The Beauty of the Unseen

A Cloud of Unknowing

 "It is impossible to think about God."

I ran into that line not too long ago while looking at a philosophy website.  It's a little bit of a shocking statement.  We rejoice in knowing God; we put our faith and hope in it.

There is a level on which the statement rings true, though.  Our powers of mind prove time and time again that we're not equal to thinking about much, and if God has infinite scope and power and magnitude, then what are the chances we have any ability to begin to conceptualize Him?  You might as well ask a squirrel its theory of mankind; he might know some basics, but couldn't have any idea about human depth or emotion or capacity.  If that's a squirrel to us, then what are we to God?

As I often do, though, I found help in a medieval English mystic text, this time "The Cloud of Unknowing."  The anonymous author here agrees that we can't "know" God, at least not in our traditional ways of knowing.  As humans, the author writes, we have two great faculties: knowing and loving.  We get caught up in our arrogance of knowledge, pretending to know what we don't, or denying things if we can't understand them.  But the book says that our ability to love always outstrips our ability to know.  That we must love God through a "cloud of unknowing."  Isn't this the way we always have to love?  To love people we don't understand: to love a world that baffles us?

Ken Kesey wrote, "the need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."  We need knowledge and reason, of course.  Thomas Merton said that the faith journey is like a long and dark road.  Reason is the headlights.  It helps light the way, but it doesn't show you everything.  But I like driving at night; I love the beauty of the unseen.

Written by David Parker