It Isn't the Moon

I’ve just started reading The Cloud of Unknowing.  It was originally written by an anonymous 14^th century Englishman.   The edition I’m reading was edited by William Johnston in 1973 with a foreword by Huston Smith in 1996.  This is all new material for me, yet it resonates with my heart in such a manner that it gives me an unexpected sense of familiarity.   It is similar to the feeling I had when I converted to the Catholic Church.  I had never been there before, yet it felt like home.

I’ve barely gotten past the foreword and already I have been blown away by what I’ve read.   I quote:   

“Implicated with mystery, the cloud of unknowing will never disappear, but it can to some distance be penetrated.  How! By activating a faculty of knowing that parts the obscuring clouds of words and thought.   The underlying idea here is the limitations of language, and no topic has received more philosophical attention in the last half-century: Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derida have all wrestled with it.   But (to borrow a Buddhist figure of speech) they see that language is only a finger pointing at the moon and not the moon itself...” 

                                                                   The Cloud of Unknowing, Page 4  

I connected with this particular image because I am often awed to silence by the rising moon.  My words could describe the beauty of the moon to some extent, but my words could never become the moon itself in all its majesty and wonder.

This “faculty of knowing which parts the obscuring clouds of words and thought” brings us to the heart which needs no words and thoughts for that which it knows and understands. This, in turn, brings us to the language of silence.  It is the language of lovers; it is the language of prayer, it is the language of love itself because it is known only to the heart and it is a language which only the heart can speak. 

This language of love is the most direct means of being with God and knowing God.  Yet, because it needs no words, it often leaves the mind dark and “unknowing”.  This kind of knowing with the heart does not seek to communicate so much as it seeks to touch, to “be with”, and to be in a state of being with God or the other person.  It is knowing that “being with” someone is the most direct and most intimate form of communication, yet no words are spoken.  This language seeks to touch the object itself rather than being content with a hollow finger which can only point to the object.

This language of silence falls upon us like a gentle cloak when the mind reaches for words and can find none.  How many of us have fallen silent when seeing a sunset because its beauty can not be contained in words?   How many of us move into silence with our lover because words are no longer needed to communicate our beings to each other?  How many of us learn the language of silence in the presence of God?   Even the prophets in the Old Testament, after experiencing God, protested that they could not do what the Lord had asked of them because they had no words.  They had moved into the silent language of God and their human language had become an encumbrance to them. In the silence of God, their human words seemed inadequate, worthless…even unclean, because they knew their words were but a shallow imitation of God and not God Himself.   It was not until the Lord had put His word into their mouths that they were able to move forward.   Entering into silence is relatively easy; coming back from it is not. 

As we stand on the edge of silence we are inexorably drawn into that inexpressible love which is God.   Our hearts urge us forward, yet our minds recoil.  Accustomed to the tangibility of words and thoughts, our minds retreat from that which is wordless and without thought.  Weaned on the empiricism of science we seek to avoid the paradox of knowing that it is the intangible which is reality and the tangible which is not.

Yet, if we move forward, we begin to enter into the “deep calling to deep” with the depths of our being.  We begin to enter the very heart of God, not with our minds, but with our own hearts so that we can become a part of Him and He of us.  In silence we become one with our God.