“…It's
cloud illusions I recall,
I really
don't know clouds at all.”
–Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”
* * *
Glorious sunshine chased away soupy skies this morning, its crisp winter brilliance blinding the eyes and stirring the soul. I became absorbed in studying the unique family of cumulous clouds occupying the heavens, floating together like grazing cotton-ball sheep. At mid-day, morning’s moody grey-bottomed rams gradually gave place to silky, friendly ewes and lambs. Toward evening the herd merged to shape pandemic piles of sheared, smoky-blue wool edged with soft tints of gold and silver – visually striking as they smeared veiled reflections on the lake’s new ice.
During my cloud-watching, I
remembered an anonymous 14th century work entitled, “The Cloud of
Unknowing.” It challenges its readers to submit intellectual “knowing” of God
to a loving, courageous “unknowingness” – a spiritual awakening of the human heart such that we cast off analytical suppositions and begin to
truly glimpse Him.
Science says clouds are
suspended condensation. Metaphorically,
they remind me to examine my own conceptual clouds - to be willing to puncture presumptions
with a sharp arrow of mystery, tipped
with longing and love, that can penetrate and go beyond what I rationally think
glory and mercy might look like.
“Surely we
cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang,
turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take
the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about
it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown
to know that it is unknowable.”
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