Living with Unknowing

     Last night’s dream must’ve figured from recent readings (especially Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani, translated by Jan Van Bragt) and doings (particularly planting maple trees whose roots were wound far too tightly inside far too small containers, much too restrictive for the continuous development essential for ascension). The dream featured folks playing a sort of game where individuals attempted to articulate words that yearned toward but not quite able to reach into sufficient meaningfulness. Perhaps the divine purpose within the activity meant to enjoy the spirit of the attempt without getting trapped by the demands of clarity and rational thought. Nishitani seems to lean into such notions, including the attempt to “prehend,” the attempt to grasp or lay hold of:

“But when the concept of substance, which was supposed to express the selfness of things, and the concept of subject which was supposed to express the selfness of the self, strike against nihility at their very ground and are there negated, they make a leap forward onto a field where the things and the self they were out to prehend manifest their selfness. This means that, on the field of nihility, neither things nor the self are objects of cognition and, hence, can no longer be prehended or expressed conceptually (as logos). They are no longer determined either as substance or as subject. We seem no longer to be able to say ‘what’ they are. . .   With that, the existence of things and of the self are both transformed into something utterly incomprehensible, of which we can no longer say ‘what’ it is.” (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 136)

     Looking out into the tree (whose colors transition between matter and air, my reflections wander into the poem that’s held a favorite position for over a decade. Antonio Machado in “Llamo a mi corazon” penetrates into the garden with the “viento” which I consider as holy spirit that wafts along dreams and visions, that whispers its blessings and demands upon the responsive heart and soul. 

     The full poem with Robert Bly’s translation has been treated in previous posts including Distilling Distraction: Contain the Longing (Oct 4, 2014); Mining the Resonant Field with Mantras & Story Moments (Nov 4 2016, including a link to a video in which I recite the poem and give brief commentary); and Winter Containment (Feb 3, 2022).

     My experience today with Machado’s marvelous poem owes much to the remarkable writings of Mark C. Taylor (see previous blogs, most recently Planting a Tree Oneself ), Nishitani (just cited above), and works noted in other recent blogs. Especially, I have gratitude for a responsive shift to the closing of this poem. Usually the emptying of the garden feels almost heart-breakingly poignant (“Mi corazón sangraba”) as the wind takes away the waters of the fountain, the yellowed leaves, and the withered petals: 

          Me llevaré los llantos de las fuentes,

          las hojas amarillas y los mustios pétalos.

          Y el viento huyó... Mi corazón sangraba…

          Alma, ¿qué has hecho de tu pobre huerto?

Now I’m thankful that a somewhat lighter possibility flits through. Perhaps as Nishitani indicates, the field of emptiness promises a marvelous transformation beyond the too-tightly contained self. The emptied garden makes a space brimming with the hope of movement into “the field of ecstatic transcendence…” (p. 151).

Telling the Truth

December 9, 2025

A secret special passage mediates between me and the message that wants to get through. One mess (or not) involved with access to and movement within this passage involves the collection of books that somehow shuffle around desk, floor, shelves, boxes… to say nothing about drop-ins from used book stores, goodwill, on-line sources, and recommendations... Just yesterday (or maybe the day before) I was browsing about the basement library hoping that something would light up. Although Taylor’s Disfiguring was the right book to be reading, the copy I had was just too cluttered with a previous owner’s ink underlinings and marginal notes. Connecting Taylor’s terrific commentary on Modernism/Post-modernism, art, transcendence/immanence and integrating this with personal experience was demanding enough. Trying to block out the distraction of someone else’s grappling/frustration with the text was too much. So I gave in to the need to order a replacement and to find another good read while waiting for it to arrive. 

     A gift really, because when looking about the possibilities, my eyes fixed on a slender volume with Truth in the title, by an author I’d not read before, Frederick Buechner. The first glance wasn’t compelling enough so I kept browsing, but maybe that golden thread that Blake says leads the way must have been tugging me back. So I returned and took down Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. 

     A day or so later I’m very grateful because not only is this book terrific but I’ve now found two other books by Buechner that were lost in the other side of the basement library thus promising prospects for wonderful hours guided by his imagination, the opening of truth, the Word in the rich dimensions of depths of each human’s life expressed through tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale. 

