Thomas Acklin

“Our union is in love, not in thought, “because he can certainly be loved, but not thought. He can be taken and held by love but not by thought. Therefore, though it is good at times to think of the kindness and worthiness of God in particular, and though this is a light and a part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this exercise, it must be cast down and covered over with a cloud of forgetting.”4 Even knowing this, however, we may still feel ridiculous when we can find no words to describe God after spending so much time in prayer. The author of the Cloud of Unknowing has learned to embrace his poverty when he can state it simply, “But now you put me a question and say: ‘How might I think of [God] in himself, and what is he?’ And to this I can only answer thus: ‘I have no idea.’ For with your question you have brought me into that same darkness, into that same cloud of unknowing.”5 In my human poverty, I must learn to accept prayer that seems useless, leaving me with nothing to show for it.”
― Thomas Acklin, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father’s Love