Getting Ready to Discuss The Cloud of Unknowing on Tuesday, June 19

Study Guide for Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The Cloud of Unknowing: with the Book of Privy Counsel, trans. Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Boston: Shambhala Press, 2009).

As always for our purposes, read slowly.  When you think something is important, underline or highlight it.  Make notes in the margins where you have questions or don’t understand something.  What you want to do is read so that you can raise questions and follow along in our discussion next week.  Above all, don’t try to read all the pages in one sitting.  Read three or four pages carefully each day.  Mark up your text.  Let things soak in.  Go over what you’ve read perhaps two or three times.  You may even wish to treat the text as some sacred reading for lectio divina.  However, you do your reading, read with the Holy Spirit.  Jesus has promised that he will guide you into all truth, so don’t be afraid of new ideas, new ways of thinking, news ways of appreciating the contemplative life.

About the endnotes

Carmen Butcher provides us with plenty of endnotes that begin on page 227.  They are worth reading!  Treat them as important as the words in the text itself by also reading them slowly and attentively.  When and if you find her notes especially significant, tell us about your discoveries!  Point out to us how they have helped you understand what Anonymous is saying.

Read the following:

·         Preface (5-6)

·         Chapter 1, “The four stages of the Christian life, and how the disciple for whom this book was written advanced in this calling” (7-8)

After you read this short chapter, write out your understandings of what Anonymous means by the following:

·         The ordinary stage of life
·         The special stage of life
·         The singular stage of life
·         The perfect stage of life

Is it possible to “translate” these stages of life into terms that make sense for those of who are not monks or nuns but laypeople:  If so, how?  If not, why not?

As best as you can tell, what stages of life have you gone through and how would you describe the stage of life you are now within?

·         Chapter 2, “A short lesson on humility and the work of contemplation”  (9-10)

Anonymous asks us to “take a good hard look at [ourselves]” (9).  After asking several questions that we need to answer, he urges u to “watch out for that enemy, pride.”   In what special and peculiar ways does pride work in the lives of those of us who wish to live and pray contemplatively?

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?

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?

What does Anonymous mean when he says that “God is a jealous lover”?

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

As always, if you  wish, let us know where you found something difficult in the text to understand.  And then too, let us know where you read something that made very good sense.  More than anything, come back next week ready for a good discussion, one you will enjoy.