“The preaching of the Gospel is a telling of the truth or the putting of a sort of frame of words around the silence that is truth because truth in the sense of fullness, of the way things are, can at best be pointed to by the language of poetry—of metaphor, image, symbol—as it is used by the prophets of the Old Testament and elsewhere. Before the Gospel is a word, it is a silence, a kind of presenting of life itself so that we see it not for what at various times we call it—meaningless or meaningful, absurd, beautiful—but for what it truly is in all its complexity, simplicity, mystery.” p. 25

December 9, 2024

Hidden in the Cold

David would’ve been age 40 today…suppose is, in memory at least… gone just before 19, just over 21 years ago. Reading in the middle of the night from Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross, adds perspective on loss. In her chapter on “Spirit and Faith” (reflecting particularly on the work of St. John of the Cross, both Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul):

Therefore faith is a totally dark night for the soul. But it is precisely by these means that it brings her light: a knowledge of perfect certainty that exceeds all other knowledge and science so that one can arrive in perfect contemplation at a correct conception of faith. That is why it is said: Si non credideritis, non intelligentis (“If you do not believe, you will not understand,” Is 7:9). [fn 3: See Ascent of Mount Carmel 2.3.2-4 ]

From what was last said, it has not only been made clear that faith is a dark night, but also that it is a way: the way to the goal toward which the soul strives, to union with God. For it alone gives knowledge of God. And how is one to arrive at union with God without knowing him? However, in order to be led by faith to the goal, the soul must conduct itself in the right manner.  She must enter into the night of faith by her own choice and by her own power. After having renounced all desire for creatures in the night of the senses, in order to reach God, she must now die to her natural faculties, her senses, and to her intellect also. For in order to reach the supernatural transformation, she must leave behind everything natural. Yes, she must divest herself, as well, of all supernatural goods when God grants her any of these. She must let go of everything that falls into the realm of her power of comprehension. ‘And she must remain in the dark like a blind man, leaning upon dark faith and choosing it as light and guide and not supporting herself by anything she understands or enjoys or feels or imagines. For all this is darkness that will lead her into error or delay. Faith, on the other hand, is above all such understanding, enjoyment, feeling, or imagining.’ [fn 4: Ascent of Mount Carmel 2.4.2-4] 

   from pp. 58-59 Stein, The Science of the Cross

 Looking back at written reflections, this item seems good for reflection:

When You Come to the Land

Halfway to his third-grade class, I lurch at the wheel
spotting bare ankles between jeans and sneakers,
and feeling the cold rubber brake as on our soles.
It’s mid-December. Ice crusts the left-over rain.
How can he not know his socks are missing?
We can’t blame sleepiness as he’s jabbering away
about meteor showers, fishing for a word
to catch the ground between exciting and afraid.
Some line’s down between head and foot.
Did a big storm pass through, snow and wind?
Has the ground around him been too harsh?
The stares cold inside the house, an icy silence?
Oh, perhaps he’s in search of winter’s power,
that makes hidden, in the cold, the hope of spring.

 

The Realm of Truth

July 11, 2025  2:31AM

In addition to the full moon, a different kind of “highlight” brightens retirement by shortening sleep and thus expanding “free time.” Nights become unpredictable and often consist of several, maybe three, two-hour sleep-segments that get interrupted by bathroom breaks, legs cramping, head congestion (which thereby justifies a 3-4AM coffee break), then (not surprisingly) wide-awake hours spent reading… Anyway, since there’s no longer the eight-hour+/- workday, why live by that old eight-hour sleep rule? After all, the shorter night-sleep justifies a delicious “short” nap in the afternoon or possibly even late morning.

        Besides, doesn’t the Good Book say: “the spirit goeth where it listeth,” suggesting that the body/mind/heart followeth. [Before anyone objects, be advised that the corrected quotation is coming up soon.]

        Another justification: Paradoxical teachings appear to make more sense after midnight and before dawn light. Having been given this after-age-seventy dispensation, perhaps it’s allotted in order to attend to such mysteries. 

pre-dawn today 5:49A

        One of those pre-dawn readings (probably from William Johnston’s Mystical Theology: The Science of Love) explained the origin of “mystical” as coming from mystery. (Duh.) And the abundant genre of mystery deserves top rating and needs extra time. This is not to detract from increasing dedication properly devoted to mysticism.

