Unknowing: Weekly Summary

Sunday
Healthy religion is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. Anybody who really knows also knows that they don’t know at all. —Richard Rohr

Monday
In my experience, the people who find God are usually people who are very serious about their quest and their questions, more so than being absolutely certain about their answers. —Richard Rohr

Tuesday
We may come to a place that points beyond conceptions so that we may start to discover what God is not and allow room for what we can hardly conceive—God is no thing. —Lisa Colón DeLay

Wednesday
Contemplation is a wordless resting in the presence of God beyond all thoughts and images. So, in contemplation, we’re not thinking of anything. We’re not thinking of anything, but we’re wordlessly resting in a presence beyond thought that’s intimately accessing our heart as we intimately access it, and we rest in the oneness. —James Finley

Thursday
What if it was exactly at the point at which the words go wobbly, at which they start to slip through our fingers, that we might find ourselves able to take an unobstructed glimpse into holy truth? —Janet P. Williams

Friday
When we come before the tremendous mystery of God, all we can do is mutter. We know whatever just happened is beyond words, beyond proving, and beyond any kind of rational certitude. Our present notion of God is never it, because if we comprehend it, it is not God. —Richard Rohr

Receiving “Grace”

In her book Seeking the God Beyond, Anglican priest and author Janet P. Williams suggests poetry as a helpful way for individuals to move beyond ordinary patterns of thought and prayer. She writes, “Poems address mystery and reality sufficiently obliquely that in them we can, as Emily Dickinson demanded, ‘tell the truth [a]slant.’” [1] We invite you to click on the image below to listen to a poem entitled “Grace” by Australian poet Judith Wright [1915–2000]. Through prayerful listening, the poem becomes an invitation to experience God beyond what we can know. Here is an excerpt:

Living is dailiness, a simple bread

That’s worth the eating. But I have known a wine,

a drunkenness that can’t be spoken or sung . . .

It seems to have nothing to do with things at all . . .

[it] takes over the depth of flesh, the inward eye . . .

because it occurs beyond the here and now, positives, negatives, what we hope and are. [2]

References:
[1] J. P. Williams, Seeking the God Beyond: A Beginner’s Guide to Christian Apophatic Spirituality (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), 161.

[2] Judith Wright, “Grace,” in The Double Tree: Selected Poems, 1942–1976 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 143.

Explore Further. . .

Read about poetry’s capacity to point us toward Mystery.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Chaokun Wang, 夜 night (detail), 2017, photograph, China, Creative Commons. Unknown Author, Close-up of New Growth (detail), 1970, photograph, British Columbia, Public Domain. Chaokun Wang, 竹子 bamboo (detail), 2015, photograph, Heifei, Creative Commons. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

Mystical Certitude

Truly, you are a God who hides, O God of Israel, the Savior. —Isaiah 45:15

Father Richard closes this week’s meditations on how God is encountered not through words but through humble “not knowing”:

I want to point out that there are two different kinds of certitude: mouthy and mystical.

Just for the sake of alliteration and cleverness, I call the first one “mouthy certitude.” Mouthy certitude is filled with bravado, overstatement, quick, dogmatic conclusions, and a rush to judgment. People like this are always trying to convince others. They need to get us on their side and tend to talk a lot in the process. Underneath the “mouthiness” is a lot of anxiety about being right. Mouthy certitude, I think, often gives itself away, frankly, by being rude and even unkind because it’s so convinced it has the whole truth.

We have to balance mouthy certitude with “mystical certitude.” Mystical certitude is utterly authoritative, but it’s humble. It isn’t unkind. It doesn’t need to push its agenda. It doesn’t need to compel anyone to join a club, a political party, or even a religion. It’s a calm, collected presence, which Jesus seems to possess entirely. As Jesuit Greg Boyle writes, “There is no place in the gospel where Jesus is defensive. In fact, he says, ‘Do not worry what your defense will be’ [Luke 12:11]. Jesus had no interest in winning the argument, only in making the argument.” [1]

Those who know always know that they don’t know. That’s the character of the mystic. The very word “mystical” comes from the Sanskrit “mū,” which was associated with being tongue-tied or hushed to silence. This Indo-European root shaped the words “mystery,” “mystic,” “mute,” “mumble,” and others. It’s when we come before what the scholar Rudolph Otto (1869–1937) called the “mysterium tremendum” [2]—the tremendous mystery of God—and we can’t find the words. All we can do is mutter, because we know whatever just happened is beyond words, beyond proving, and beyond any kind of rational certitude. Our present notion of God is never it, because if we comprehend it, it is not God. If you happen to have the charismatic gift of speaking in tongues, it is a physiological experience of the ineffability of true spiritual experience. Maybe we all need to pray in tongues!

