in the paradoxical twist of this contemplative journey, as we go deeper into our sincere and humble longing for God, surrendering to the unknowing, something of God is revealed.
But the author of The Cloud warns up front not to expect fireworks. This is a subtle realm that the contemplative enters.
For the first time you lift your heart to God with stirrings of love, you will find only a darkness, as it were a cloud of unknowing…Whatever you do, this darkness and the cloud are between you and your God, and hold you back from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason and from experiencing him in the sweetness of love in your feelings… And so prepare to remain in this darkness as long as you can…for if you are ever to feel or see him...it must always be in this cloud and this darkness.
In other words, though we may not be able to fully grasp an infinite God with our finite capabilities, with pure loving intention and enough perseverance in silence, we might pierce the cloud of unknowing with a dart of longing.
One starts by:
Lift(ing) up your heart towards God with a humble stirring of love; and think of himself, not of any good to be gained from him.
This is step one: learn to love and long for God, not for what God can do for you, not to earn contemplative brownie points, but simply for who God is. This echoes the later steps of Bernard of Clairvaux’s degrees of ascending love. Once you set this as your intention, you bring your focus to God.
…refuse to think of anything but him, so that nothing acts in your intellect or will but God himself. And do what you can to forget all of God's creations and all their actions, so that your thoughts and desires are not directed and do not reach out towards any of them…
The author of The Cloud wants you to draw a curtain between the coach-cabin that is your busy, distracted mind, and the first-class cabin which is the presence of God. But if quieting the mind was tough for a medieval monk, it is infinitely harder for us with our smartphones, streaming services and social media which guarantee that we never have to be alone, and never have to do the hard work of being silent.
And make no mistake, it is hard work. If you’ve ever tried meditation, you know that, at the beginning, it is nearly impossible to go more than a few seconds without the mind straying. This is completely natural. The author of The Cloud understood this, and so he gives us a tool. First, go into contemplation with your intention to simply sit in the presence of God. Then choose a word to be your dart of longing:
If you want to have this intention wrapped and enfolded in one word, so that you can hold on to it better, take only a short word of one syllable; that is better than one of two syllables, for the shorter it is, the better it agrees with the work of the spirit. A word of this kind is the word God or the word Love.
Whenever your mind strays, you repeat this word, using it as your dart of longing that pierces the cloud of unknowing and allows you re-entry to stillness.
Now, rest in this state of relaxed surrender for a period of time (modern Centering Prayer teachers have settled on twenty minutes as an ideal length).
That’s the method. Simple, but definitely not easy.
But again, this is a subtle path. It is not ecstatic visions or rolling on the floor speaking in tongues. It takes much practice and a willingness to suffer. Yes, that’s right: suffer. There can be the physical discomfort of just remaining still. But, more often, there is the discomfort of wrestling with your own jumpy mind. And even once you reach the stage where you can more easily tame your thoughts, there will come periods of spiritual dryness and darkness. Or difficult emotions may arise. It’s all par for the course.
But if we can stick with it over time, and commit to long-term practice, more and more we may feel ourselves uniting to God, love and peace flooding our being—oneing, as Julian of Norwich would say. And even if those moments are here then gone, they are never forgotten, and always afterward longed for.
This is your foretaste of heaven.
Practice
Interested in learning more about Christian contemplation? Here are a few ways to dive deeper:
Watch this 10-minute video from my teacher Richard Rohr where he talks about contemplation, which he refers to as a long, loving look at the real.
Learn about Christian contemplatives traditions on Contemplative Outreach.
Revisit the Practice section from our recent entry on Thomas Keating.
As you proceed through Advent, consider making a commitment to try a style of contemplative practice on a daily basis. The truth is that you will only make real headway if you have a diligent practice. There are many styles of Christian contemplation besides Centering Prayer, including Lectio Divina, the Ignatian Exercises, praying the Rosary, reciting well-known prayers like the Jesus Prayer, the prayer of Saint Francis, etc. Try different ones and see what resonates with you!
Upcoming Holiday Happenings at Life In The City
Dec. 21, 7:30 pm: Blue Christmas, an intimate service for the longest night of the year.
Dec. 23, 7:00 pm: Our annual Christmas Eve-Eve service.
Dec. 25, 11:15 am: Celebrate Christmas morning with your church family.
Jan 1, 11:15 am: A quiet, contemplative service to welcome 2023.
Feedback
This is a first draft of a book that will go to publishers in 2023. If you spot typos or have suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email Greg Durham at greg@lifeinthecityaustin.org.
Catch Up On Recent Posts
Read the Introduction to The Heart Moves Toward Light: Advent With The Mystics, Saints and Prophets.
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