Negative Capability

We were talking about Negative Capability:

capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries and doubts without any irritable reaching after fact or reason. (Keats)

We were talking about it in relation to creativity and being an artist. It is the ability to wait. One might be very active but within this activity, there is an openness to what may come without “any irritable reaching” for a finished product.

Sunday morning, the first reading was the call of Isaiah (in Chapter 6). Isaiah has a vision of God filled with awe.

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’

St Irenaeus said,

The life of man is the vision of God.

Isaiah’s response is, ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’

So, this “life” in the vision of God is two-fold: I finally realise the woe of knowing I am lost and unclean, yet I have seen God! I am humbled.

Humility is seeing yourself as you really are. It’s that simple. Two truths make this obvious. We are sordid, sad, weak creatures. Everyone lives with these consequences of original sin, because no matter how much you advance in holiness, you can never be wholly free of them to some degree. But being aware of your imperfections is humility of the “imperfect” sort. “Perfect” humility comes when you experience God’s goodness and superabundant love. Nature trembles before God’s majesty and kindness, scholars are reduced to fools, and saints and angels go blind. Words fail me…

Butcher, Carmen Acevedo. The Cloud of Unknowing: A New Translation (p. 37). Kindle Edition.

God says, ‘Go and say to this people:

“Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.”
Make the mind of this people dull,
   and stop their ears,
   and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
   and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
   and turn and be healed.’

At first reading, it sounds like a condemnation or punishment until we read the final four words. What is truly being offered is healing. It carries on, relentlessly:

Then I said, ‘How long, O Lord?’ And he said:
‘Until cities lie waste
   without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
   and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
   and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
Even if a tenth part remains in it,
   it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
   whose stump remains standing
   when it is felled.’
The holy seed is its stump.

Only with the final sentence is there any sense of hope.

In The Cloud of Unknowing, the author says:

Lift up your heart to God with a gentle stirring of love. Focus on him alone. Want him, and not anything he’s made. Think on nothing but him. Don’t let anything else run through your mind and will. Here’s how. Forget what you know. Forget everything God made and everybody who exists and everything that’s going on in the world, until your thoughts and emotions aren’t focused on or reaching toward anything, not in a general way and not in any particular way. Let them be. For the moment, don’t care about anything. (p. 11)

The first time you practice contemplation, you’ll only experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing. You won’t know what this is. You’ll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God. You must also know that this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God, whatever you do. They will always keep you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your intellect and will block you from feeling him fully in the sweetness of love in your emotions. So, be sure you make your home in this darkness. Stay there as long as you can, crying out to him over and over again, because you love him. It’s the closest you can get to God here on earth, by 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. (p. 12)

So, there it is. This is the “negative capability” of prayer. Forget what you know. Let go of thoughts about God, images of God, and feelings for God. Let go of comprehension and understanding. Let go of the whole of Creation. Let the mind be clouded. Stop the ears. Shut the eyes. Let everything be emptied out. Leave only the stump of my love for You. Wait.

This is paralleled with the prayer of St Ignatius:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You gave it all to me; to you Lord I give it all back. All is yours, dispose of it entirely according to your will. Give me the grace to love you, for that is enough for me.

This is not to die. It is to be a palimpsest. What I think of as “me” is scraped off to allow healing and a new surface for the Holy Seed.

’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.