Prayer, said Mechthild of Magdeburg, brings together two lovers, God and the soul, in a narrow room where they speak much of love: and here the rules which govern that meeting are laid down by a master's hand. "When thou comest by thyself," he says, "think not before what thou shalt do after, but forsake as well good thoughts as evil thoughts, and pray not with thy mouth but list thee right well. And then if thou aught shalt say, look not how much nor how little that it be, nor weigh not what it is nor what it bemeaneth . . . and look that nothing live in thy working mind but a naked intent stretching into God, not clothed in any special thought of God in Himself. . . . This naked intent freely fastened and grounded in very belief shall be nought else to thy thought and to thy feeling but a naked thought and a blind feeling of thine own being: as if thou saidest thus unto God, within in thy meaning,
`That what I am, Lord, I offer unto Thee, without any looking to any quality of Thy Being, but only that Thou art as Thou art, without any more.' That meek darkness be thy mirror, and thy whole remembrance. Think no further of thyself than I bid thee do of thy God, so that thou be one with Him in spirit, as thus without departing and scattering, for He is thy being, and in Him thou art that thou art; not only by cause and by being, but also, He is in thee both thy cause and thy being. And therefore think on God in this work as thou dost on thyself, and on thyself as thou dost on God: that He is as He is and thou art as thou art, and that thy thought be not scattered nor departed, but proved in Him that is All."
posted by Juke at 7:34 PM [edit]