Dialogue 1: The Common Life

James Finley (0:00)

Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:03)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:05)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:15)

Welcome, everyone, to season five of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to an anonymous author and the book, The Cloud of Unknowing. I'm here with Jim, and we're going to dialogue about his first session on The Cloud. Fun to start a new Mystic.

I'm excited about it. I wanted to begin where you began with that first session, which was going over the schema that this author uses to describe these states of faith or degrees of faith and awakening to God. Just an opening question. Does everyone on a faith journey go through, especially the first two stages?

James Finley (1:04)

I would say if we're on a faith journey, first of all, of course, everyone is in or has gone through the first stage. That is, there is a kind of religious consciousness, but it fulfills, gives moral guidelines, it gives a sense of belonging, all good things, whatever your own heritage is, continuity, and probably to sincerely then live your faith, where it's personally important to you, and everyone lives the special way.

And also, in the common way and in the special way, everyone from time to time experiences a blind stirring of love, like the quickening. But not everyone has a singular phase, where there's a desire to abide in that stirring, like a longing, like having tasted it. One wants to find one's way, how do I stay there?

And so not everyone has that. So he's writing for the person who is experiencing that, or to help us discern it, because it's subtle in a way. It's a very subtle kind of longing. And so he's trying to offer guidance in how to understand it, recognize it, understand it. And then, like all these mystics, how to respond to it, how to kind of yield to it.

Kirsten Oates (2:35)

Yes, I was thinking about parents or grandparents, even me as an aunt, listening to this podcast and thinking about this schema in relation to children, teenagers, people growing up in our midst. And so hopefully this teaching will be helpful to looking at the next generation and how to better support them in their faith journey.

James Finley (2:59)

Yeah, exactly. You know, I used to, for years I taught high school religion. I taught seniors, Catholic schools, wrote the textbooks. It's interesting, these people who are 17, 18 years old, some of them just aren't very, you know, some of them just aren't, but some of them are very, their faith is, they have their own sense of their faith and how to grow in it and they want to. They're very sincere about it.

And so that's how we, in our own journey, can look back and help others move along. But also, we're saying for those who are more in this contemplative way, can help people who are just beginning to find their way into it and how to help them. And that's what the author, The Cloud, is doing. That's what all the mystics are doing there. We're all in this together and such a person is well seasoned in this.

Is there to help people find their way into this? And that's the teachings, really.

Kirsten Oates (4:00)

I didn't have guidance like this, which is so helpful. But my grandmother did really encourage the mystical sense of life when I was growing up, which I look back on and see was a great grounding for this journey I'm on now. You mentioned the desire that comes and we've been seeing with all these mystics how desire is the first step into this contemplative journey.

And this desire, Jim, you describe it as a graced, like it's a gift. We can't kind of make it come to life ourselves, is it?

James Finley (4:42)

Yes, here's how it helps me to understand it. We do this thing again. Say we draw a circle that represents ourself, the interiority of ourself, our soul. And we know by faith that God lives in the innermost, hidden center of ourself. The kingdom of heaven is within you. And so God, whom the whole universe cannot contain, is all about us, as Augustine says, closer to us than we are to ourselves.

So what happens in this special way, devotional sincerity, is that God does illumine the interiority of that circle. It doesn't, not the center, but illumines, reflective consciousness, illumined by faith. So there's consolations, there's insights, there's aspirations, there's these gifts that come to us to guide us in our faith walk.

What happens in the stirring, which is a blind stirring, in your inmost center, it's deep, it's hidden, it's that hidden center where you and God are unexplainably one with each other, is that it stirs there.