'...revealing, perceptive, personal, stimulating and inspiring.' Photo: Daniel Speiss / flickr CC.
A little book of Unknowing
Ian Kirk–Smith recommends an new book on spirituality
‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ I think, therefore I am. René Descartes came to this memorable conclusion after subjecting his ‘world’ to the most rigorous, uncompromising doubt. Even his senses, he believed, could deceive him. What could he be certain of?
Certainty, and uncertainly, are at the heart of A little book of Unknowing by Jennifer Kavanagh. It is an excellent read: revealing, perceptive, personal, stimulating and inspiring. It is a book for seekers. It is a book for Friends. It is a book for people who are interested, not in materialism and consumerism, but in exploring the spiritual and mystical side of life.
People, Jennifer Kavanagh writes, crave certainty. Our lives and lifestyles are built on it: built, since the Enlightenment, on a passion to know and on centuries of acquiring knowledge about the world. Today, the author argues, we crave certainty in our career, our relationships and our faith. We want the familiar, the reliable and the predictable. We long for security. We veer towards the road taken. It is hard not to with bombs and bullets shattering lives in the centre of Paris.
The first part of the book deals with the distinction between science and religion. It is not a question, the author writes, of ‘either/or’ but of ‘both/and’. She casts a critical eye on the accepted certainties of science and tells us that scientists themselves work in a world of ‘provisional’ truth. It is good to be reminded that it was the scientist Albert Einstein, not a Medieval mystic, who said: ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’. He also said that ‘there is a world of religious experience’ that is ‘not opposed to science’.
This is Jennifer Kavanagh’s deeply held belief. She writes: ‘Faith is not about certainty but about trust.’ What can we know with certainty? How can we know God? Her answer to this question forms the central thread of the book and is tied, closely, to her own story.
Faith, she explains, came to her by surprise after a personal trauma that prompted her to give up her career, after thirty years in publishing, and to learn to ‘let go’. The decision was life changing. She plunged into the unknown and began to embrace uncertainty. The author’s decision to abandon a successful career took courage. She writes: ‘I had no idea what I wanted to do but it did not matter’. She no longer needed to know, but to allow herself to trust.
A little book of Unknowing is an intimate portrait of a spiritual awakening and journey. Jennifer Kavanagh confesses that, having plunged into the unknown, she had to surrender many things – plans, expectations, ambition and those ego-driven desires that society conditions us to accept over our working lives.
Spiritually, it meant listening, completely letting go and waiting for God. Zen Buddhists talk about ‘having no knowledge’ and behaving ‘as if just born’. Jennifer Kavanagh believes that, to really go deep into a spiritual space, a certain kind of religion is helpful: not a religion based on scripture and ritual and action, but one based on stillness and silence and waiting.
I particularly enjoyed the short chapter entitled ‘Reclaiming the dark’ and would have liked more. It promised seeds that will hopefully be explored by this sensitive writer. Illuminating quotations are thoughtfully used and St John of the Cross, Brother Laurence, Thomas Merton and John O’Donohue are among those selected to assist the reader along the journey.
A little book of Unknowing is an engaging, and tender, invitation to approach the Divine and provides very helpful advice on how to do it.
A little book of unknowing by Jennifer Kavanagh. Christian Alternative. ISBN: 9781782798088. £4.99.
