Sometimes we assume we have all the answers and folks from the distant past have nothing to teach us. That’s especially true when we have to distill the meaning from unfamiliar language and expressions. Even writings from a hundred years ago in English can be difficult because the writer expressed thoughts in ways far removed from our way of speaking today. We dismiss the thinking because it isn’t said the way we would say it.

Roughly seven hundred years ago an anonymous work of Christian mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing, was written. It’s in what’s known as Middle English. For th...