Dark Clouds

Thursday, June 14, 2007 -- Week of Proper 5
(Basil the Great of Caesarea, 379)

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 970)
Psalms [70], 71 (morning) 74 (evening)
Ecclesiasticus 44:19 - 45:5 (found in the Apocrypha)
2 Corinthians 12:1-10
Luke 19:28-40


Today we pick up reading a section of Ecclesiasticus (also known as the Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach, a Jerusalem scribe who lived around 180 BCE). Our reading begins with his famous Hymn in Praise of the Ancestors.

I was struck by a phrase in Ben Sira's passage about Moses: "He allowed him to hear his voice, and led him into the dark cloud." As I first read it, my word association for "dark cloud" was about the kind of experience that feels oppressive. When we feel like we are living in a dark cloud we have little energy or direction. It is a depressive existence.

But the dark cloud that Ben Sira references is Moses' direct experience of God. On Mount Sinai, Moses entered the dark cloud of God's presence and communed with God "face to face." It was within the dark cloud that God gave Moses the commandments, "the law of life and knowledge." An anonymous Christian mystic of the 14th century will speak of the contemplative experience of communion with God as the "cloud of unknowing."

These clouds have their similarities. Both the dark cloud and the cloud of unknowing are places where we exercise little energy or direction. Whatever energy and direction is present is of God. And they can both be fearful places. But the cloud of Sinai and the cloud of unknowing is a dazzling darkness that is filled with God's presence. It is life giving.

In today's reading Paul speaks of an experience of revelation that happened to him. "I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows." He doesn't seem to have words to describe his experience. But linked to this exhilarating spiritual revelation is another kind of darkness. "Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.'"

Paul relates together the ecstatic revelation and the thorn in the flesh. He is given both gift and challenge. Weakness seems to be a catalyst for each. The revelation of being caught up into an altered state of consciousness is a gift that bypasses even his awareness of his body. The fleshly thorn in the flesh is something he is powerless to overcome. Yet Paul finds both to be mediators of God's presence. The revelation for encouragement, the thorn for humility to trust.

Dark clouds are places of encounter with the divine. That's especially good to remember when the dark cloud feels more like the thorn in the flesh than like the third heaven.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
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