The only people who grow in truth are those who are humble and honest. This is traditional Christian doctrine and is, in effect, the maxim of Alcoholics Anonymous. Without those two qualities—humility and honesty—we just don’t grow. If we try to use religion to aggrandize the self, we will end up just the opposite: proud and dishonest. Humility and honesty are really the same thing. A humble person is simply someone who is naturally honest about their own truth. You and I came along a few years ago; we’re going to be gone in a few more years. The only honest response to such a mystery is humility.

References:
[1] Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2021), 130.

[2] Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 12.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate: Seeing God in All Things (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2010). Available as CD, DVD, and MP3 download; and

Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1999, 2003), 120.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on faith as a path without certitude.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Story from Our Community:

Separating from my husband, after 17 years of abuse, I felt lost. I was isolated and had lost all sense of who I am. Although, I had had glimpses of God and the divine throughout my life. Reading Fr. Richard’s meditations every day, and several of his books, lead me back to knowing who I am in God, and accepting the mystery of unknowing. I am grateful for all my experiences now, because I know how to pause, look with new eyes, and love my enemy as well as my friends. I know how to trust God, even when I stumble.
—Marilyn G.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Gestures in the Right Direction

Anglican priest Janet P. Williams describes a renewed sense of the importance of apophatic spirituality:

We tend to encounter God’s reputation before we (knowingly) encounter God. We gather all sorts of bits and pieces of information about God, some of it good and useful, some of it wildly off-centre and frankly harmful to us and others. . . .

If we are to speak of God as [God] is, then, we need to check what we say as often as possible against the touchstone of our experience of living towards holy encounter. And acknowledging that both our individual experiences and accounts of the common experience of the Church can be bent out of shape by prejudice, stereotype and idiosyncrasy, we need always to hold what we say and hear with a certain provisionality. Though this worries many people, there is no contradiction between this and faith. . . . As is often said, the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty [emphasis added].

From many directions, from the Bible and from philosophy and from the Church’s practical experience of prayer as understood down the ages and wrangled into shape by theologians, there is agreement: God, who reaches out to us in love and mercy, through the life of Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who meets us in worship and sacrament and prayer and in moments of grace in the natural world and in human relationships, is at the same time far beyond our reach. The words we use to describe God are more like gestures to point our attention in the right direction than they are like a scientific description or dictionary definition. . . .

In the Bible, this is the point made in the last chapters of the book of Job, with their cut-us-down-to-size questions:

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

On what were its bases sunk,

Or who laid its cornerstone,

when the morning stars sang together

And all the [children] of God shouted for joy?’ (38:4–7). . . .

Williams encourages us to trust that God meets us when we acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge of God:

We know too that our words and ideas tend to become wobbly and unreliable when we point them at the divine. . . .

What if it was exactly at the point at which the words go wobbly, at which they start to slip through our fingers, that we might find ourselves able to take an unobstructed glimpse into holy truth? What if it was exactly at the point at which we consent to set aside what we’ve heard about God that we are best equipped to see clearly the character of the God we encounter? What if the setting-aside turned out to be . . . the single most important thing we need to do?

Reference:
J. P. Williams, Seeking the God Beyond: A Beginner’s Guide to Christian Apophatic Spirituality (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii.

Explore Further. . .

