The recent fog brought to mind some of the teaching of the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ on prayer. Here is part of Chapter 3: ‘Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. … For at the first time when thou dost it, thou findest but a darkness; and as it were a cloud of unknowing, thou knowest not what, saving that thou feelest in thy will a naked intent unto God. … And therefore shape thee to bide in this darkness as long as thou mayest, evermore crying after Him that thou lovest. For if ever thou shalt feel Him or see Him, as it may be here, it behoveth always to be in this cloud in this darkness. And if thou wilt busily travail as I bid thee, I trust in His mercy that thou shalt come thereto’.

Further on, our author writes: ‘He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never. And therefore, although it be good sometime to think of the kindness and the worthiness of God in special, and although it be a light and a part of contemplation: nevertheless yet in this work it shall be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And thou shalt step above it stalwartly, but mistily, with a devout and a pleasing stirring of love, and try for to pierce that darkness above thee. And smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love; and go not thence for thing that befalleth.

‘Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love …’ We are encouraged to persevere! May God bless you in your own interior life, as you advance along the path of His Love.