415AlacoFJL._SL500_AA300_ The title of the book “This Is Not the Story You Think It Is…” is absolutely true. In Laura Munson’s memoir her life is falling to pieces around her and she makes the conscious decision to choose love over fear. This wise and witty wordsmith has captivated me—my eyes are wide open, along with my heart.

In Chapter Two she shared this excerpt from The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous (an unnamed English monk):

Take just a little word of one syllable rather then two… Such a one is the word God or the word love. Choose which you prefer…and fasten this word to your heart so that whatever happens it will never go away. This word is to be your shield and your spear, whether you are riding in peace or in war. With this word you are to beat upon the cloud and the darkness above and beneath you. With this word you are to strike down every kind of thought, driving it down into a pool of forgetting. If any thought should press upon you, asking what you would have, answer with no word but this one. If your thoughts should offer, out of their great learning to analyze your word for you and tell you its meanings, say to your thoughts that you want to keep it whole…It is not a matter of analyzing or elucidating…No one can truly think of God. It is therefore my wish to leave everything that I can think and choose for my love the thing that I cannot think. God can be loved but not thought. He can be taken and held by love, but not by thought.

I’m fascinated by this suggestion, “No one can truly think of God…God can be loved but not thought.” And this struck a deep chord of knowing within me, “He can be taken and held by love, but not by thought.”