Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 23

Chapter 23 brings us to this consideration:

How God answers and provides spiritually for those who are too preoccupied with loving him to answer and provide for themselves

Brother Birger
is in charge ofmaking candles
at the Lutheran
Ostanback Monastery
in Germany

In this chapter Anonymous assures his young student reader that all will be well if he decides to become a contemplative in a contemplative community, a monastery.  One certainly doesn't, he says, unnecessarily postpone living such a communal life.  The Teacher promises that when people model their lives after that of Mary Magdalene, God "will always defend" them (59).  We need not worry, therefore, about anyone who criticizes contemplative-prayer people for having too much of a Mary-heart. In fact, if such critics are "good-hearted," they will later feel ashamed of what they have said.




Speaking as a mature contemplative, Anonymous assures his young protege that God will provide for those who live like Mary; he will make sure that have "food, clothes, and all else" (59).  Yes, he knows that some like to quote the Old Middle English saying that "God sends the cow, but not by the horn," that is, God helps those who help themselves. Self-help is not a concern. Indeed, Anonymous insists, God doesn't expect anyone to postpone his or her contemplative prayer life until all of one's material needs are in order for self-reliant living. In fact, God always does one of the two things. One the one hand, he may give someone an abundance of what he or she needs so that person will be taken care of; or, on the other hand, God may give someone "the physical stamina and spiritual patience to endure its absence." When all is said and done, those who know God by living the contemplative life "need nothing else in this life" (60).

At this point, some may wish to find out more about living a more fully realized contemplative life, either in a community or an a hermit or anchoress. Here are some places to visit to find out more about such possibilities:

• A Hermit of the Heart

• The Order of Saint Benedict

• St. Augustine's House, Oxford, Michigan

Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 22

In Chapter 22, only two paragraphs long, Anonymous has written one of my favorite chapters in all of The Cloud.  He gave it this chapter heading:

Christ’s wonderful love for Mary, who represents all sinners truly  converted and called to the grace of contemplation.

In Middle English the name for Mary is Mari, and perhaps you have noticed in previous chapters, that Anonymous tends to imagine the Bible's various Maris as one woman, moving back and forth among what we know as three Biblical Marys. Yes, from our point of view, it looks as though Anonymous gets them a little mixed up, talking about one Biblical Mary and then slipping over in the next sentence to talk about another Biblical Mary as though they are one person. But as Butcher explains in endnote 3 on page 249, Anonymous is simply following the common understanding and practice of his time:

Throughout this chapter, the author has presented the traditionally accepted composite Mary: the unidentified sinner with the alabaster jar of ointment in Luke 7:37; Mary Magdalen in Luke 8:2; and Mary of Bethany in John 11:1-12.

As Anonymous envisions the relationship between Jesus and “Mari,” he's aware that he's on potentially dangerous ground when he notes that “the love between our Lord and Mary Magdalene had for each other was sweet”--or as the Middle English text declares: Moche [much] love had sche to Hym; moche more had He to hir. It’s for this reason that Anonymous says what took place between them surely “isn’t gossip.” Our Teacher says that we need only to “study” the story to see “the looks that took place between them” and know the truth about their relationship. It was not superficial; what went on between them was deeply experienced, an intensely realized “exceptional love” (58).

The love of Mary for Jesus models the love that we contemplatives have for Jesus. And the love of Jesus for Mary models “the love he has for all of us ordinary sinners who genuinely repent and are called byu grace to the contemplative life” (58).  With Jesus we are like Mary. And we who practice Centering Prayer know that at its deepest level prayer is, first of all, a profound relationship. In Centering Prayer we experience God’s presence within us, closer than any thinking about God, closer than consciousness and self-awareness itself. Centering Prayer is not meant to replace other kinds of prayer. Rather, it adds depth of meaning to all prayer and facilitates movement from many active modes of prayer—verbal, sung, mental, liturgical, or emotional—into receptive prayer of resting unitively in God. Centering Prayer emphasizes prayer as a deep personal relationship with God as a movement beyond conversation with God to communion with Him. In Centering Prayer God gives us the gift of gazing at the One we love as He, in turn, gazes at us.  Or as Meister Eckhart so famously said, "The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God see me. My eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowledge and one love" (Sermon 16, in Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, trans. and ed. O Davies (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1994), 179).

As best you can, remind yourself and others how we express and experience, like all the Biblical Maries, both our love for God and God's love for us when we enter contemplative (centering) prayer.

Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 21

Relatively speaking, Chapter 21, consisting of five paragraphs, is one of the longer chapters in The Cloud.  Writing in Middle English, Anonymous gives us this question as his chapter heading:

The trewe exposicion of this Gospel worde: Mary hath chosen the best partye.

