preface

pr efaceThis is a book about how to be when you don't know.It offers counsel for how to live when you don't know what to believe, or who to believe, or how you could possibly know.It considers why, and how, profound uncertainty can be liberating, cracking us open to another way of being.The proposal will sound either audacious or benighted: that on the other side of not-knowing, passing through the crucible of unknowing, we can realize the significance of being beloved, and so become fearless.Experiences of profound, ineradicable uncertainty led me to a surprising source for modern consolation: the spiritual meditations of contemplatives like Meister Eckhart, St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, and the anonymous fourteenthcentury author of The Cloud of Unknowing.These mystics uniformly testify to a mystery that seems worth consideringthat beneath all that distracts us, behind all that foments our