Writing the Icon of the Heart. Maggie Ross

(fundamentalism) on the one hand and “whatever” (vague, fuzzy, warm feelings) on the other. The cultivation of a pressure-free space where faith can grow without distortion appears to be a notion almost entirely foreign to contemporary religious hustle and bustle.

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      The present state of affairs is not unique. For example, the author of the fourteenth-century Cloud of Unknowing, a master of discretion, writes to a reluctant disciple:

      I say all this to let you see how far you still are from knowing truly your own interior dispositions; and second to give you warning not to surrender tο nor follow too quickly in inexperience, the unusual movements of your heart, for fear of illusion. I say all this to explain to you what my opinion is of you and your stirrings, as you have asked me. For I feel that you are over inclined and too eagerly disposed toward these sudden impulses for extraordinary practices, and very swift to seize upon them when they come. And that is very dangerous.14

      How far this mentality is from the twenty-first century attitude, “If it feels good, do it,” that often passes for discernment; from narcissistic self-regard, or fatuous, overconfident claims of biblical inerrancy and literalism; from thundering condemnations of other human beings for the way God happens to have made them—all such indiscreet activities masking, of course, agendas of power and self-promotion.

      [The Devil]15 will sometimes change his likeness into that of an angel of light, in order that, under the colour of virtue, he may do more mischief. . . . He persuades very many to embrace a special type of holiness above the common law and custom of their state of life. The signs of it are . . . devout observances and forms of behaviour, and openly reproving the faults of other men when they have no authority for it. He leads them on . . . always under the pretext of devotion and charity; not because he takes any delight in works of devotion or of charity, but because he loves dissension and scandal.16

      The Cloud-author shows us the source of destructive religious dissension in our own day. It is a mentality that arises from the sloth of yielding to distraction (medieval people would use the word fornication, for from the beginning of the Christian era to the high Middle Ages, distraction was considered a greater sin than sexual infidelity), of indiscretion, and the idolatry of experience. He is perhaps glossing Matthew 12:34–35: “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure.” In every age, religious demagogues—and, in ours, atheistic ones as well—are quick to censure people and situations they not only do not understand but also refuse to understand. This deliberate closing of the mind is not only culpable; it exposes bitter, narrow hearts that lust for power. This kind of judgmentalism is at the root of much of the evil abroad in today’s world.

      If we are to recover discretion in our lives and in our world before our heedlessness makes our planet uninhabitable at any level—physical, moral, or spiritual—we must start by choosing silent, receptive awareness, “the hidden love offered in purity of spirit,” which is God’s working in us.17 But we face a Herculean task. To merely begin even to attempt to alter our knee-jerk response of anesthetizing our sin and pain to make room for this working in us requires extreme cultural ascesis.

      To make space for God means examining every daily pressure to which we are exposed, both the pressures from within ourselves, and those we receive from others, allowing each to fall away unexercised. It is in this pressure-free space that discretion is born. This space is not “my space,” but a space in which the mystery of the other and of ourselves takes on a far greater significance: a space where God’s working may perhaps find a way of sorting things out beyond human limitation; a space where we may learn the discretion of doing “only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.”

      If . . . grace is ever to be won, it must be taught from within, of God, when you have yearned longingly after him for many a day with all the love of your heart, and by emptying out from your inward beholding every sight of anything beneath [that is, other than God] him; and this even though some of those things that I bid you empty out should seem in the sight of some to be very worthy means whereby to come to God.

      For to him who wishes to achieve his spiritual purpose, the actual awareness of the good God alone suffices as the means along with a reverent stirring of lasting love. He needs no other.18

      The Space of Prayer

      Once upon a time there was a terrible drought. The crops failed, the livestock died, the people were in misery. As the drought grew worse, they tried ever more desperate measures. The shamans danced and banged pots, the priests made offerings to the gods, and the children went on pilgrimage to the mountains. A few individuals even shot arrows at a stray cloud, hoping to pierce the membrane that held back the water, or so they thought. Any charlatan who came along claiming tο be able to make rain fall was hired. Always the outcome was the same: he took the money and ran.

      One day the villagers spied a beggar trudging down the road, leaning on his stick. “Go away, old man,” they said. “We don’t have any food and water for ourselves, much less for the likes of you. And we’re not hiring any more so-called rainmakers.”

      Unperturbed, the old man replied, “Keep your food and drink, and your money. But if you will lend me a hut for three days and leave me in peace, who knows, some good may come of it.”