Carmen Acevedo Butcher

Summary: A classic on contemplative prayer in a new modern translation.

The Cloud of Unknowing is perhaps one of the greatest works on contemplative prayer. We don't know the author but it was written in the 14th century in Middle English. This edition is a re-publication of a 2009 translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher in an inexpensive paperback format.

It seems that many of the spiritual classics we read come to us in stuffy, Victorian English. Butcher's translation strives for a simplicity show more and informality of conversation between a spiritual director and a directee, and this is one of the most winsome aspects of this work.

To give you both a sense of the work and the significance of the title, here is a brief passage in which the author describes the experience of beginning to contemplate:

"The first time you practice contemplation, you'll only experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing. You won't know what this is. You'll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God. You must also know that this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God, whatever you do. They will always keep you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your intellect and will block you from feeling him fully in the sweetness of love in your emotions. So be sure to make your home in the darkness."

One of the critical themes running through the work, true to the apophatic tradition out of which it comes, is that God cannot be known with our minds but only in our love--"we can't think our way to God." Contemplation is best pursued according to this author by simple reflection on a single word--"sin" and "God" are the two commended to us. He discourages trying to attain an experience of God through the senses, and encourages dismissing both our thoughts and feelings into a "cloud of forgetting."

What I found attractive in this work is its wisdom and sense. We are assured that longing for God is enough, as this will open us to a deeper understanding of God. He discourages strenuous physical exertions that enervate and weaken us. He stresses the value of pursuing our contemplation accompanied by a spiritual director. He identifies four stages of spiritual maturity, with no sense that one is "better" than another, but only reflect a progress in love for God:

The ordinary which is our active life in the world
The special, where one continues to live an active life but also longs for God and begins to contemplate.
The singular is where contemplation becomes the focus of one's life, praying without ceasing in love toward God.
The perfect, where we are with God, as we pass from this life into God's presence.

The work itself consists of 75 brief "chapters" often connected to one another, that seems especially fitted for devotional reading of one or a few chapters a day.

Butcher's translation includes an introductory essay and recommendations for further reading, including renderings in the Middle English, works on English mysticism and Christian mysticism more broadly, as well as reference resources. Her notes also offer explanations for her translation and other helpful background.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. show less

“Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world – everything is hidden in you.” –Hildegard of Bingen

She was a Benedictine abbess, artist, composer, dietician, naturalist, poet, travelling preacher, mystic, and political consultant. She was a self-doubter with acute certainty in a merciful and mysterious God; a gifted healer who suffered from illness her whole life. Meet the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. show more Nourishing, challenging, and idea-bursting, her writings will stir and awaken your soul. show less

I'm truly not just a Hildy Hater. I think her music is downright beautiful. I think it's neat that she knew about herbs and stuff. I think it's cool that she was a strong woman who used God to beat people into submission, because what other weapon did she have really, and I even think she meant well, most of the time. She's mendacious and she resorts to that smelling our wounds metaphor just a little too much, but on the other hand I like that her word for what God brings us and the feeling show more he leaves is "green."

It doesn't help that Carmen Acevedo Butcher is a condescending Christian lady who seems to think the whole point of Hildy is that she was just! like! us! and isn't! that! nice! only more godly and maybe we could learn a thing or two from the anchoress, ahem. Butcher really hammers that point home--like we won't care about the Middle Ages unless they're super-relevant to our lives, which just makes me super-suspicious that Butcher actually wouldn't care if she didn't think her God wanted her to and would be more excited about, like, her new washing machine. A more serious issue is that she can't write for shit--really kindergarteny stuff like when the devil vomits up some bad crud she can't use the noun vomit to describe it because she already just used the verb vomit, so we end up with a sentence that goes something like "the devil vomited up some evil throw up on them," which is so puerile it almost makes me feel bad for picking on her. But then when she writes things like "Hildegard's letters weren't like the emails we send today," or rattles on and on and on about her trip to Korea--no, not even the trip, the baggage claim, because her writing workshop told her she should write her experience and include sensory detail--I get over feeling bad, because man, stop wasting our time, Butcher (of the English language).

Enough of her. After a serviceable biography, we get excerpts from the songs and visions, and at the risk of a Carmeacevedobutcherian presentism I have to say that all this stuff about e.g. the Church being a woman with a demon's maw emerging from between her legs just seems really traumatized and sad to me. That's not a dig--it seems like Hildegard feels frozen and helpless and like a Jesus who will smite all the doubters and lazy Christians and basically everyone except Hildegard as long as she sucks up really good would be just the thing. I know how sneery that sounds, and let me stress that my attitude toward religious belief is calmer and less frothy-violent than I sound now. But I do sort of feel like whenever I encounter medieval Church literature it reminds me of that thing my internet acquaintance Lola said about the Middle Ages being a Christian thousand-year Reich. The poor people seem broken, and unequal to the task of living without a bunch of empty, sad threats about how their friend Mercy will stomp you and Humility will judge you and Chastity will fuck some more righteous dude. Hildegard doesn't seem to get that an endless parade of virtues that come on and pose and sneer and threaten and boast is comical or pathetic.

(oh, Butcher also took out all the "O!s". Like "O! Christ, you who are our shield," and "O! St. Disibod, right arm of the Church, O! exemplar," etc. Why would you take out the "O!"s?)

The parade of asshole virtues is repeated several times in several ways--sort of implicitly in the visions in the excerpts from Scivias, which were the foundation of Hildegard's spiritual authority, where she sees a woman whose body is covered with eyes, but she's not a demon, she's "Fixing-one's-eye-upon-God"--it takes a lot to tell the grotesque virtues from the grotesque vices sometimes, which is weird because the vices all gnash and gnarr and have beetle torsoes or, like, hair made of offal, so you wouldn't think telling the difference would be that hard)--then in musical form in Ordo Virtutum or the "Play of the Virtues," which is included in its entirety so I have spoken of it elsewhere, and finally, again, in the Book of Life's Merits in detail--this book is not included in toto, but good luck finding that out from Butcher, who takes an approach probably best described as ramshackle.

There is also the physick, which is all mad libs: "If you have (name of an ailment), that is because your (name of a bodily humour) is out of balance; do (name of a penance)." Also, everyone should eat more garlic. That's another place where we agree, and I'm being judgmental on the mores of a different time and probably coming across like a pretty repulsive person in this review. But you know why? Because Hildegard comes across pretty badly too--shallow, opinionated, given to histrionic threats--and I could forgive that on the grounds that she created tihngs of cool weird beauty (besides the music, her illustrations of her visions in the Scivias, not included here, are freaky-Christedelic) if not for the fact that she never, never stops judging and threatening and bludgeoning me, or my Bavarian peasant great-to-the-seventy-first power grandfather. Sheerest presentism, that. But like Hildegard reaching out and weaponizing a mythology, I'm only using the best tool--for me, mockery--available in my self-defence. show less

Compact yet overall summary of St. Benedict's life, his times, and his Rule. Easy to read, very well organized -- a helpful introductory handbook and resource.