“I can see now how deeply God's absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that pride and fear and self-love at once protected me from and subjected me to.... For if grace woke me to God's presence in the world and in my heart, it also woke me to his absence. I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe.” IfsWorldBelieveHeartLongI CanSelfPainFallFeltGracePrideSelf LoveMy HeartAbsenceUnconsciousAffectedProtectedUnbeliefGod's Presence Author:Christian Wiman
“What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent with the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves.” WorldGivingMindSelfSpiritDoubtAbsenceLatentDormantDullnessBest Self Author:Christian Wiman
“I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence that the world, including many prose writers, doesn't recognize as discipline. It is, though. It's the discipline to endure hours that you refuse to fill with anything but the possibility of poetry, though you may in fact not be able to write a word of it just then, and though it may be playing practical havoc with your life. It's the discipline of preparedness.” WorldWritingKindMayFactsAbleCertainHoursPossibilityDisciplineEndureIncludingRefusePracticalsProseIndolencePreparednessHavocTime Poetry Author:Christian Wiman
“There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.” WorldFeelsKindFeelingsHomeForceDifficultAnxietyAmbitionExplanationIsolationFuelSecularNever Quit Author:Christian Wiman
