Called out by The Cloud

After my trip, I am working on getting back to my daily and other reading habits. One of the books that I am steadily working with is "The Cloud of Unknowing". I just stumbled onto a passage that really diagnoses the type of experience that I described a couple posts back when I talked of repenting from a gnostic error. The author of The Cloud in Chapter 4 talks about two primary faculties: Knowing and Loving. They say that God cannot be known through the first but is entirely known through the second. If we were speaking Spanish I would hazard to guess that the first "know" is saber and the second is conocer. God cannot be grasped as a fact, but can be beheld as a person.

Though it probably violates the admonitions put forth in the very beginning of The Cloud, I'd like to post the primary paragraph that resonated with a stretch of years in my past. It has some very profound things to say about that attempt and its dangers:

A person hearing this book read or quoted may misunderstand my point. I'm not saying that if a person thinks hard enough, he or she will succeed in the work of contemplation. I do not want people sitting around analyzing, racking their brains, their curiosity forcing their imagination to go entirely the wrong way. It's not natural. It's not wise for the mind, and it's not healthy for the body. These people are dangerously deluded, and it would take a miracle to save them God in his infinite goodness and mercy would have to intervene, making these people stop such a wrong-minded approach and seek the counsel of experienced contemplatives; otherwise, such erring souls could succumb to madness, frenzied fits, or the devil's lies, which lead to the profound misery of sin and eventually to the loss of body and soul, for all eternity.

I can definitely say that the author is right. In the ten years between 1997 and 2007, I experienced all of the pitfalls mentioned, not as the only feature of my life, but certainly in large events and large swathes of time. When pushed to my limit, I looked to God in the small hours and said in great distress, "I do not understand". There is no worse feeling on the gnostic quest when knowledge and understanding are the keys to the imagined life that "should" be.

However, I was not permanently lost. God did indeed intervene, slow things down, and break me out of my pattern. I did indeed seek the counsel of experienced contemplative. The cathedral community and its various ministries is full of vital and experienced contemplatives.

My descent into Egypt is not a new challenge nor one that I have faced which others have not. I pray that they may be delivered from the pain of having to figure it all out. For those that can turn back and choose love which transcends and includes knowledge that they may gain as much as I did from my wanderings among the rocky paths.

Perfect love cast out all fear, including the fear of unknowing.

Two stray thoughts and a poem

Serendipitous Idea of the Day (actually last Friday) Number 1

Quantum mechanical theory of the afterlife:  dead people are waves, incarnated people are particles.  The contemplative mind can help us particles remember that we too are the waves. 

Serendipitous Idea of the Day Number 2

In healthy situations, children are not load bearing members of society, but rather are freely contained within the structure provided by adults.  Since we are advised that unless be become like a child we will be unable to enter the kingdom of God, perhaps that kingdom is an entire society without any load bearing members.  What a relief indeed that would be.  That to me is an idea worthy to be called Heaven.
 
However before we go to far towards fanaticizing about not having any responsibilities, it would be good to remind ourselves of the seriousness of play and the concepts of “work without effort” as discussed in the first letter of “Meditations on the Tarot”.  Cynthia Bourgeault, wisdom teacher par excellence and one of our speakers in Albuquerque, calls that book the Bible of the Christian Hermetic tradition.  I first read it in college on the recommendation of my Martinist brothers and sisters.  Rumor has it there is a photo of John Paul II at his desk with a copy of the original French edition on top of a stack of books.  When I picked it up again recently, I was surprised to see that the reviewers were Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating.  Certainly not New Agers.  I’m sure I didn’t know who they were at the time.  It is quite interesting how that book holds together just the threads that I’m working on reintegrating right now.  This is unlikely to be the last time I mention it. 
 
How’s this for an interesting perspective (from the book that triggered this thought in the first place:  “The Sacred Journey” by Charles Foster, the eighth and final volume of The Ancient Practices Series edited by Phyllis Tickle, who spoke on the Great Emegence both in Albuquerque last year and just a few weeks ago in Texas at the Episcopal Church’s Bishop’s Retreat):
 
“The child, too, has a real relationship with time, undistorted by the accelerating effect of deadlines and airplanes, the decelerating effect of boredom, or the artificial punctuation of alarms.”

A society where everyone works without effort with the wonder and openness of children; seems like a reasonable goal and perhaps something attainable enough to truly be called “at hand”.  Plus is resonantes with our true role as children of God. God is the adult which provides the containing structure in which we "live and move and have our being".


Poem from a point of return

Already here.
Never so far away
as when we forget
that one all encompassing fact.

Already here.
Already here.

Take off your shoes
for this is holy ground.

Back on the river

So I'm back from the conference and back online. Happy about both. The conference will take a bit more processing before it turns into any postings. It was excellent and very helpful. We really shifted gears this year. The speakers harmonized a bit more deeply and looked carefully at how the contemplative mind will help us stay in this transitional space and open up future possibilities.

Last year, I did not have the confidence to talk to nearly as many people as I did this time. Also it wore me out pretty thoroughly. I picked up Richard Rohr's "Everything Belongs". Last year I think I was making a mistake he mentions in that book: I was "pushing the river". The important thing is to realize that we're already in the river and to let us take us. Our old friend: surrender.

To completely mix metaphors: It is great to be back on solid ground. This spring has been quite an initiation for me.

Light and Peace this night.

Holy Week trumps technology

On the Monday of Holy Week my laptop decided to throw in the towel, probably out of spite since I'd decided to replace it next year rather than this year. Between Holy Week liturgies, the Apple Store being preoccupied with the iPad release and my trip to New Mexico, immediate fixes were not in store for me.

At the moment I'm awaiting departure to Albuquerque and couldn't resist a kiosk to connect in my few minutes of downtime.

Very much looking to new experiences and conversations as well as heightened computing power when I return :)

For now this monk is taking a short sojourn into the wider world.

A blessed Eastertide to you!