Listen to The Cosmic We co-hosts Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant speak with Bayo Akomolafe about losing your way generously.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

The Narrow Gate of Contemplation

CAC teacher James Finley describes contemplation as taught by the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. This fourteenth-century work inspired the creation of Centering Prayer, and teaches a way of praying that involves surrendering our thoughts so that we can simply be in God’s presence:

Contemplation is a wordless resting in the presence of God beyond all thoughts and images. So, in contemplation, we’re not thinking of anything. We’re not thinking of anything, but we’re wordlessly resting in a presence beyond thought that’s intimately accessing our heart as we intimately access it, and we rest in the oneness. . . . How do we pass through the narrow gate [of contemplation] into God’s presence? [1] This is what the author of The Cloud of Unknowing says we are to do:

Lift your heart up to the Lord, with a gentle stirring of love desiring him for his own sake and not for his gifts. Center all your attention and desire on him and let this be the sole concern of your mind and heart. Do all in your power to forget everything else, keeping your thoughts and desires free from involvement with any of God’s creatures or their affairs whether in general or in particular. Perhaps this will seem like an irresponsible attitude, but I tell you, let them all be; pay no attention to them. [2]

In the latest season of the podcast Turning to the Mystics, James Finley and Kirsten Oates discuss the challenge of this method of prayer and of “paying no attention” to thoughts. As soon as one sits in silence, the thoughts continue! Jim reflects:

Those thoughts are still there. See? You’ve been called to something beyond thoughts. Therefore, because you’re still accustomed to thought, we’re very bound up with our thoughts. That self that’s accustomed to thoughts, good thoughts, noble thoughts, the thinking self and all that it thinks, because we’re so accustomed to it, at first, it’s very hard. It’s a very strange thing. You have to sit long enough for it to catch hold.

How long do you sit? Let’s say you try it and go, “Wow. That was hard.” You try it again, four days later, it’s still hard. . . . I think it goes like this: first of all, there’s like this beginner’s mind. At first, you realize you’re getting acclimated. It can go on for weeks and weeks. It’s still difficult. Even though it’s difficult, you can sense in it a certain resonance. It’s difficult but there’s something here that’s quietly shining in the difficulty. I feel called to do it. That’s the important thing. . . .

Let’s say you’ve been exercising for a while. So you go for a long run or a long distance whatever it is. It’s a certain point where it’s difficult and you want to get to that point where you’re burning off [energy] but even though it’s difficult, it’s not just difficult. There’s meaning in it. There’s meaning in the difficulty because it’s a transformative difficulty. [3]

References:
[1] The Cloud of Unknowing; and the Book of Privy Counseling, ed. William Johnston (New York: Image Books, 2005), 40.

[2] Adapted from James Finley, Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate: Seeing God in All Things (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2010). Available as CD, DVD, and MP3 download.

[3] James Finley with Kirsten Oates, “Dialogue 1: The Common Life,” March 21, 2022, in Turning to the Mystics, season 5 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2022), podcast, MP3 audio.

Explore Further. . .

Listen to James Finley and Kirsten Oates introduce the latest Turning to the Mystics season on The Cloud of Unknowing.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Story from Our Community:

I spent the night of January 30th [2021] alone with my 87-year old Mom, who had been released to hospice care 24 hours earlier following major palliative surgery. I was sleeping in the same room on the couch – more accurately, not sleeping, as she mumbled aloud all night. . . When I greeted her shortly after midnight to give medication, she didn’t recognize me and her fear was evident. It was a stunning, all-too-quick transition that heralded the brevity of the precious life before me. . . Around 6 a.m. I opened the CAC Daily Meditation: “Unknowing: The Inadequacy of Words”; how kind of you to offer that entire reflection just for me in that little living room. This particularly hushed my racing mind: “Mystery,” “mystical,” and “to mutter” all come from the Greek verb muein, which means “to hush or close the lips”.”
—Terri B.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

The God Beyond What We Know

Author Lisa Colón DeLay offers insight into the origins of contemplative prayer, which include the experience of God beyond what we know:

The desert elders would sink deeply and continually into what they called the “prayer of quiet.” This type of prayer is called apophatic prayer. It does not employ words. Apophatic prayer involves a mindful and relinquishing disposition in the process of communing with God. This contemplative method of praying does not use images, requests, intercessions, and rituals. It involves the quieting of one’s spirit and the settling into the essence of being, which allows one to be found in the presence of God.

Many of us in Western context and cultures are accustomed to only word-based praying. We understand God mainly through an acquisition of knowledge that affirms what and who God is. This is the kataphatic way of knowing God. This is the first way we begin to know God (or anything, for that matter): with definitions, descriptions, concepts, categories, images, and words. After some development, we understand more fully that God is transcendent, uncontainable. We may notice that God shatters any box of mental understanding we have been misusing. Then we may come to a place that points beyond conceptions so that we may start to discover what God is not and allow room for what we can hardly conceive—God is no thing.

