Quote from The Cloud of Unknowing

The Cloud of Unknowing

edited by William Johnston

Image Doubleday, New York, New York, 1973.    195 pages.


From William Johnston's introduction to the Cloud of Unknowing:

"As the contemplative enters more deeply into the cloud, love comes to guide him, teaching him to choose God, who cannot be thought or understood or found by any rational activity. As it grows stronger, it comes to take possession of him in such a way that it dominates every action. It orders him to choose God, and if he does not follow its command it wounds him and gives him no peace until he does its bidding. This is beautifully illustrated in a passage from another work of the author which does not, unfortunately, appear in this book. Let me quote from An Epistle of Stirrings about the dynamic quality of the blind stirrings of love:

Then that same that thou feelest shall well known how to tell thee when thou shalt speak and when thou shalt be still. And it shall govern thee discreetly in all thy living without any error, and teach thee mystically how thou shalt begin and cease in all such doings of nature with a great sovereign discretion. For if thou mayest be grace keep it in custom and in continual working, then if it be needful to thee for to speak, for to eat in the common way, or for it bide in company, or for to do any such other thing that belongeth to the common true custom of Christian men and of nature, it shall first stir thee softly to speak or to do that other common thing of nature whatso it be; and then, if thou do it not, it shall smite as sore as a prick on thine heart and pain thee full sore, and let thee have no peace but if thou do it. And in the same manner, if thou be speaking or in any such other work that is common to the course of nature, if it be needful and speedful to thee to be still and to set thee to the contrary, as is fasting to eating, being alone to company, and all such other, the which be works of singular holiness, it will stir thee to them." -- (pp. 22-23).

-- Read to the group by Joel on a Sunday, Fall 2018

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