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Greetings. I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone. And welcome to our time here together at Turning for Guidance

to the Teachings of the Christian Mystic, the Anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing.

As we go through these mystics together, I think it's always helpful to remind

yourself that these texts were written as guidelines and spiritual direction. And particularly

with respect to offering guidance for the person who's come to a very mysterious place,

or for those of us who come to this mysterious place in our journey, at which our search for

God and prayer and in life starts to become mystical. Meaning it starts to take on a quality

of infused contemplation. That is, it's God not gracing us with the graces of God and the

gift of the earth, the gift of life, the gift of our relationships, the gift of our inspirations,

all of that in response to which we respond in love to live this life of discipleship

and so on. But rather, it's the point at which God begins to infuse into us God's knowledge

of God, and infuse into us God's knowledge of who God eternally knows us to be, hidden

with Christ and God forever, and eternally calls us to be. And we passively receive this

divine influx into ourselves. And because this is so mysterious, sometimes it's very intense,

like it can be visions or voices or very intense things can happen. But you see, it's just the

opposite. It's extremely subtle and delicate. So they're trying to help us discern the signs

that it's happening to us and also how to cooperate with it. And also what I want to talk

about this morning with you, sharing with you in this session. It isn't like a decisive point

like all of a sudden it clicks in the mystical direction, but there's actually a very broad

base to range in which the intimations of the mystical start moving in and out of our lives.

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