Please mark this coming September 30 on your calendar when Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, professor of English and Scholar-in-Residence at Shorter University, will be speaking about the practice of contemplative prayer at the Cathedral of St Philip as part of the Cathedral Book Store Jane Baird Lecture Series. The author of numerous books and scholarly articles, Dr. Butcher was recently awarded as Georgia Author of the Year in the creative non-fiction category for her translation of the medieval manuscript “The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Council.”  She graciously made time in her busy summer schedule for a short phone interview.

Congratulations on receiving the award! Especially for translating a book that’s been around for more than a few centuries.

I couldn’t believe it, especially when I look at the other authors, like Barbara Brown Taylor who’s amazing, nominated in this category. Contemplative prayer, at first blush, sounds off putting, unless you’re into it.  I think Anonymous, the original author, would be really pleased and, at the same time, a bit nonplused since he’s like one of those monks who’s very worldly wide. He’d be happy if it led more people to read the book.

In your introduction to A Cloud of Unknowing, you write about what we do and don’t know about Anonymous, its nameless author. Do you think it would be valuable to know his real identity?

I spent over nine months, a long time, with this man translating his manuscript. He feels like a monk to me, though there’s also been speculation that he’s a priest, or even more specific, a Cistercian monk.  But his personality is as rich as his anonymity is impenetrable. His manuscript was very popular in his day, so you know he choose to be anonymous.  I think that’s because he didn’t want any credit, he just wanted to point people to Jesus. That’s the bone of real humility.

Your translation has been praised as more devotional than past ones. Was that deliberate?

I couldn’t make it devotional if it weren’t devotional to begin with. The author was a gifted teacher. Page after page, he patiently explains what contemplative prayer is and through practical spiritual exercises that he calls the “cloud of unknowing” and the “cloud of forgetting,” he teaches us to pray without ceasing and shows us that a dialogue with mystery is not only possible but is in fact, “the work of the soul that most pleases God.” It’s obvious he knows what he was talking about from experience, and that experience resonated with me. He wanted people to soak up his words, and be able to experience contemplative prayer by reading his book. That’s an amazing thing he’s trying to do, but he has such a friendship with Jesus, he pulls it off.  So for me, it wasn’t just about translating his ideas but how he communicates his ideas. I wanted to make modern English reflect what Middle English was trying to do, but I’m not saying it was easy. He’s hard to translate and a master of rhetoric, sometimes just to point out to us that words are just words. They’re mysterious and you have to put your trust in Jesus.  

How did working on the manuscript enrich your own prayer life?

I started out in a church where we were told  to memorize Bible verses, so I was doing lectio divina before I even knew what it was. But working on this book, it was like a prolonged experience of contemplative prayer, a gift from God. But it was also a humbling experience.  I often prayed every day “Please let me be up to the task.” The author taught me so much that I can’t put into words,  what  I want to live out about kindness and knowing God and just getting to know Jesus better. One of the things I love most about “A Cloud of Unknowing” is the peace is has. It’s not the author’s peace, like he’s saying “Look I have this.”  He doesn’t describe it so much as it’s in his text and it’s about being in relationship with God. I’m a type A and I want that peace.  My favorite Bible verse, Psalm 46:10, “Be Still and Know that I am God,” doesn’t come naturally to me!