Unlearning and unknowing - 29 July 2011

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn. That was said, among many other things she said, by the American feminist and activist, Gloria Steinem. Whatever she meant by it, I think she is right. Contemplative prayer and life is very much about unlearning.

One of our greatest spiritual classics -- and we don’t know who the author was -- is entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. In that title are two deliberate images -- the image of a cloud, rather than any image of clarity and certainty; and the strange word unknowing, divesting, dispossessing ourselves of perhaps cherished assumptions and props. To a lot of people this seems not at all what they thought religion was about.

If you consult what Jesus teaches about prayer, you find that prayer is to happen in an inner room with the door shut. The Jews of his day, the people to whom he spoke, did not have inner rooms or doors. This, rather, is how Jesus refers to inwardness. He describes the importance of being still and silent. He also says we are to shed anxiety. Anxiety is pandemic. I can think of people who seem anxious that if they shed their anxieties there would be nothing much left. Worry is their default response to life. Prayer is the way we set it aside, says Jesus.

Prayer is the relinquishing of possession and of our illusion of control of our lives, or of events, of other people, of doctrine and belief… and, we must add, our control of God. A most basic part of that is that we come to terms with our own mortality.

In the stillness we consent to God’s process rather than our own. We unlearn, unknow much that we habitually assume, our reliance on some god who is our personal domestic idol, or the protector of our belief system, perhaps even fashioned in our own image, we start to unlearn our self-protection mechanisms, dismantling our propensities for looking for happiness in the wrong places. We choose to pay attention to the God Jesus called Father, and that is all. Like Mary of Bethany, simply be present and pay attention.