“Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.” MayPersonsSometimesFormOrderUnbelief Book:My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer Source: My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
“Poetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give one’s loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. It can do these things for one person, or it can do them for an entire culture. But poetry is for psychological, spiritual, or emotional pain. For physical pain it is, like everything but drugs, useless.” GivingPersonsUseSeemsMightPainSpiritualFormCultureCan DoLossEmotionalDrugShapesDespairPsychologicalUselessDimensionsPoetry IsHopelessHauntingEmotional PainPhysical Pain Author:Christian Wiman
“One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It’s easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall that person who once responded to poems—and to people—without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be.” PeoplePersonsWantedReadingEasyQualityEssentialsCapacitySurpriseNotionBe GoodLikesPoetry IsDislikeRecallsPreconceived NotionsReading Poetry Author:Christian Wiman
“It is easy enough to write and talk about God while remaining comfortable within the contemporary intellectual climate. Even people who would call themselves unbelievers often use the word gesturally, as a ready-made synonym for mystery. But if nature abhors a vacuum, Christ abhors a vagueness. If God is love, Christ is love for this one person, this one place, this one time-bound and time-ravaged self.” PeopleIfsWritingPersonsMadeSelfEnoughUseEasyChristMysteryReadyComfortableIntellectualClimateBoundsContemporaryOne TimeVacuumsGod Is LoveUnbelieversSynonymVagueness Author:Christian Wiman
