https://cac.org/the-power-of-love-2018-10-11/
The Power of Love
Thurs. , Oct. 11, 2018
God can only be known by loving
presence— contemplation.
Forget what you know. Forget everything God made & everybody who exists & everything
that’s going on in the world, until your thoughts & emotions aren’t focused on reaching toward anything, not in a general way & not in any particular way.
Let them be. For the moment, don’t care about anything. . . .
You/will have to learn
how to live there by
“forgetting” your previous
methods of knowing]
You’ll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God.
this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God, whatever you do.
They will always keep you from seeing [God] clearly by the light of understanding in your intellect
and will block you from feeling [God] fully in the sweetness of love in your emotions
make your home in this darkness.
Stay there as long as you can, crying out to [God] over and over again
waiting in this darkness and in this cloud. Work at this diligently, as I’ve asked you to, and I know God’s mercy will lead you there. . . .
our souls are able to take the measure of [God] because [God] created us in [God’s] image
God’s grace restores our souls and teaches us how to comprehend [God] through love. [God] is incomprehensible to the intellect. . . . Nobody’s mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know [God] by experiencing [God’s] love.
two main strengths: the power to know and the power to love.
God made both of these, but [God is] not knowable through the first one.
To the power of love, however, [God] is entirely known, because a loving soul is open to receive
God’s] very nature makes love endless and miraculous
God will never stop loving us.
the experience is eternal joy; its absence is unending suffering.
Reference:
The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel, trans. Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Shambhala: 2009), 11, 12, 14.
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