May 2, 2024* Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous and ancient guide on living a contemplative life, and the author takes a path many of us wouldn’t consider. The author says in order to know God, we need to leave off studying or thinking about who God is, what God is like, or anything God does. Instead, the author says we must be courageous enough to surrender our ego and mind to not knowing any of that (thus the title). Only then can we experience God.
A central tenant or practice of the teaching is that we come to God’s presence “stripped of all thought”. In our prayer and meditation, thoughts are like leaves that fall from a tree and into a flowing stream. We see them, gently let them glide away, and sit, then, in this empty and open space where we meet God. Even words become meaningless and we enter deeply into silence and listening.
We have been using the above prayer in our liturgy on Sundays during Eastertide. It is included in the Book of Common Prayer as possible opening to our worship service. It comes to the BCP from The Cloud of Unknowing, penned (or at least recorded) by the anonymous author. I hope knowing that changes how you come to this prayer as we include it in our worship this season.
Over time in our tradition, this prayer has been unfortunately called “the Collect for Purity”, and we have interpreted that as moral uprightness or worthiness. Through this lens, open hearts, known desires, and unhidden secrets, not to mention the petition to cleanse our thoughts, all have a heaviness, even a confessional tone. They are laden with a sense of our sinfulness or even our unworthiness to come to God without first asking God to fix us up so God can stand to be around us.
Through the original contemplative lens in the Cloud of Unknowing, though, this isn’t the case at all! Our open hearts are stated as a reality that we offer as a gift to God. Our known desires are held as precious and holy and good, especially our desire for God which is what this prayer is all about. And we have no secrets, no need to hide or protect our innermost being from this Holy One to whom we come because we are safe and loved in that Presence. That’s quite a different angle.
But here is where it gets really beautiful. We ask the Holy Spirit to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, not because they are shameful or bad, but because we wish to be “stripped” of them. We want them to fall away, that we may know union with God, loving and praising God with our full, undistracted, untethered, ego-empty being.
This beautiful prayer helps us prepare our inner space to meet God together in worship. So bring all of your heart, your desires, your inner self to God. I encourage you to pray this prayer with the assurance that you are known and loved by God who wishes to be known and loved by you.
With love and in faith, |
Jenny+ |
* This reflection was originally published on September 9, 2021 |
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