The Cloud of Unknowing: Session 4

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time here together at Turning for Guidance to the Teachings of the Christian Mystic, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. As we go through these mystics together, I think it's always helpful to remind ourselves that these texts were written as guidelines in spiritual direction, and particularly with respect to offering guidance for the person who's come to a very mysterious place, or for those of us who come to this mysterious place in our journey, at which our search for God in prayer and in life starts to become mystical. Meaning it starts to take on a quality of infused contemplation, that is it's God not gracing us with the graces of God and the gift of the earth, the gift of life, the gift of our relationships, the gift of our inspirations, all of that in response to which we respond in love to live this life of discipleship and so on. But rather it's the point at which God begins to infuse into us God's knowledge of God and infuse into us God's knowledge of who God eternally knows us to be, hidden with Christ and God forever and eternally calls us to be. And we passively receive this divine influx into ourself. And because this is so mysterious, sometimes it's very intense, like it can be visions or voices or very intense, things can happen. But you see, it's just the opposite. It's extremely subtle and delicate. So they're trying to help us discern the signs that it's happening to us and also how to cooperate with it. And also what I wanna talk about this morning with you, sharing with you in this session, it isn't like a decisive point, like all of a sudden it clicks in the mystical direction, but there's actually a very broad-based range in which the intimations of the mystical start moving in and out of our lives. And that's what I wanna speak about here.

And also what's different with The Cloud, why this is particularly helpful, I think, is notice that in the previous mystics, there's no method, Thomas Merton never suggests a way to practice contemplative prayer. Teresa of Avila doesn't do that, John of the Cross doesn't do that, Wego doesn't do that. What they do is suggest that we start out in devotional sincerity with Lectio Divina, reflective meditation, the prayer of our heart, our desire. And then at what point does that start to touch contemplation in how to respond? And so the cloud is different and it offers us a method, unlike these previous mystics. We'll see later when we do the Jesus Prayer, the way of a pilgrim, we also get a method.

And so we might, in getting this method, think, oh, here's a method, I think I'll practice it. See, here's how you do this and do this. So I'd like to talk about practicing this way to contemplate to prayer, popularly known today as centering prayer. But as it's experienced and understood on this broad range, the spectrum of discerning where we're at and how we experience and respond to it. It's an inclusive invitation to anyone who's drawn to practice it.

And then at the end, I want to talk about in 74 and 75, Chapter 74 and 75, I want to talk about what the author says, this might not be for you. It gives the reasons why it might not be for you. And because God's always waiting for you where you are, not to some mystical place you're supposed to be. And so we're always trying to discern where we realistically are to follow how God's one with us in our life. And therefore he says, however, there are some who are called to kind of a singular mystical path of this love alone, of leaving behind all thoughts, all images, all and so on. And I want to speak specifically to those people, also through this whole book, because it's hard for people who are being called to that to find help in understanding it.

I want to find help in how to conduct themselves and so on. So that's what I want to focus on here. And this will be my last session on the cloud speaking alone. Kirsten will be coming on next with me for the session, asking questions like a dialogue. And then there'll be more where you will be responding to your questions that you submit in. And might be a couple of those. And so then we'll take a break and then we'll pick up later with contemporary of the cloud, English mystic 14th century, Julian of Norwich. Take a break. Then we'll go into the German mystical tradition. We'll look at Meister Eckhart and the Mikthel of Magberg. So we'll just kind of keep moving along here as long as we do this. So I want to start then in the light of that with chapter eight. Again, he's talking to a directee in spiritual direction. And by implication, he's also talking to all of us to help us understand how this lines up with where we personally are in our life.