Magnificat

I well remember the conference at which I was being selected as a candidate for the ordained ministry. My interview with the educational selector sticks in my mind. What books had I read? I spoke about a book that had been important to me. Why did I read it? It had been on the bookshelf in my parents’ house. We moved on to another book. Why that one? It had been the next book on the bookshelf. We came to that medieval classic, the Cloud of Unknowing. That too had been on the bookshelf, but it had caught my attention because it had been mentioned by Martin Israel.

I had emerged from a Christian educational system, which had both left me profoundly dissatisfied by a Christian perspective of life and yet hooked by the quality of life that I saw in one or two deeply prayerful people. I did not want to believe in the torturous dogmas of the Church, but I saw in a few people, whose paths crossed mine, an authenticity of living that was profoundly attractive. I was drawn to various churches in London, searching for something I could hardly name. Eventually I came across All Saints’ Margaret Street. There my soul was caught up in the overpowering sense of the numinous, expressed through the glorious Anglo-Catholic liturgy. I also joined a prayer group, led by Martin Israel, and I was introduced to contemplative prayer. The Cloud of Unknowing became the most influential book in my life (apart from the bible) and its pages encouraged me to a deep praying, which left doctrine and language behind and sought to reach into the Cloud in which nothing was certain, except the reality of the Divine.

It was here that I found God, or rather the Divine, who had been luring me onwards, drew me into the reality of the Divine Love. It was a place beyond all words and language. Yet, if I must use language, it was as if I had been caught up in a mighty wind and my heart had been consumed by fire. It radically altered me as a person. Maybe it would be better to say that it brought me into the rebirth of the person God had created me to be. It profoundly altered my perception of life and every human relationship. It was an experience of Pentecost yet also a place of Magnificat. It opened my eyes to a new world in which every status of wealth, position, power, class, sexuality or influence has been levelled, as we are drawn into one in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Years later, as I was studying for an MA in Christian Spirituality, I focussed on the preaching of the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. He is constantly pointing beyond the things of this world to the reality of the unknown Godhead that lies beyond all images of God. He once prayed “O God save me from God”. His meaning was that every image, picture, idea or doctrine we might have of God is a blockage to our experiencing the reality of God, if it is not but a gateway into a reality that goes beyond our human perceptions. If you are satisfied with an image of God; if it seems to provide the ultimate expression of what you mean by ‘God’; then it is like a closed gate that prevents what needs to be a journey into even deeper reality. We need to enter The Cloud, to move beyond all images and language, and to discover the living relationship that will transfigure our lives.

As we debate human sexuality, the weight of historical abuse cases, whether we are prepared to worship with other Christians, how we can reach out to the young, how we interpret the scriptures, and so many other things that engage our passion and make up the agenda for today’s church, I sometimes wonder if we have lost the sense of being drawn into the life of the Divine.  A shared experience of praying, that leads us beyond all human language, will bring us to a place in which, being engulfed in the flame of the Divine Love, we are drawn into a new community as God’s children. It will not resolve the items on our agendas, but it will no longer be those items that define us. Our agendas will still need discussion, but we will have discovered the common bond of having been transformed into a new creation by the fire of the God’s Love. To discover that shared New Life, and to live it to the full, with exuberant joy, is what we are called to do, to be and to proclaim.