       One unsolved puzzle that has particularly been stirred up by recent readings concerns the text referenced above, that which “bloweth where it listeth.” The specific text is John 3:8, but the extended passage also needs consideration. If we enter the text at verse five, Jesus answers Nicodemus, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” 

        The Mystery, a vital one that builds with increasing significance as life in this world moves ahead toward the finish line, wonders about the what, when, etc. of the full Realm of God. The text (John 3:6-12) continues with Jesus speaking:

   That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

   Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

   The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

   Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

   Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

   Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

   If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

        For those of us “blessed” as heirs of the King James version (especially the “Lord’s prayer,” “Thy kingdom come…” Matt 6:10; “the kingdom of God is within you,” Luke 17:21; as well as “seek ye first the kingdom of God” Matt 6:33), the when? (now or later) along with the what/where/how? of this realm offers a recurrent mystery, and perhaps offers a key gateway into the Inarticulate, into more vital access to the space of Unknowing. 

        Of special relevance to this, Johnston gives extensive attention to The Cloud of Unknowing and to Saint John of the Cross. He also focuses on Jesus’ parables and elaborates Mark 4:11. “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables…” Johnston continues, “What are these mysteries? What is the secret that the disciples alone can understand? The mystery is the kingdom of God.” (Mystical Theology p. 24).

     Regarding questions of this realm, I’m not sure who is to blame and/or give credit to for pushing me into the Gospel of Thomas, but thanks. That text opens with amazing invitations from/to the living Jesus. For example, from the first sayings:

“Seek and do not stop seeking until you find. When you find, you will be troubled. When you are troubled, you will marvel and rule over all. . .

the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty and you are poverty.”

(Barnstone, Willis; Meyer, Marvin. The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition (pp. 44-45). (Function). Kindle Edition.)

And yet… this blessing seems to provide yet more mystery.

        In case anyone wants suggestions for wandering around in this wonder, texts I’ve consulted and found useful in this past year (often cited in previous entries) include Barbara Brown Taylor, Austen Farrer, Stanley Hauerwas, Rowan Williams, David Jasper, Robert Detweiler, C.H. Dodd, Thomas Altizer, Lissa McCullough, Nathan A. Scott, Jr., Mark C. Taylor, Norman Perrin, Brandon Bernard Scott, Karl Barth, Richard Valantasis, Soren Kierkegaard, and Bernard Lonegan. (This list doesn’t include the “escape” reading in mysteries and other fiction which might have played its own part.) Amazon/Goodreads also reminds me that I read Elaine Pagels’ Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas about a year ago, and so her writing might be blamed/credited. That’s enough for now. Of special significance, lifting off these texts particularly evident in the most recent readings from Lonergan’s Method in Theology and Johnston’s Mystical Theology is the gift of God’s love.

“… the First Epistle of St. John tells us that the one who loves knows God and the one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Sacred Scripture does not say that the one who studies theology knows God, but the one who loves.

   The love of God, then, is poured into our hearts; we are united with God; we are one with God; and through this love comes the highest wisdom. . .

   God is known as unknown (quasi ignotus cognoscitur).

   God is known as mystery. (Mystical Theology p. 39)

today

The Treasure of Not-Knowing

Dawn, December 30, 2024

Wintering

 as finishing in-

  to the end of

    the year—

     Dreaming last night of a friend and mentor (particularly in dream interpretation) who passed over a number of years ago. In the dream, Tom was giving me a new assignment, not surprisingly one that relates to a well-trodden sojourn in the Unknown. Wondering into the trajectory of this theme, I look back over my record of books read this year and into blogs posted. Tracings show immediately in last January’s explorations related to the book of Job, evident also in an early blog post that references Samuel Terrien’s Job: Poet of Existence.

Terrien proceeds to take us through the entire text of Job, just enough commentary along with amplifications from scripture as well as contemporary literature, so that the Deus Absconditus, the ineffable, the mystery surpassing human grasp, eases somewhat through the mist, unsurprisingly by the grace of love.

