Available Light

The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing and St. John of the Cross writing of The Dark Night of the Soul allude to the same reality: that is, that God is unknowable and all our ideas about God, all our feelings about God, all our intuitions of God can only ever give us the vaguest knowledge of who and what God is. Whatever image of God it is that we hold between our ears is therefore largely the product of our rational, intuitive and affective imaginations. Paradoxically however, God calls us ever Godward and seeks us out. We are called, drawn to God and we make steady progress along the path to God and our knowledge of God, imperfect and fragmentary though it may be gets steadily clearer. As we progress along the narrow road that leads to life, there comes a point when we draw close enough to God that we must finally leave whatever it is we think we know of God behind. Like Reepicheep in The Voyage of The Dawn Treader , we get to the point where the ship of all our th...

I remember once reading Thomas Merton saying that the people who have had religious experiences never make very good monks. Similarly, The Cloud of Unknowing is not overly impressed with religious experiences. It's not that there is anything wrong with such events in themselves, but rather that they can divert us from the real path along which God seeks to lead us. Now, to a person of Pentecostal extraction, such as myself, this sentiment has caused a bit of soul searching; after all, I have had a few times of being overwhelmed by the Spirit, and in the churches I once attended these things were regarded as acceptable -or even required - in a normal Christian life. There are, of course, the obvious dangers of shallow experiences. We are all prone to group hysteria, suggestibility and the misinterpretation of indigestion. We all have a remarkable capacity to deceive ourselves and to fall prey to the tricks of our central nervous systems. The Cloud of Unknowing says that all religio...

The Cloud of Unknowing is one of those books, like the Bible , that sits unread on a lot of bookshelves. E.g. mine. At various times in the past, I peeked into it, and retired baffled. Of course I never admitted as much. When it came up in conversation, I'd nod sagely.  "Oh yes, The Cloud of Unknowing . Great book, Fantastic. Loved every minute of it. " A little like 12 year olds smoking: "Hey, man, this is so cool! Cough! Hack! Retch." The anonymous 14th Century author of this spiritual instruction tells us that the book isn't for everyone, and that apart from those called to read it he'd really rather people left it alone. I certainly followed his advice. The book sat unread on my shelf for decades, but last week all that changed. Maybe it's a call? Or maybe for people like me, some pennies just take about 30 years to drop. I'd been thinking, recently, of how God is ultimately unknowable, and trying to think what that might mean for a spiritu...