“You cannot devote your life to an abstraction. Indeed, life shatters all abstractions in one way or another, including words such as… — Christian Wiman Abstraction Copy Share Image
I can't think offhand of any American poets who have Mandelstam's urgency, but it's a different country and a different time, and… — Christian Wiman American poetry Copy Share Image
The horrors have made the legend of Mandelstam and are inevitably the lens through which we read his work and life. But… — Christian Wiman Emotional Copy Share Image
“part of my enjoyment of life had always been an unconscious assumption of its continuity. Not necessarily a continuity of reality itself—the… — Christian Wiman Life Copy Share Image
What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent… — Christian Wiman Absence Copy Share Image
One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
I'm drawn to this range, that's for sure, but I suppose the thing that most appeals to me about Mandelstam is the… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“Herein lies the great difference between divine weakness and human weakness, the wounds of Christ and the wounds of man. Two human… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out,… — Christian Wiman Absolutes Copy Share Image
“What you must realize, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is… — Christian Wiman Christianity Copy Share Image
“How many loves fail because, in an unconscious effort to make our weaknesses more strong, we link with others precisely at those… — Christian Wiman Love Copy Share Image
“Religious despair is often a defense against boredom and the daily grind of existence. Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that… — Christian Wiman Christianity Copy Share Image
It is easy enough to write and talk about God while remaining comfortable within the contemporary intellectual climate. Even people who would… — Christian Wiman Christ Copy Share Image
“And I Said To My Soul, Be Loud Madden me back to an afternoon I carry in me not like a wound… — Christian Wiman Artistry Copy Share Image
Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“The temptation is to make an idol of our own experience, to assume our pain is more singular than it is. Experience… — Christian Wiman Experience Copy Share Image
“God speaks to us by speaking through us, and any meaning we arrive at in this life is composed of the irreducible… — Christian Wiman Life Copy Share Image
“The sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else’s suffering flaring in your own nerves.… — Christian Wiman Compassion Copy Share Image
“Faith cannot save you from the claims of reason, except insofar as it preserves and protects that wonderful, terrible time when reason,… — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
“Modern spiritual consciousness is predicated upon the fact that God is gone, and spiritual experience, for many of us, amounts mostly to… — Christian Wiman Consciousness Copy Share Image
“The meanings that God calls us to in our lives are never abstract. Though the call may ask us to redefine, or… — Christian Wiman Life Copy Share Image
“The spiritual efficacy of all encounters is determined by the amount of personal ego that is in play. If two people meet… — Christian Wiman Human love Copy Share Image
I don’t believe in “laying to rest” the past. There are wounds we won’t get over. There are things that happen to… — Christian Wiman Alive Copy Share Image
“whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but… — Christian Wiman Change Copy Share Image
“When I think of the years when I had no faith, what I am struck by, first of all, is how little… — Christian Wiman Atheism Copy Share Image
There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that… — Christian Wiman Ambition Copy Share Image
The endless, useless urge to look on life comprehensively, to take a bird's-eye view of ourselves and judge the dimensions of what… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
