Tag: anonymous

Alignment

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher | 1 Comment on Alignment

Recently the Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville shared with me her excitement over a new tattoo on her arm—it’s a flowing line of classical poetry scansion. Formerly a teacher of translation, Dr. Somerville knows her classical poetry, too! She’d invited me to speak with her warm and brilliant Alignment Interfaith community, so when they arrived online, we stopped talking about tattoos and metrical patterns, or the time recently that Margaret somehow calmly talked with an Alignment Author Visit presenter as a storm brought five large trees crashing down outside her home.

After a wonderful welcome from everyone, we dived into The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous in the late 1300’s CE and Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence in the late 1600’s CE. I began by singing, then shared some of my journey, before talking about the subversive power of translation and of contemplation, reading from both books, and sharing dialogue at the end, dancing with everyone’s lyrical, insightful questions that were, as Rilke said, ones to live now. Then most people left, and I stayed a bit longer, because we were all just having such a good conversation. The whole evening included—in addition to Anonymous and Nic Herman / Br. Lawrence—also Jhumpa Lahiri and Bayo Akomolafe.

I don’t know why, but sometimes the best bits happen before and after, even when the main event of being together for a formal gathering is also very meaningful and appreciated. That’s when Margaret shared a wonderful Dr. Barbara Holmes (Dr. B.) story with me and those few there. I felt she’d handed me a golden ingot, as I hadn’t heard or read Dr. B. tell this before. Perhaps someone else has heard it, but I haven’t, and Margaret said I could share it on.

I learned Dr. B. was the first Authors Visit presenter two years ago. That made me smile to know. Margaret also mentioned that during informal conversation with Dr. B. that time, they began talking about the practice of preparing to preach as a contemplative act. Dr. B. shared with Margaret then that “she did not learn how to preach ‘for real’ until she abandoned the way she had been taught to preach by men and learned that a sermon was really a poem.” Dr. B. added that “[w]hen she created sermons as a poem, she felt that she was truly preaching.”

I added to Margaret’s memory Dr. B.’s last words of “Forgive everyone for everything.”

“What a treasure!” Dr. B. was, Margaret said, and as our wise ancestor, she is still with us.

Thank you, Margaret, and Alignment Interfaith community, for your welcoming presence!

View my Alignment Authors Visit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsFnSfeOj9Y

Fog

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

When a reader says your book helped them or thank you for your book, words can’t be found to say how wonderful that is. Today an email came from a reader about my translation of the Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous. It moved me deeply. I have anonymized this kind email, and I’d like to share it and my response here on my blog. The reader is referencing the fourteenth-century spiritual classic on prayer as written by an experienced contemplative, perhaps a Carthusian monk or a priest, and that I translated for Shambhala Publications. For more information please see my website here: https://www.carmenbutcher.com/books.html

Dear Carmen,

having read several translations of this wonderful book I keep coming back to your version.
It speaks to me the most.

During my studies of English I had to follow a course of Middle English. Of course, as a young student, I did not understand why I should be bothered with this.We students saw it as additional chicanery to reduce the high number of students. But I quickly realized that reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in its original version was quite different from reading its rendering in modern English.

When I came across The Cloud of Unknowing for the first time – it was Ravi Ravindra who quoted from it in his webinars – I bought the William Johnston edition of it. Then I read Evelyn Underhill’s rendition. But when I got your translation of it I was suddenly touched in a quite different way. The text spoke more to my heart than to my brain while reading.

So I decided to get the original in the Phyllis Hodgson edition. And now I know why I had to do Middle English as part of my studies. Reading this wonderful text in the words of its author is a completely different experience. There might be words where the meaning is not clear or different in modern English. That’s where modern translations help. But what really makes the difference: it’s a SLOW reading which takes you much deeper into the text.

Being a seeker on the spiritual path I enjoy this text as soul-food. With each reading some concepts become clearer. Yet I still do not know if I have really understood what contemplation is … even after all these readings. I’ve been practicing going into stillness, letting all inner talk coming to a halt for some time, just focussing on God, Love, Light. But I’m still not sure whether this is meditation or contemplation. I need some more clarity there. But as long as there are still more questions than answers I suppose I’m on the right way.

Thank you for this wonderful translation of this spiritual classic. . . .

