For those deepening their spiritual practice, here's a simple introduction to the classic text on Christian prayer, The Cloud of Unknowing. Follow this link for the longer article with helpful excerpts from the text.

For the first 16 centuries of the church, all Christians engaged in this silent form of prayer. Both then and today, contemplative prayer is practiced in the orthodox context of communal Christian worship and intense Bible study. Since it acknowledges the inadequacy of language to describe God, contemplative prayer is often called the via negativa ("negative way"). In the 16th century, John of the Cross embraced this prayer, saying that it purifies us and prepares us to love. Teresa of Avila taught that this "prayer of quiet" revives a "desolate and very dry" soul, creating an intimacy with God that is like "rain coming down abundantly from heaven to soak and saturate" the gardens of our hearts. Christians of all backgrounds are returning to this simple Jesus-centric prayer to grow their souls and learn to love in an increasingly complex post-modern world.

In Anonymous's timeless teaching on Christian contemplative prayer, the Cloud, he shows us how to pray and reconnect with a very personal, very forgiving God of love.