An anonymous work from the 14th century, The Cloud of Unknowing is a classic text of Christian mysticism, and a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer. The trouble with it is that “many readers today find [it] less than accessible,” Daniel London declares, since it’s written in Middle English. So it is that he has “tried to offer a distillation/paraphrase,” Heather Shelton explained last August in Eureka, California’s, Times-Standard, “that speaks to spiritual seekers of all stripes today.”
London’s version offers the reader “a spiritual practice for directly experiencing the God beyond all understanding,” according to progressivechristianity.org, which affirms that the text has been made “broadly accessible, while remaining deeply penetrative and revelatory.”
In his introduction to his modern rendition, London tells how the unknown author of the original wanted the reader to “[g]et out of your head, and into your heart.” Why? Because “he knows we cannot grasp God through knowledge, but we can embrace God through love.” It is the “only power that can pierce through the cloud [of unknowing] to access God.”
Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka, London, a practitioner of contemplative meditation, earned his Ph.D. in Christian spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
The Cloud of Unknowing, Distilled
By Daniel London
Apocryphile Press, 2021