Best wishes,

My response:

Dear ,

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful email. It is wise and speaks to what I hoped and prayed for my translation of the Cloud. I’m delighted you decided to share this with me. Thank you! 

Until fairly recently, I spent most of my time in a fog of mystery about this text. It generated more obscurities than anything I know, like the purple fog coming out from around the hills nearby and blanketing the water, and these were not discrete rational questions but more a kind and gentle atmosphere of letting go that is questioning’s openness and humility, a true cloud of unknowing. 

I would be bemused when someone asked me to speak about the Cloud, as I myself wasn’t sure what it was about, not really, not its essence. This was true, even as I was someone practicing meditation daily, in both ways of which I was aware and unaware then, and even as someone who has practiced diverse types of meditation for decades. I see now I was living in this life-nourishing fog that resembles the low-suspended clouds Bay Area residents are so grateful for. At the time, I was hesitant to mention this uncertainty aloud, as I suspected it could be heard as my not knowing some information about the text, like say where it was written, etc., which of course was not the case since I have spent untold hours studying it academically. 

This was most perplexing, and I see now how I had protected myself, I thought, by growing my mind as a kind of carapace between me and my pain. And this gentle fog was active in, as the actual fog does here, cooling off my mind and greening it like our hills here in spring. I often say that I translated the Cloud as it translated me, and this is true. My whole life has been one of living my childhood question, How can I pray without ceasing? In this journey, the Cloud stands as the text that most healed and heals my understanding as it increases the kind mystery. Perhaps that is because of when I translated it, my age, needs, and life circumstances then, but also it is because of its bedrock presentation of the loving mystery loving us all. It is “soul-food,” as you say. Anonymous’ rhetoric, teacherly kindness, and encouragement are wonderful invitations to enter the text and slow down and steep in the mystery.

I appreciate that you point out, “it’s a SLOW reading which takes you much deeper into the text.” I grew to understand as I gave talks, led workshops, and responded to attendees’ questions, that whenever consternation about the Cloud was present, it was most often coming from the split mind of dualism we all share and would be helped by more time in contemplation. It seems that my need to understand grows less as my feeling of being loved grows more.

Your very kind email, as you can see, has occasioned a lengthy response, and again I am grateful for your wise words and wish you the great joy of the Cloud. . . .

Best,

Carmen

Come

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

This blog pairs well with my YouTube channel meditation / video where you can spend 6 calm minutes listening to it, watching birds fly over blue water in a blue sky, seeing a rivulet flow, and enjoying a container ship slowly entering the horizon. To view, go here.

The practice of Lectio Divina is ancient and simple, and it exists in diverse forms across faith traditions and wisdom traditions. It means sacred reading. It’s a kind of steeping that creates a web of mental associations, sometimes broken up into four non steps.

I think of these as a web.

We read or bite some wise words, and then we chew on them like a cow chewing her cud. And for those of us from the country who’ve seen cows chewing their cud, that’s some very, very excellent chewing. Very serious nourishing chewing and re chewing.

And then the next non step or spot on the web is savoring.

So read or bite, reflect or meditate or chew, and then comes the respond or oratio or prayer. What is it saying to me? And then the final non step is contemplatio, or contemplation, resting, simply letting go of thoughts or finding that thoughts let go of you, of us, and resting.

Sometimes the fourth non step is sort of separated away and packaged as centering prayer. And that can be, as I’ve experienced it and many others, very nourishing.

Also the cloud of unknowing’s author Anonymous says in chapter 35 and elsewhere that Lectio Divina is where we start as contemplatives.

And in my experience, this kind of food or eating is needed throughout the journey of life. And the wise Jesus said, we don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of love or God or mystery, the ultimate source, however a person thinks. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. What from this seems to be highlighted in your consciousness?

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

What would you feel is speaking to you in this in these wise words from Jesus? What might it make you feel and what might it make you realize you would like to have more of in your life? Or what kind of a relationship is it calling you to with yourself, with God, or love and with others in whatever non aggressive way you wish?

Let this passage of wise words that have meant so much to so many over millennia speak to us, and then we rest.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Kindness

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions1 of my heart through the unspeakable2 gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.