Sometimes other names can help disrupt our hardened and limited concepts of God: Divine Love, Mystery, Source. Apophatic theology, seen most fully within Eastern Orthodox Christianity, invites the spiritually devoted beyond limitations and known categories to ways that make room for what we don’t know and cannot comprehend about the Divine. The prayer of quiet draws us ever deeper into the Mystery that is worth growing familiar with but is ultimately unknowable in its totality. There is a boundlessness of the One who we, in English, sometimes call God, and apophatic prayer may lead us into that unknowing to experience the divine beyond what we know. [1]

Father Richard stresses the importance of not-knowing to the authentic life of faith:

To presume we know is always dangerous. There is an arrogance that comes from knowing and thinking that we normally have the right answer. That’s why great spiritual traditions balance the kataphatic way (knowing God through words and ideas) with the apophatic way (knowing God through silence and unknowing). We see it very clearly in the desert fathers and mothers, and it lasts pretty much through the first thousand years of Christianity. [2] The Franciscan theologian Bonaventure (c. 1217–1274) ended his classic text The Soul’s Journey into God with this instruction, which represents the apophatic tradition of unknowing:

If you wish to know how these things come about,

ask [for] grace, not instruction,

desire not understanding,

the groaning of prayer not diligent reading,

the Spouse not the teacher,

God not man,

darkness not clarity,

not light but the fire

that totally inflames and carries us into God . . . . [3]

References:
[1] Lisa Colón DeLay, The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice (Minneapolis: Broadleaf, 2021), 102–103.

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Beginner’s Mind (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2002). Available as CD and MP3 download.

[3] Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, 7.6, in The Soul’s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 115.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on the inadequacy of words.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Speaking of What Truly Matters

Father Richard explores why he believes we must be humble in our language when we speak of God and truth:

German scholar Heinrich Zimmer (1890–1943) studied sacred images and their relationship to spirituality. He said, “The best things can’t be told: the second-best are misunderstood.” [1] So we settle for talking about the “third-best things,” which, in my culture, I suppose are things like sports, television, the weather, and other safe topics.

The best things can’t be talked about—they can only be experienced. And then if we try to talk about them, we know that we see “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Our best attempts will still be merely stammering, grasping for good enough words. But one of the great difficulties of theology and spirituality is that its subject matter is precisely those “best things” that cannot be talked about. If religion does not have humility about knowing, it ends up being smug, silly, and superstitious.

The second-best things which, according to Zimmer, “are misunderstood,” are those things that merely point to the first-best things. These belong to philosophy, theology, psychology, art, and poetry, all of which—like sacred Scripture—are so easily misunderstood. Yet what I have tried to do in my work is to use those second-best things that point to and clarify the first-best things. What else can we do? All our words, beliefs, and rituals are merely “fingers pointing to the moon.” [2]

I believe Jesus follows the same risky path, which has allowed him to be interpreted in so many different ways. Apparently, he was willing to take that risk, or he would have written down his teachings himself. Why do we think we have a right to certainty or complete clarity? This is the necessary and good poverty of all spiritual language. After all, Jesus never said, “You must be right!” or even that it was important to be right. That’s the genius of the biblical tradition. Jesus offers himself instead as “way, truth, and life” (John 14:6), and suddenly it all becomes about the sharing of our person instead of any fighting over ideas. Some people will meet that statement with resistance and criticism because we feel so much more in control when we are right than when we are in right relationship.

Such admitted poverty in words should keep us humble, curious, and searching for God, although the history of religion has been quite the contrary. In fact, what we have largely done, even in church, is talk about the third-best things. Focusing on things like finances, clothing, edifices, roles, offices, and who has the authority gives us a sense of certitude, order, and control. In my experience, the people who find God are usually people who are very serious about their quest and their questions, more so than being absolutely certain about their answers. I offer that as hard-won wisdom.

References:
[1] As quoted in Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (New York: Alfred van der Marck, 1985), 21.

[2] Traditional Buddhist saying found in the Lankavatara and the Shurangama.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2008), 69, 119, 121–122.

