Study Guide: Chapters 2 (pages 9-10) and 3 (pages 11-12)

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

It’s been quite wonderful to experience the opening pages of The Cloud. Now as we enter Chapters 2 and 3, we can expect more patient encouragement from Anonymous as he brings us into his care and love for us.


In his original manuscript, Anonymous provided a “Table of Contents” in which he lists all seventy-five chapters with brief descriptive sentences indicating the general theme of each chapter. Such a listing allowed the reader to get a quick overview of the whole book right away. Inasmuch as Butcher provides us with Anonymous’ thematic previews of each chapter at the beginning of each chapter, her translation does not contain Anonymous’ introductory Table of Contents. As a “green” translator, she has eliminated the printing of duplicate material. One wants to say, “Hooray!”  A page unprinted is a tree branch still alive in a forest.


However, as presented in her edition of The Cloud (coming as they do right under the number of the chapter), Anonymous’ chapter previews do not call attention to themselves. As a consequence, we may overlook their importance even though Anonymous thought them so important as to make a complete listing of them immediately after the “Prayer for the Preface.” When read in the original, the “Table of Contents” summarizes the content of the whole book in one quick reading. To underscore the importance of these chapter summaries, once in a while we’ll take a look at them, often emphasizing a word or two. Take, for example, the title of Chapter 2:

A short lesson on humility

and the work of contemplation

While all the words are important, one can’t help but notice the word “short.” Here and elsewhere (Chapters 6, 15, 19) Anonymous tells us that that he will not be long-winded; he will not overwhelm us with lots of words. Chapters, more often than not, will be schort, to quote his Middle English word.

True to his word, Anonymous writes only five brief paragraphs in Chapter 2, two in Chapter 6, four in Chapter 15, and four in Chapter 19. Many other chapters are similarly schort. Brevity of expression characterizes most of Anonymous’ writing. His sentences are nearly always schort.  He writes crisply as a good Anglo-Saxon, avoiding the complex Latinate diction of other contemplatives. For this we are grateful because it means that we will understand The Cloud appreciatively from a master teacher. Yes, some ideas will be difficult and complex, but Anonymous will go out of his way to make things simple, pointed, and succinct. We are being assured that we will not have any undue trouble understanding The Cloud.  

In the first paragraph of Chapter 2 Anonymous asks us to “take a good hard look at [ourselves]” (9).  He asks three questions (for example, “Who are you?”), and he wants us to think about them seriously so we can answer them honestly. After we do such thinking and answering, Anonymous urges us to “watch out for that enemy, pride.” 

Here, then, are some questions for personal reflection and discussion among contemplative-minded friends:

1.  In what special and peculiar ways does pride work in the lives of those of us who wish to live and pray contemplatively?

2.  Anonymous asks us to “lower ourselves,” and he makes several suggestions in that direction.  He reminds us that we have a “spiritual partner.”  Who is that person?

3.  What other suggestions does Anonymous make that will help us “live up to [our] high calling by lowering [ourselves]”? What’s the best way to keep ourselves humble?

4.  What does Anonymous mean when he says, “God is a jealous lover”?

5.  Have you ever “locked eyes” with someone you love or have loved?  When in Centering Prayer do we “lock eyes” with God?

6.  Many contemplatives have found the following quotation by Meister Eckhart a wonderfully insightful way of describing what happens when we “lock eyes” with God: "The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love" (from the Sermons of Meister Eckhart). Modern scholars consider Eckhart's mysticism generally orthodox. What do you think?  Is Eckhart’s saying on target or a bit too radical?

7. Note that our Teacher ends Chapter 2 with a question. How might you answer it?

Read Chapter 3, “How to do the work of contemplation, and why it is the best work” (11-12).

Notice the many different ways Anonymous emphasizes that it is God who brings us to himself as he begins to describe what happens when we use our sacred words to disentangle ourselves from thoughts in our monkey mind. Here are some of the expressions he has used so far:  

• God leads you by “the desire of your heart” (7)
• God nudges “your desire awake, fastening it to a leash of longing” (7-8)
• God wants to “lock your eyes on him . . . .” (10).   

Anonymous says that what God does and what we feel is “a gentle stirring of love” (11) and “a simple reaching out to God” (12).  

Read endnotes 2, 3, and 6 so you get a good feel for the Middle English words that Anonymous is using to help us understand.  The metaphors our teacher uses to describe

what happens in contemplative prayer--stirring (steryng), stretching (streche), and feeling a simple reaching out (thou felist in thi wille a nakid entent unto God)--all underscore the movement of love that the Holy Spirit squeezes out from us when we silently whisper our sacred words as God leads us.

One of my contemplative friends recently described the “stirrings” and “simple reachings” he allows himself to experience and act upon. In the evening, rather than

wanting to sit down and watch television when tired, fretful, overworked and burdened, he says he often finds within himself a simple desire to go out on the porch and take a short deep rest. That, he told me, is the work of God encouraging him to become quiet within the mystery of the divine presence. When he feels such a “stirring,” he acts upon it, goes to his favorite old porch chair, sits down comfortably, closes his eyes, and (when needed) says a simple single word, his prayer word. Slowly he lets go of his worries, quietly releasing his ideas--both trivial and grandiose--so that for a while his life is emptied of hurtings and worries. During this “timeout” he is somehow quietly filled (even though momentarily) with healing and a semblance of hope. Anonymous says such a stirring (and others like it) is “the work of the soul that most pleases God.

  

Is Anonymous on to something? Does your own experience confirm Anonymous bold affirmation that “this is the werk of the soule that moste plesith God”? 

In the final paragraph of Chapter 3 our Teacher gives us his first use of the cloud metaphor, telling us that in contemplative prayer we “experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing” (12). Surely we’ve all experienced genuine and literal darkness of one kind or another. Perhaps when at home in the middle of the night when we were shut off from electricity. Perhaps a windowless room. Perhaps while spelunking. Perhaps after eye surgery. If so, can you remember and describe the disorientation? 

Anonymous urges us to be comfortable in this darkness. “Be sure you make your home” in it, he says. “It’s the closest you can get to God here on earth, by waiting in this darkness and in this cloud.” If you have been practicing Centering Prayer, you know that it’s the custom of many to close their eyes while entering contemplative prayer.  Some, however, find that closed eyes increase distractions and so keep them slightly open but without focusing on any particular object.  Might you share what works best for you as you work with and become comfortable with darkness in the “cloud of unknowing?”

As always, if you wish, in the comment boxes let us know where you found something difficult to understand.  We will respond with our best efforts to clarify things. And then too, let us know where you read something that made very good sense. Share your insights and experiences.More than anything, come back next week ready for a good discussion, one you will enjoy.