Kindness

This past weekend the Very Reverend Gary Jones, Interim Dean at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, invited me to give some talks, lead an experiential, I did Centering Prayer, and preach twice at 9 and 11. So I did. Gary is exceptionally kind and wise, also brilliant and a contemplative. Those are a combination the world needs more of. Thank you, Gary. He and his wife, Cherry, are so welcoming, as was the whole community. Thank you, everyone, for giving me such a warm welcome. I can’t (yet) say in words how much it meant and means—thank you for gifting me with such genuine dialogue, much appreciated.

So I took a copy of the Cloud of Unknowing and of Practice of the Presence with me. It was the fifth Sunday in Lent, where the community reads about Lazarus being raised from the dead, and I’m always happy to consider resurrections, personal and societal, and for nature, injured as this wonder is by greed.

At another time I will write about my time behind the rood screen and among the mirrored skyscrapers where the blue sky and white clouds were reflected. It was a kind of resurrection for me, for diverse reasons. First I want to have digested the experiences fully. I’m still ruminating on them gratefully.

Right now I want to sing again what I did in the 11am service, known to me as the Prayer for the Preface to the Cloud of Unknowing. For a long time I’ve sung it in Middle English, over ten years now, in fact. But I’d never sung my Modern English translation of it. If you want to see me sing it there in Modern English and listen to my 15-minute sermon, you can go to vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/809526246 “3/26/23 Acevedo Butcher: The Fifth Sunday in Lent.” I so appreciate that they included both my last names.

The song or tune for this prayer was inspired by my preparing as I do by reading and thinking, watching CCC’s third week in Lent’s service (where Bradley read it, in fact, from the communal prayerbook, and that sparked in me), and many times praying “What should I do?” as I walked through the marsh, holding this prayer.

How that song came about was the same as with the Middle English. I start out saying it in lectio divina, on a note card on which I’ve written it. And eventually somehow it becomes singing, sung, a song. Sometimes it sounds one way and then another and eventually it settles into a sort of way that is repeated and now I can sing it in that settled version.

It started, this song, in the marsh. Among egrets flying and squawking plus ducks, geese, red-tailed hawks, swallows, pelicans, too. I sing it first in Modern, then in Middle English, and after that read the two footnotes from my translation of the Cloud. You could also substitute for “God” here “Love” or even “Kindness,” since that’s the heart of all major religions and wisdom traditions—kindness, to ourselves and to others—connecting with our True Self, which is/who is Kindness.

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions1 of my heart through the unspeakable2 gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.

Here are the footnotes from my translation:

1. The Cloud author uses the Middle English entent (“intent”) often, reminding us that his theme is the exercise of “stretching” towards God. See Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, 21, line 3. With his background in Latin, he well knew that the word entent (our intent)comes from the Latin in-, “toward,” and from tendere, “to stretch,” so to be “intent” on something is literally “to stretch towards it.” This anonymous monk shows us how we can “stretch” our minds towards God in contemplation and grow spiritually, becoming people who “make peace” (James 3:18). Intense, tendon, attention, attend, attentive,and extend share this Latin root for “to stretch.” 

2. In Middle English, this prayer reads: “God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.” See Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, 21, lines 2-5. Here we find a splendid example of the author’s play on the words “speak” and “unspeakable,” highlighting that God listens to us when “alle wille” (“all longings”)“spekith” (“speak”) to himand that he answers our articulated or “spoken” longings with “the unspekable gift” (“the unspeakable gift”) of his grace. We “speak” and in return are given an “unspekable” (“ineffable”) gift, his grace. This word play deftly suggests the mystery of a dialogue between our chatter and a profound silence. This prayer is also the short opening prayer (or collect) before the epistle in the Roman Catholic votive Mass of the Holy Spirit (Ad postulandam gratiam Spiritus Sancti), with one difference. The anonymous author has slightly changed the original Latin version. Originally, the prayer addressed the unspeakable gift “of your Holy Spirit,” not “of your grace.” The author revised it to focus on God’s grace. His use and revision of this liturgical prayer reveal his belief that grace and the Holy Spirit are closely related, that the Holy Spirit informs contemplative prayer, that grace is the sine qua non of contemplation, and that communal prayer is central to spiritual growth.

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions1 of my heart through the unspeakable2 gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen

Thank you for being here and I hope these bring peace and joy to you.