Explore Further. . .

Listen to Brian McLaren and CAC staff talk about discovering faith anew in the podcast Learning How to See.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Story from Our Community:

Where do I belong? Not with the rich and privileged, not with the very poor, not with the liberals and not with the conservatives, not with the intellectuals and successful [people], not with organized religion and social organizations, and not even with some family members. I belong in Christ’s arms, in the space of paradoxes, in the space of unknowing and in the cracks of suffering. This is where I am free to see God’s Glory and feel his loving touch of Grace; an open, humble heart.
—Kathy Jo W.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Humble Knowing

Father Richard Rohr begins this week’s meditations by emphasizing the importance of humility in our knowing, acknowledging all that we don’t know about God, Reality, and ourselves.

Ultimate Reality cannot be seen with any dual operation of the mind that eliminates the mysterious or confusing—anything scary, unfamiliar, or outside our comfort zone. Dualistic thinking is not naked presence to the Presence, but highly controlled and limited seeing. With such software, we cannot access infinity, God, grace, mercy, or love—the necessary and important things! Wouldn’t you join me in saying “I would not respect any God that I could figure out?” St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) said the same: “If you understand it, then it is not God.” [1]

Jesus himself consistently honored and allowed Mystery. Many of Jesus’ sayings are so enigmatic and confusing that I am convinced that is why most Catholics simply avoid reading the Bible. If Jesus had been primarily concerned about perfect clarity from his side, and certain understanding from our side, he surely didn’t do very well as a communicator, even in his lifetime. Thankfully, Protestants insisted on reading and studying the Scriptures, but then became certain they had the one and only interpretation and ignored many of the others! This, even after Jesus so often (seven times in Matthew 13 alone) taught that Ultimate Reality (which he calls “the kingdom”) is always like something. He clearly offers simile and metaphor to invite further reflection and journey, not impose a single understanding.

Jesus largely communicates through parables, stories, aphorisms, and often deeply obscure riddles (such as “Many are called, but few are chosen,” Matthew 22:14). This discourse isn’t pleasing to systematic thinkers. If I had turned in papers as open to misunderstanding, false interpretation, and even heresy as most of Jesus’ teachings are, I would never have passed my theology courses. He couldn’t have been concerned about exact words, or he would have learned to speak Greek, instead of the philosophically imprecise and very different Aramaic!

Healthy religion is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time—when the truth is the exact opposite. Anybody who really knows also knows that they don’t know at all.

We’ve got to constantly remind ourselves that we don’t know. The Buddhists call this stance “beginner’s mind.” Imagine how our politics and our churches could change if we had that kind of humility in our conversations. It just doesn’t seem possible anymore. Both politics and religion are filled with people clinging to certitudes on every side of every question. This makes civil and humane conversation largely impossible because there’s no humility. There’s no openness to mystery as being that which is always unfolding. Mystery is not that which is not understandable. Mystery is that which is endlessly understandable.

References:
[1] Augustine, Sermon 117:5 (on John 1:1). Original text: “Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus.”

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2009), 74–75;

Just This (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2017),85–86; and

Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate: Seeing God in All Things (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2010). Available as CD, DVD, and MP3 download.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on beginning again in each moment.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Moonlight, dewdrops, the overnight growth of bamboo. Nature reveals the great mystery of the Divine in the cycles and patterns of life.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Unknowing: Weekly Summary

Unknowing

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Week Five Summary and Practice

Sunday, January 31—Friday, February 5, 2021

Sunday
The formal theological terms for unknowing and knowing are the apophatic or “negative” way, where you move beyond words and images into silence, and the kataphatic or “affirmative” way, where you use words, concepts, and images.