Alluding to the story of Jesus’ visit to the house of Mary and Martha as Luke presents it (10.38-42), Anonymous is aware that grammatically his 15^th-century Latin Bible (translated into English and known today as the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible) concludes the story with these words:

[41] And the Lord answering, said to her: Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: [42] But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Anonymous sees a problem with the word best. For something to be best, there must be at least three things: something good, something better, and something best. Obviously, however, in Luke’s story only two things (actually two persons) are being compared: Martha and Mary. So how can there be a best choice? Fully aware of the problem, Anonymous works toward a satisfying answer in paragraph one.

In paragraph two, Anonymous reminds us that he’s already laid the foundation for a satisfying answer. He briefly reviews what he’s said in Chapter 8, and you may wish to revisit that chapter to see how Anonymous lays out a tri-partite schema describing the relationship between the active and contemplative life. By following his logic in paragraphs two through four, you can how his “three-part” schema makes the “best” part possible?

In paragraph five, Anonymous, addressing us as “active” Christians, encourages us “to work as hard as [we] can in the first and second stages.”  Then he tells all “active” Christians who may have a tendency to criticize “third-stagers”—that is, contemplatives—to leave us along.  After all, we’re chosing “Mary’s third and ‘best’ part, and play” (56). Look at Butcher’s note on the word “play” (in Middle English pley) and work toward answering this question: “In what way(s) is Centering Prayer “play”?

A hint.  Those who play musical instruments generally do not describe such activities as "work." We really don't "work" a violin, piano, guitar, or any musical instrument; instead, when we practice and make music, we say that we are "playing" our instruments. How then can it be that Anonymous suggests that contemplative prayer, our doing Centering Prayer--is, as the last word in this chapter puts it--pley?

Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 20

As you read Chapter 20, “How the all-powerful God well defends those who won’t stop loving him through contemplative prayer to stick up for themselves” (52-53), notice that at the end of the first paragraph, Anonymous reminds us again that both Mary Magdalene and Mary (sister of Martha) show us how to enter into union deep union with God.  We need only the desire to be fully in his Presence.

Anonymous also wants to realize Martha’s difficulty; she simply is “too worried” about things, too “distracted by many things.”  Her to-do list, filled with “merciful deeds” to be done, is long and good, but it doesn’t include “the best work of all,” that is, a deeply intimate love for God expressed within contemplative practice.

 

Read the final paragraph of this chapter carefully and explain in a sentence or two why Anonymous agrees with Jesus when he says, “Mary has chosen the best part, which will not be taken away from her” (53).

Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 19

With Chapter 19 Anonymous tells how we respond to those who either criticize or don't understand what we contemplatives are doing; he says this chapter is “The author’s brief apology, teaching contemplatives to excuse actives for complaining and acting against them” (50-51).

Anonymous emphasizes how important it is for us not to criticize anyone who complains about our doing contemplative prayer.  If he seemed to criticize Martha in his previous chapters for being upset about Mary’s attentive love,  for “her delightful, intimate love pressed against that high  cloud of unknowing between her and God” (Ch. 17, p. 46), in this chapter Anonymous goes out of his way to make sure that you know he loves and respects Martha for all that she is.  He showers Martha with gracious compliments as he perceives her motivations.

 

What observations about Martha does Anonymous make so that he’s able to excuse Martha for complaining?

With this understanding of Martha, what does Anonymous say to us when we find people “baffled” by our contemplative practices?

Study Guide, The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 18

In Chapter 18 Anonymous cautions us to be aware “
[t]hat still, to this day, actives complain about contemplatives, out of ignorance, just as Martha complained about Mary” (48-49).

After reading this chapter, perhaps, like Mary, you can think of times when you have experienced disparaging remarks made about your contemplative practice, about your doing Centering Prayer. It’s not an uncommon experience. Some Christians look at contemplative prayer practices as unnecessary, too overtly pious, or perhaps unbiblical.  Perhaps someone has suggested that you are too “religious.” And then there’s the problem of hypocrisy.  Such critics (and we ourselves) know that many so-called godly and “prayerful” people have shamed the contemplative tradition by living outrageously wrong-headed lives. Anonymous acknowledges that such criticism happens and is often justified, and he concludes this chapter by suggesting that he may later say more about the matter. But he doesn’t want to take us “too far off course” (47).   So he drops the matter rather abruptly.  As we continue our study of The Cloud, be alert as to when Anonymous picks up this concern again.

If someone does criticize you as a Christian contemplative for being beyond the pale of orthodoxy, a practitioner of New Age ideas, or a proponent of pagan practices, how does one react to such misinformed charges? According to Anonymous, what is the best way to respond to such disapprovals?