Tag: Cloud of Unknowing

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