Monday
Perplexity, I realized, was working like an X-ray of my soul, exposing much of my so-called spirituality as a vanity project of my ego, an expression of my arrogant desire to always be right, my desperate and fearful need to always be in control, my unexamined drive to tame the wildness of life by naming it and dominating it with words. —Brian McLaren

Tuesday
You actually need this purgation and unknowing to prepare you for a new depth of living, knowing, and loving. —Brian McLaren

Wednesday
Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Growth germinates not in tent dwelling but in upheaval. Yet the seduction is always security rather than venturing, instant knowing rather than deliberate waiting. —Sue Monk Kidd

Thursday
John of the Cross says that the dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation. —Barbara Brown Taylor

Friday
I entered into unknowing / Yet when I saw myself there / Without knowing where I was / I understood great things; / I shall not say what I felt / For I remained in unknowing / Transcending all knowledge. —St. John of the Cross

The YHWH Prayer

You shall not take the name of God in vain. (Exodus 20:7)

Many Christians think the second commandment is a prohibition against swearing. But I believe the real meaning of speaking the name of God “in vain” is to speak God’s name casually or trivially, with a false presumption of understanding the Mystery—as if we knew what we were talking about!

Many Jewish people concluded that the name of God should not be spoken at all. The Sacred Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was not even to be pronounced with the lips! In fact, vocalizing the four consonants does not involve closing the mouth. A rabbi taught me that God’s name was not pronounceable but only breathable: YH on the captured in-breath, and WH on the offered out-breath!

We come from a very ancient, human-based, natural, biological, universally experienced understanding of God. God’s eternal mystery cannot be captured or controlled, but only received and shared as freely as the breath itself—the thing we have done since the moment we were born and will one day cease to do in this body. God is as available and accessible as our breath itself. Jesus breathes the Spirit into us as the very air of life (see John 20:22)! Our job is simply to both receive and give this life-breath. We cannot only inhale, and we cannot only exhale. We must breathe in and out, accept and let go.

Take several minutes to pause and breathe mindfully, surrendering to the mystery of wordless air, the sustainer of life. Part your lips; relax your jaw and tongue. Hear the air flow in and out of your body:

Inhale: YH
Exhale: WH

Let your breathing in and out, for the rest of your life, be your prayer to—and from—such a living and utterly shared God. You will not need to prove it to anybody else, nor can you. Just keep breathing with full consciousness and without resistance, and you will know what you need to know.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 129‒131.

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

To learn more about Thomas Merton’s photography see: Pearson, Paul M, ed., Beholding Paradise: The Photographs of Thomas Merton (Paulist Press: 2020).

The Way of Unknowing

Unknowing

The Way of Unknowing
Friday, February 5, 2021

Descriptions of the “dark night of the soul” from the Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542–1591) have become the marker by which many Christians measure their own experience of unknowing. He fits an entire life spent exploring God’s mystery into memorable poetry, and even dares to call unknowing “an ecstasy”! Here are several stanzas from his poem “Stanzas Concerning an Ecstasy Experienced in High Contemplation”:

1. I entered into unknowing

Yet when I saw myself there

Without knowing where I was

I understood great things;

I shall not say what I felt

For I remained in unknowing

Transcending all knowledge.

. . . .

4. He who truly arrives there

Cuts free from himself;

All that he knew before

Now seems worthless,

And his knowledge so soars

That he is left in unknowing

Transcending all knowledge.

. . . .

6. The knowledge in unknowing

Is so overwhelming

That wise men disputing

Can never overthrow it,

For their knowledge does not reach

To the understanding of not-

understanding,

Transcending all knowledge. [1]

John’s poetry is exquisite in its humility—knowing that he does not know, can never know, and doesn’t even need to know! He goes so far as to call this dark night “a work of His mercy, / To leave one without understanding.” [2] John’s teaching contains paradoxes that are difficult to absorb, but modern readers have the good fortune of many good translations, including that of Mirabai Starr. Like the other friends whose work I have shared this week, Mirabai knows the via negativa, the way of unknowing, personally and intimately, and describes what happens between the soul and God in the “dark night:”

The soul in the dark night cannot, by definition, understand what is happening to her. Accustomed to feeling and conceiving of the Beloved in her own way, she does not realize that the darkness is a blessing. She perceives God’s gentle touch as an unbearable burden. She feels miserable and unworthy, convinced that God has abandoned her, afraid she may herself be turning against him. In her despair, the soul does not recognize that God is teaching her in a secret way now, a way with which the faculties of sense and reason cannot interfere.