     The theme continues in Kathleen Raine'sThe Inner Journey of the Poet : “There has been no greater loss to modern Western civilization than the loss of access to the sense of the numinous, the holy” (p. 142). The track then moves through a number of books by Stanley Hauerwas (e.g., Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering) and further into Rowan Williams (e.g., Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross), David Jasper (The Sacred Body), and Thomas Altizer Self-Embodiment of God).

     In these final days of December, I’m in the closing chapters of Jasper’s The Sacred Desert. Jasper explores many ways of expressing the mystery, none capable of capturing it, but just the approach, like a mirage, shimmers as nearness to God, the Beyond All.  As we yearn for the Unknowable, the Inarticulate, thought and words are destined to fail, and yet we may, by grace, enlighten by the incarnation. Here are a couple of passages from Sacred Desert (pp. 148, 149).

At the same time this journey is itself quies or ‘rest,’ an absolutely empty anatta that is nirvana. This is seen in the perfect horizontal line of the desert horizon, the purity of utter immanence, unbroken and unending: while the death, as the Kingdom realized, is found only in the stillness of one place—the Desert Fathers knew well the value of staying still in their cells. At the same time the stillness is still moving—always the journey. . . It is a perfect coincidence of opposites—the transcendent utterly immanent, and the immanent perfectly transcendent. Totality is then present as absolute nothingness, even beyond the possibility of self-negation. …

In these moments the task of the theologian is radically transfigured, for it has abandoned the language of theology as it has always been understood in Christianity, and finds itself in the deep experience of the poet, and beyond that in a vision in which, we might say the invisible proceeds up into the visible; a necessary death which transforms consciousness in the loss of identity and self. In Altizer’s words: ‘True darkness can then be known as the fruit of compassion, and the actual death of an individual center of consciousness can then be celebrated as the self-annihilating presence of the universal Christ. Now the way ‘up’ will be the way ‘down’… (Jasper quotes Altizer from The Descent Into Hell, p. 241).

 

Fourth of July

July 4, 2024  5:10AM

Predawn readings concluded with these reflections;

The Flying Change ends with “steep return”

After having mused on the aim for perfect freedom.

In concert, Palmer's Oriental Mysticism

Guides our self-search homeward-bound.

That lifting off as human/horse power join

Sweetly, as if held in God's hand, soft–

Dare we imagine life, not mean, beloved

   From E.H. Palmer: “The Universe is the mirror of God, and the heart of man is the mirror of the Universe; if the Traveller then would know God, he must look into his own heart; if he would know the light, he must look into his own heart” (p. 41, Oriental Mysticism).

   In the title poem from his Pulitzer Prize, The Flying Change, Henry Taylor reminds the traveller: “Turning at liberty, [the horse] can change leads without effort during the moment of suspension, but a rider’s weight makes this more difficult. The aim of teaching a horse to move beneath you is to remind him how he moved when he was free” (p. 50).

   Midnight meditations the night before considered that love in essence focuses the quality that enables the (re)union with the One. It’s that which prepares, matures, and cleans so that the person better discerns the Presence and more fully engages the beloved.The “beyond” can only be approached, neared, by hint, by scent or taste, because it belongs to the Unknown, to the inarticulable, as the Infinite, as any and each of the Ninety-Nine Names. None can be owned. Vigilance must diligently prevent the making of idols out of the unique and ephemeral. Drive on. No hoarding of spent treasures. The beating heart won't abide in rag and bone shops.

Midwinter Knows

It might be just the time to trod over the sodden leaf bed, attending to the fallen giants—to this stillness when so much seems asleep as if lifeless, still to sense the eternal presence that holds together, knowing only by heart the year-round spring blush, the summer lost-in-love, and always autumn’s passion, winter-truth.

Like the deep secret to human wholeness, holiness, plumbs center-wise, passing space/time to pre-eternity, remembering that profession of Trust. The poet's Tavern, drunken on unimaginable majesty, calls even for the subject looking foolish, risking too much, like these wood-kings apparently bared of their royal robes.

Yet protected in the deepest roots, a spark, never-to-be extinguished, the heart of Love flows from the Source, always returning.

