Prayer for the Preface, Preface (5-6), and Chapter 1 (7-8)

“Prayer for the Preface,” “Preface (5-6),” and Chapter 1 (7-8)

The Cloud of Unknowing: with the Book of Privy Counsel, trans. Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Boston: Shambhala Press, 2009), 5-10.

As always, read slowly. When you think something is important, underline or highlight it. Make notes in the margins where you have questions or don’t understand something. Read so that you can raise questions and follow along in the upcoming discussion. Above all, don’t try to read all the pages in one sitting. Read three or four pages carefully each day. Mark up your text. Let things soak in. Go over what you’ve read perhaps two or three times. You may even wish to treat the text as your sacred reading, your lectio divina. However you do your reading, read with the Holy Spirit. Jesus has promised that he will guide you into all truth, so don’t be afraid of new ideas, new ways of thinking, news ways of appreciating the contemplative life.

Read the “Prayer for the Preface.”

In Middle English, the first page of The Cloud reads as follows:

Here biginneth the preyer on the prologe.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.

Here is Butcher’s translation:

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thin is hidden.  I beg you—purify the intensions of my heart through the unspeakable gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are.

This beautiful prayer [1] might well have been what Anonymous (the name we’ll give to The Cloud’s author) said to God as he sat down to pray what we now call Centering Prayer. I have copied both the Middle English and Butcher’s translation on a 3”x5” card and pray this prayer quietly when I begin Centering Prayer. You might wish to do something like that.

Take a look at Butcher’s notes on page 231. Inasmuch as the Middle English word entent (“intent”) is one of Anonymous’ favorite words, it’s important that we recognize how contemplative prayer gives us opportunities to show our entent, our intention to stretch ourselves toward God. As you say your sacred (or love) word in Centering Prayer, you are stretching yourself toward the ineffable Divine Mystery, asking God to receive your desire to be within the Divine Mystery.                                     

Read the “Preface” (5-6).

In the “Preface” Anonymous asks us to do two things with his book. First, he wants us to treasure “this book” so much so that we will be sure to share it only with friends who are “sincere in their intentions to follow Christ” (5).  The Cloud is for Christians who are living an “active life,” one prayerfully dedicated to cultivating love for God and service to all peoples.

Second, Anonymous wants us to read his book from start to finish, all the way through. It’s important to do this because his book moves us incrementally toward a full understanding of contemplative prayer. Reading only one or two (or twenty or thirty) will not allow Anonymous to develop (nor for you to understand) what it means to enter “the cloud of unknowing.” To make sure that you come to that understanding, Anonymous deliberately writes seventy-five short chapters so that as you read, you take short steps, one by one slowly, moving forward into an expanding understanding of contemplative prayer. Listening to Anonymous’ request, we will be sure to read every chapter.

An Armaria

In a helpful note (n. 1, 232) Butcher suggests that Anonymous writes as though he might have been the monastery’s armarius, the caretaker of the armaria, “the cupboards in which manuscripts were stored.” Like an armarius, Anonymous asks us to handle The Cloud carefully, passing it on only to those who are ready for it. This means that we don’t pressure others to read it, nor, as we shall see in later chapters, do we make it appear as though we are somehow better than others for reading it.

So here’s a question for you and me to think about: Why do we want to read The Cloud?  Are we ready for it?  Do we want to be ready for it?                                                                       

CHAPER 1

Read Chapter 1, “The four stages of the Christian life, and how the disciple for whom this book was written advanced in this calling” (7-8)

After you read this short chapter, write out your understandings of what Anonymous means by the following:

·         The ordinary stage of life

·         The special stage of life

·         The singular stage of life [1]

·         The perfect stage of life

Is it possible to “translate” these stages of life into terms that make sense for those of us who are not monks or nuns but laypeople: If so, how? If not, why not?

As best as you can tell, what stages of life have you gone through and how would you describe the stage of life you are now within?

Now that you’ve gotten some sense of where you may be in the “stages,” you can forget you ever thought you knew!

Our Buddhist friends like to remind us that “Everyday is a new beginning,” a truth that Anonymous will endorse throughout The Cloud.  Yes, some writers may describe the contemplative life as one in which we move along from one “stage” to another. Yet we want to remember, as Carl McColman notes, that such analyses can be dangerous:

They are so fraught with the danger of reinforcing egotistic understanding of spirituality at the expense of authentic kenotic growth that many seekers are probably better off ignoring them altogether.” [2]

Carl McColman

McColman’s observation is a good one. We avoid trying to figure out where we are on our own or anyone else’s contemplative path. Whether we have been practicing centering or contemplative prayer for years or we started practicing last week makes no difference. We avoid making comparisons with others. We are all beginners each time we sit down to enter the Divine Mystery as God shares his love with us in quiet rest and silence.

Martin Laird agrees:

Martin Laird

It’s best to become comfortable with the sense of always being a beginner. St. Gregory of Nyssa thinks it characterizes the spiritual life. In his beautiful Homilies on the Song of Songs Gregory points out that the Bride, no matter how much she has matured in the spiritual life “always seems to be just beginning the journey.” Her beginner’s mind is far more spacious and conducive to contemplation than any feeling of being good at prayer.[3]

Have you any questions and/or insights about this Chapter?  If so, share your query or observations in the Comments section below. Don’t hesitate to post!  

With our next posting we enter Chapters 2 and 3. Both chapters are short, so you’ll be able to know each well by reading each slowly (perhaps as lectio) several times. See you next week!

Notes

[1] The translation of this prayer by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) was originally published in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI (1549), and carried over unchanged (aside from modernizations of spelling) in the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI (1552) and The Book of Common Prayer (1662), and thence to all Anglican prayer books based on The Book of Common Prayer. The following translation is now used in many Episcopalian and Lutheran churches near the beginning of the Eucharist:

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secretes are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy holy spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name: through Christ our Lord. Amen.

[2] Butcher’s note 2 on page 234 is especially interesting in that it suggests three possible relationships Anonymous may have had with monks living the “singular” life. Inasmuch as many readers think that Anonymous might have been or associated with Carthusian monks, you may want to watch Into the Great Silence, a documentary film directed by Philip Gröning that was first released in 2005. It is an intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps. The film has experienced generally laudatory reception; it won the Special Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Festival. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting listed Into Great Silence as one of the best ten films of 2007. The Carthusian monks themselves loved the film. It’s available from Netflix.

[3] Answering the Contemplative Call: First Steps on the Mystical Path (Charlottsville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2013), 166.

[4] Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 87.