The Cloud Song Om Verbum (Inspired by the Cloud of Unknowing)

Into the cloud, into the cloud, where no image reaches through, Not by thought but by desire, love alone can carry you. Strike the darkness, strike the silence, with a sharp and true love — Into the cloud, into the cloud, into the cloud above. I have left the land of knowing, where the mind makes maps of God, Where the clever and the pious build their towers in the sod. I have folded up my reasons, laid my arguments to rest, There is only one way upward — sink The Word into the breast. Into the cloud, into the cloud, where no image reaches through, Not by thought but by desire, love alone can carry you. Strike the darkness, strike the silence, with a sharp and naked love — Into the cloud, into the cloud, into the cloud above. There’s a cloud below you also, built of all you’ve ever done, Every sin and every glory standing between you and the sun. Press it down with deep forgetting, let it fall beneath your feet, For the grace of love is wordless and the silence is complete. Into the cloud, into the cloud, where no image reaches through, Not by thought but by desire, love alone can carry you. Strike the darkness, strike the silence, with a sharp piercing love — Into the cloud, into the cloud, into the cloud above. There is nothing here to hold to, not a vision, not a face, Not the sweetness of devotion, not the comfort of a place. Only this: a blind stirring, naked will toward the One, Not the moon of consolation — just the hidden, burning sun. Christ, — the word is enough — Love, — the word will do — Not the great nor the devout are called to stand within this place, But the small and the surrendered who ask nothing but His face. Thought will turn on its own maker, reason rots without its root — Let the tree of self grow silent, let love bear the only fruit. When at last you are descended to the place where words grow still, You will find the cloud was always the dark lining of His will. What you could not see was seeing, what you lost was what found you — Every ending was a threshold, every darkness, breaking through. Into the cloud, into the cloud, where no image reaches through, Not by thought but by desire, love alone can carry you. Strike the darkness, strike the silence, with a sharp and naked love — Into the cloud, into the cloud, into the cloud above. Into the cloud above.