The Cloud of Unknowing and the Clouds We See Every Day.

"I've never seen an ugly cloud."

Driving home last night with a friend I haven't seen for 15 years, we were admiring the evening sky and sunset over Aberdeenshire. Blue pink occasionally smudged by dark gray as if a Chinese brush artist had randomly played with tinted paper to include a few contrasting shadows, long, thin one-stroke lines - not too dark, but warm gray and feathered at both ends as the brush was flicked up. The finished sky looked like a delicate watercolour, which would have been spoilt if it had been framed.

At which point he said, "I've never seen an ugly cloud." What strikes me about that quite spontaneous observation was the affirmative worldview it revealed. That my friend is travelling a hard road just now made the words even more poignantly positive. There are moments of meaning when a chance remark gathers to itself a significance made up of coincidence of circumstances, emotional preparedness, shared memories and that profound mystery of heart reaching out to heart in agreement and thankfulness. That was such a moment.

Since last night I've let those words dwell in those deep places where meaning slowly forms and understanding is never more than humble recognition that somehow love and life and laughter are definitive of human fellowship. I've thought often and sometimes thought long, about clouds. And I don't mean in the sentimental and fluffy sense of silver linings, and naive denials that clouds are somtimes harbingers of storm and can be ominous and well as beneficent. Yet William Cowper, that gentle 18th Century rural poet, whose courageous battle with depression and an oppressive predestinarian theology brought him often to breakdown, could still write words that were first penned for his own encouragement:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread,

Are big with mercy and will break

with blessings on thy head.

At the other end of the spectrum of Christian spirituality the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, urged the Christian that you can apprehend God through the cloud of unknowing by love, but by thought, never. That cloud of unknowing represents the mystery and beauty of God, like Moses in Exodus, who drew near to the cloud of darkness, where God dwells. So much in our self-explanatory, information sated, google shaped omniscient culture makes it hard to appreciate, long for, be content with, contemplate with a proper sense of our own smallness, the mystery that lies at the heart of all existence.

Perhaps the clouds are there to help us recognise the obscurity that limits our knowing, and to make us respectful of those opaque experiences and thoughts that tease and trouble, lure and disturb, attract and pull our minds and hearts towards that which is infinitely greater than even our most inspired imaginings. Out of such attentiveness and receptiveness, perhaps we will discover also, there are no ugly clouds.

Or as another wise man wrote, "May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.  May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.  ~Edward Abbey

 

 

Comments

[Poetreehugger.blogspot.com]

This was one of your best ever. Edifying, inspirational, thought-provoking, comforting.
To consider appreciating "the mystery that lies at the heart of all existence" by emotion when your reason has exhausted its efforts, and then letting love meet love, I suppose? Perhaps the benefit of having a long relationship with the central mystery so that when the time of cloud comes, we can still connect at an in-depth level.
Thank you. I continue to find blessings and challenges in your blog.

[Staffan Humlebo]

Once when I taught a philosophy class, I looked out the window and saw those sunset winter clouds we have in northern Sweden with -25 Celsius, and I stopped talking midsentence and I knew, I really really knew, that the mystery of all being lies in that ever changing nature of clouds...it was hypnotizing and chocking and I have never recovered from it.

Your wonderful blog entrance made me recall this...thank you.