THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

What a profound declaration, Father Ting: “…the cloud of unknowing liberates me…”

Yes, Father, I do feel that way, too, in most ways, and I find no “modern need for something more tolerant.”

Why should we tolerate the need for God?

What troubles us today are a glut of commercialized adventures into pseudo-religiosity, the kind that purports a semblance of spirituality through what is called “new age” transcendental trips. The “born agains” are inflicted with this malaise.

These are all garbage and create the illusion of communicating with God through thick layers of soul cosmetics. Dan Brown’s  Da Vinci Code book may have been intended to do just that – shock us into another dimension of our religion in order to shake our foundations and curse our roots.

All in the name of selling heresies.

That is why the young go into drugs and pills for a “high.”  They need a therapeutic shock treatment, regardless of where and how it is administered (pornography, violence, blasphemy), so long as the end-effect is jolting enough to spark the deadened, numbed soul.  How sad that our so-called “modern” beings have to be electrocuted this way.

How, then, can we take them through “the cloud of unknowing” in order to be liberated? To be stripped of all the excess baggage and approach the tabernacle with that purity of heart as a child? To be truly “poor in spirit” for the Godhead to come in?

Within the crowded lives we lead, we must find that silent space, that threshold of quiet, that sanctuary of peace where absence of the world is the fullness of the universe…the Nothing that contains the Everything.

We all need to connect.  To Him, especially.  And through Others.  That is the way to touch Him…Love one another as I love you…Whatever you do to the least of your brethren, you do unto me….Yes.

That is the only path in this life.  Unless we take that path, we shall be moving about in circles as in a labyrinth with no exit.

If you find God with great ease, suggested Thomas Merton, perhaps it is not God that you have found.

And how did St. Teresa of Avila say it?  “Oh God, I don’t love you, I don’t even want to love you, but I want to want to love you.”  A doctor of the Church, her cry sounds as profound as your “dark cloud of unknowing,” Father Ting.

What is a relationship with God supposed to look like anyway?

How do I sustain a relationship with a Being so different from any other, imperceptible by my five senses?  How should I behave as a child of this God?  How do these cells in my body — the same ones that sweat and urinate and get depressed and toss and turn in bed at night — how do these cells  carry the splendor of the God of the universe so that others may notice?  How do  I love even one person with the love

that this God gives to me?

Believe in the possibility.  We can believe that God parted the Red Sea, that He fed five thousand hungry people with the multiplication of five loaves of bread and two fishes, that on the day after his burial, He rose from being dead.

And so, then, we can believe the possible. And this “modern need for something more tolerant,” that surfaces from that history of doubts that have challenged the church, may one day be laid to rest.

St. Augustine, the North African scholar of the fourth century contented with the same issues that plague the Church today. “I wish to be made just as certain of things that I could not see, as I was certain that seven and three make ten,” Augustine declared. He found no answers to most of his questions.

But he believed.

Such is faith and this is what we must nurture.  It is a gift, a grace, a blessing.  Pray that our hearts and our souls shall pass though those clouds of unknowing to be liberated…

Thank you, Father Ting, for the inspiration. God bless and my prayers for all in our tribe.