The Knitting Theologian

Here is something I ran across yesterday morning in the Sacred Space prayer book that really resonated with me:

Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love, and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God, with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God. So, therefore, never give up your resolve, but beat away at this cloud of unknowing between you and God with that sharp dart of longing love. And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest.

(From The Cloud of Unknowing, a classic work on spirituality written in the fourteenth century by an unknown author.)

Sometimes my entire mental prayer session consists of me asking God to help me understand something. I have noticed that those are usually not the most fruitful of sessions. The all too rare times when I can just be with God, meditating on His love for me, and my love for Him, are better. Perhaps this passage explains why.

By the way, Sacred Space 2009 is available on amazon.com.

I’m still in week 2. It’s interesting to be asked to focus on “images, memories, crossroads, specific painful memories” at a time when I am standing at a rather large crossroads and aware of a lot of painful memories, some quite recent. So I need to take more time with this.

Last week I got a little further with acceptance, though. I had been tormenting myself with the difference between what I thought I ought to feel and what I actually did feel. Really a large gap between those two. But late last week I finally remembered something from the Sacred Space prayer book: “I acknowledge how I really am. It is the real me that the Lord loves.” Reflecting on that gave me the courage to accept how I really felt.

It was hard for me to make a deliberate choice about what goes on in the background of my life. In a  way it fits with something I’ve been asking for in prayer: to better discipline my thoughts, so that I might focus them on God.

I was hoping for images that would help me truly accept God’s acceptance of me; one of the readings for week one includes this quote, which I spent quite a bit of time pondering:

“Self-acceptance is an act of faith. When God loves me, I must accept myself as well. I cannot be more demanding than God, can I?” (Peter G. Breemen, S.J., “The Courage to Accept Acceptance,” from As Bread That is Broken (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, Inc., 1974.

This quote makes me want to cry out along with the man in the Gospel:

I believe; help my unbelief! (Mk 9:24)

As part of my renewal of my spiritual life, I have decided to make the online retreat available through Creighton University’s Online Ministries. I tried this retreat a few years ago, but was unable to complete it. I don’t know how I’ll do this time either, but one thing I want to do is blog about my experience.

I’m hoping it’ll help me write more on this blog, on a more regular basis. And I figure my three dedicated readers (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Hi Dominic!) are people I’d share my retreat experience with anyway.

I started week 1 of the online retreat today.