Inarticulate Luminous

     Often, if not always, the Path to the Divine appears, at best, only as the body’s weight suspends over the abyss and then, when almost falling, the invisible manifests again, supporting the now-present. A luminous step glimmers, almost immediately disappearing, necessitating moving on. Ibn ‘Arabi, so confusing yet comforting: “Thus it is established that motion belongs to love, for there is no motion in being that is not that of love” (p. 262, Ibn Al-‘Arabi: The Ringstones of Wisdom, Trans. Caner K. Dagli). Courage to continue on, even faced with fear of falling, then may be summoned, founded in the promise of “following the footsteps” of the prophet or priest, Lord of both worlds, even when such tracks shimmer in wonder more than in familiar forms that are touchable with this world’s eyes or fingers.

     The person who moves this way, more likely than not, gets seen as “mad” (Majnun) or love-sick. Indeed, the best hint of being on-track frequently comes in the texture of longing and/or of bewilderment; for the Divine surpasses the human. Direction comes in the tones of love; the way includes going via the imaginal world and seems best expressed in the play of poetry. This almost maddening dynamic is wonderfully explored in Michael Sells’ The Translator of Desires, his translation and commentary on Ibn ‘Arabi’s poetry. The endless pursuit of the beloved offers expression for how

“… the divine persona manifests itself in the polished mirror of the heart. Because God or ‘the Real’ is infinite, beyond space and time, its manifestation in space and time lasts only for a moment. In every new moment the manifestation changes. Whoever attempts to hold onto the image locks himself into the dead husk of that manifestation and precludes himself from receiving new manifestations of the divine. The goal is to let go of the previous image in order to be receptive to the divine appearance the next moment within the polished mirror of the heart.” (p. xxvii)

5:11 AM

5:53 AM

  

     Like the traveller on the desert sands, endurance includes seeing the oasis dissolve as mirage; still trusting instead the camel’s scent of water. Body leads the mind. Knowing through the polished heart surpasses hard reason. So it is the beloved mediates the inarticulable between: on one side the experience of human love, on the other Divine. The known and the unknowable. 

(A screensaver appeared while drafting this material.)

     Ibn ‘Arabi elaborates on Moses as a guide finding the way. “The station of Moses… could only be possessed by one who had separated realized knowledge from imagination and illusion” (p. 271, Ringstones). In the Preface, Dagli comments on separation but not severance of knowledge from imagination: 

“Indeed, one of the themes of the Fusus is the limitation of the conceptual intelligence in imposing its vision upon the imagination. The former seeks out transcendence and aims to reduce multiplicity to a far-reaching conceptual oneness, whereas the latter perceives and understands the world as a concrete multiplicity of forms and images; it is a vehicle for perceiving the immanence and presence of God. To acknowledge one to the exclusion of the other is to sever man from part of himself.” (p. xi)

      Holding the tension of the unity alongside this multiplicity allows the “one way” to paradoxically coexist with the integrity of unique authentic pathways for each created being. Crucial to this mystery is the capacity to penetrate through to the essence which is the source and life of each moment of creation. 

     The Ringstone of Moses elaborates on this with discussion of Moses’ birth mother as providing the breast milk even after he had been placed in Pharaoh’s household. 

“Then God forbade him to be suckled by any wet nurse, so that he could receive the breast of his mother…It is the same for the Laws’ knowledge. Recall that God has said, For each of you we have appointed a law and a way (Q 5:48), that is, a path. As for ‘way,’ this means that it ‘came from’ that path. These words indicate the principle from whence it came. It is the source of nourishment… the affair is a new creation without repetition. (pp. 258-9, Ringstones).

     Engaging with Ibn ‘Arabi often makes my head swim, but reassurance also comes from his text: 

“Now, guidance is that man should be guided to bewilderment, and know that the affair is bewilderment and that bewilderment is unrest and motion, and that motion is life, without stillness and so without death, and is existence without non-existence.”  In note 14 to this passage, Dagli adds 

“… There is no end to the self-disclosure of God, and no matter how far one journeys through the light the never-ending expressions of the Real will always have the power to maintain the sojourner in his state of lucid drunkenness.” (pp. 256-7, Ringstones)