At the same time that the soul in the night of spirit becomes paralyzed in spiritual practice, her love-longing for God begins to intensify. In the stillness left behind by its broken-open senses and intellect, a quality of abundance starts to grow inside the emptied soul. It turns out that the Beloved is longing for union with the lover as fervently as she has been yearning for him. . . . God will whisper to the soul in the depth of darkness and guide it through the wilderness of the Unknown until it is annihilated in the flames of perfect love. [3]

References:
[1] John of the Cross, “Stanzas Concerning an Ecstasy Experienced in High Contemplation,” The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Institute of Carmelite Studies: 1979), 718–719.

[2] John of the Cross, Collected Works, 719.

[3] Mirabai Starr, introduction to Dark Night of the Soul, by John of the Cross, trans. Mirabai Starr (Riverhead Books: 2002), 20. [Richard Rohr: The best translation in my opinion.]

Story from Our Community:
I live in an assisted living facility with my husband. I have been writing a haiku a day during the pandemic. The great unknowing / This 2020 vision. / Seeing with new eyes. —Juliana H.

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

Faith and Doubt Are Not Opposites

Unknowing

Faith and Doubt Are Not Opposites
Wednesday, February 3, 2021

The imagination should be allowed a certain freedom to browse around. —Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action

Basic religious faith is a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe. Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good.

I worry about “true believers” who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997) learned to do. Doubt and faith are actually correlative terms. People of great faith often suffer bouts of great doubt because they continue to grow. Mother Teresa experienced decades of this kind of doubt, as was revealed after her death. In a letter to a trusted spiritual director she wrote, “Darkness is such that I really do not see — neither with my mind nor with my reason. — The place of God in my soul is blank. — There is no God in me.” [1] The very fact that the world media and people in general were scandalized by this demonstrates how limited is our understanding of the nature of biblical faith.

It seems a movement from certitude to doubt and through doubt to acceptance of life’s mystery is necessary in all encounters, intellectual breakthroughs, and relationships, not just with the Divine. Human faith and religious faith are much the same except in their object or goal. What set us on the wrong path was making the object of religious faith “ideas” or doctrines instead of a person. Our faith is not a faith that dogmas or moral opinions are true, but a faith that Ultimate Reality/God/Christ is accessible to us—and even on our side.

To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable. Our youthful demand for certainty does eliminate most anxiety on the conscious level, so I can see why many of us stay in such a control tower during the first half of life. We are too fragile yet.

Author Sue Monk Kidd has written eloquently about the disruption spiritual seekers often encounter in midlife and our resistance to it. She wonders:

What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness. . . .

Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Growth germinates not in tent dwelling but in upheaval. Yet the seduction is always security rather than venturing, instant knowing rather than deliberate waiting. [2]

References:
[1] Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk, (Doubleday: 2007), 210.

[2] Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (HarperSanFrancisco: 1990), 25.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011), 111‒113; and

The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 117.

Story from Our Community:
In this time of universal powerlessness and complete unknowing, I find true peace in the ability to completely turn my will and my life over to the care of God, understanding that I can never ‘figure this out.’ I pray for a great awakening for all of us and balm for the suffering across the planet. . . I ask each day to be shown what I can do to help. —Shaun P.

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

Unknowing: Weekly Summary

Mystical Certitude

Gestures in the Right Direction

The God Beyond What We Know

Speaking of What Truly Matters

Humble Knowing

Unknowing: Weekly Summary

Unknowing

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

To learn more about Thomas Merton’s photography see: Pearson, Paul M, ed., Beholding Paradise: The Photographs of Thomas Merton (Paulist Press: 2020).

The Way of Unknowing

Unknowing

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

Faith and Doubt Are Not Opposites

Unknowing

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

Category Archive

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Unknowing: Weekly Summary

Mystical Certitude

Gestures in the Right Direction

The Narrow Gate of Contemplation

The God Beyond What We Know

Speaking of What Truly Matters

Humble Knowing

Unknowing: Weekly Summary

Unknowing

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

To learn more about Thomas Merton’s photography see: Pearson, Paul M, ed., Beholding Paradise: The Photographs of Thomas Merton (Paulist Press: 2020).

The Way of Unknowing

Unknowing

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

Faith and Doubt Are Not Opposites

Unknowing

Image credit: Ladder and Chair (detail), Photograph by Thomas Merton, copyright the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with Permission.

Image inspiration: How do we look beyond what we think we already know? At first glance the shadow of chair and ladder may be confusing, but shapes and meaning begin to emerge upon a longer contemplation.

Category Archive

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