The Cloud Of Unknowing (1)
Faithful Doubter - Generic Meditaton Issues; The Cloud of Unknowing
I was raised in a Protestant Christian family who sent me to a series of Non-denominational and Southern Baptist (though we never lived in the South) Sunday school. At eleven i started going to a Lutheran Church because my friends went there. We went through catechism but i decided that i did not want to be a Lutheran and switched to the Methodist Church where i became active and felt "a call to preach." I went so far as complete theological school and get assigned to a church. Them my life pretty much fell apart and my Christian faith with it. I had already long been questioning my commitment to the world view that nearlty all my collegues considered Christian. I married a very committed Roman Catholic, and after a few years of refusal, began accompanying her to church. Our pastors were wonderful, devout, spiritual, intelligent men and i made some effort (more than onlookers might think) to find my home in Catholic Christianity. I found the history of Christianity to be much more politically and sociologically interesting than spiritually pertinent. (When i announced my calling to my Methodist minister at age 14, he said he thought my calling was to be an educator -- after twenty years. i finally listened. He was right.)
My life came back into some semblance of order, but my faith did not. I would have described myself a thoroughly secular and modern person who relied on logic, empiricism, and science to show me, and others, to show me what was probable and what i shoud consider necessary. Meanwhile, i continued to listen to the homilies at Mass and to enjoy and learn from the ethical and intellectual aspects of the sermons.
In 1975, at the age of 42, i was given a copy of The Tao Te Ching (Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English version) I could scarcely believe that anything so wonderful could have been written by human beings. I read its 81 short chapters over and over and found that it spoke to me as no scripture had. I knew this book was true and important yet it did not contradict very much of what i already thought i knew. Five years later the drinking of two of my chidren brought me into Al-Anon which called itself spiritual but not religious and i knew what that meant and liked it. Then i found in the spiritualities of First Peoples an understanding of the world as complete and mature as that of the great mystics of the world religions and realized that they had all somehow tapped into a common fountain of wisdom.
In the late 1960s i had come across Aldous Huxley's brief discussion of the Perennial Philosophy, and even earlier i had read Dutch Historian Jan Romein's article on the "Common Human Pattern" Both argued that before the Industrial Revolution it was believed that the spiritual aspects of life were central to human being, with economics, politics, etc. being peripheral. Contemplation was the end rather than a means.
Whei retired in 2001, i wanted to enter the "fourth quarter" where in Japanese tradition a person who, having matured, and made a living, and raised a family, was now prepared to enter into a spiritual path. I read a lot of mystical poetry from many cultures and traditions and was particularly impressed with how Sufi, Hindu, and Zen poetry in particular seemed to tap into the Perennial Philosophy. But Christian mystical poetry partakes of the Perennial Wisdom also; Jacopone di Todo can be as wise and beautiful as any Sufi.
Of all of the Christian texts i could have chosen, how did i manage to go directly to The Cloud of Unknowing? It had an impact almost as powerful as the Tao Te Ching had had. Almost as many chapters and almost as short, it is additional evidence that great things can come in small packages. The author did not intend for someone like me to read it, and Huston Smiths opines in a prefice to the copy i have that an apophatic path should be undergirded by a sound and solid kataphatic path. That is probably true. But in my case, if there were no via negativa, there would probably be no spiritual "via" for me at all.
I was raised in a Protestant Christian family who sent me to a series of Non-denominational and Southern Baptist (though we never lived in the South) Sunday school. At eleven i started going to a Lutheran Church because my friends went there. We went through catechism but i decided that i did not want to be a Lutheran and switched to the Methodist Church where i became active and felt "a call to preach." I went so far as complete theological school and get assigned to a church. Them my life pretty much fell apart and my Christian faith with it. I had already long been questioning my commitment to the world view that nearlty all my collegues considered Christian. I married a very committed Roman Catholic, and after a few years of refusal, began accompanying her to church. Our pastors were wonderful, devout, spiritual, intelligent men and i made some effort (more than onlookers might think) to find my home in Catholic Christianity. I found the history of Christianity to be much more politically and sociologically interesting than spiritually pertinent. (When i announced my calling to my Methodist minister at age 14, he said he thought my calling was to be an educator -- after twenty years. i finally listened. He was right.)
My life came back into some semblance of order, but my faith did not. I would have described myself a thoroughly secular and modern person who relied on logic, empiricism, and science to show me, and others, to show me what was probable and what i shoud consider necessary. Meanwhile, i continued to listen to the homilies at Mass and to enjoy and learn from the ethical and intellectual aspects of the sermons.
In 1975, at the age of 42, i was given a copy of The Tao Te Ching (Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English version) I could scarcely believe that anything so wonderful could have been written by human beings. I read its 81 short chapters over and over and found that it spoke to me as no scripture had. I knew this book was true and important yet it did not contradict very much of what i already thought i knew. Five years later the drinking of two of my chidren brought me into Al-Anon which called itself spiritual but not religious and i knew what that meant and liked it. Then i found in the spiritualities of First Peoples an understanding of the world as complete and mature as that of the great mystics of the world religions and realized that they had all somehow tapped into a common fountain of wisdom.
In the late 1960s i had come across Aldous Huxley's brief discussion of the Perennial Philosophy, and even earlier i had read Dutch Historian Jan Romein's article on the "Common Human Pattern" Both argued that before the Industrial Revolution it was believed that the spiritual aspects of life were central to human being, with economics, politics, etc. being peripheral. Contemplation was the end rather than a means.
Whei retired in 2001, i wanted to enter the "fourth quarter" where in Japanese tradition a person who, having matured, and made a living, and raised a family, was now prepared to enter into a spiritual path. I read a lot of mystical poetry from many cultures and traditions and was particularly impressed with how Sufi, Hindu, and Zen poetry in particular seemed to tap into the Perennial Philosophy. But Christian mystical poetry partakes of the Perennial Wisdom also; Jacopone di Todo can be as wise and beautiful as any Sufi.
Of all of the Christian texts i could have chosen, how did i manage to go directly to The Cloud of Unknowing? It had an impact almost as powerful as the Tao Te Ching had had. Almost as many chapters and almost as short, it is additional evidence that great things can come in small packages. The author did not intend for someone like me to read it, and Huston Smiths opines in a prefice to the copy i have that an apophatic path should be undergirded by a sound and solid kataphatic path. That is probably true. But in my case, if there were no via negativa, there would probably be no spiritual "via" for me at all.