To be truly alive is to feel one's ultimate existence within one's daily existence. — Christian Wiman 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 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
“Art can model the more difficult dynamic of transfiguring one’s life, but at some point the dynamic reverses itself: life models, or… — Christian Wiman 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 Copy Share Image
I can see now how deeply God's absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that… — Christian Wiman 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 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 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 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 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 Copy Share Image
“if he loved his life so much, how could he be happy that it was ending so early? The answer, I think,… — Christian Wiman 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 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 Copy Share Image
“You cannot devote your life to an abstraction. Indeed, life shatters all abstractions in one way or another, including words such as… — Christian Wiman 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 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 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
I find myself continually falling back into wounds, wishes, terrors I thought I had risen beyond. — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“Intellectuals and artists concerned with faith tend to underestimate the radical, inviolable innocence it requires. We read and read, write long, elaborate essays and… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
We should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations. — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“Let us remember...that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
To be truly alive is to feel one's ultimate existence within one's daily existence. — 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, My God,… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his… — Christian Wiman 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 points? How… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“It is a strange thing how sometimes merely to talk honestly of God, even if it is only to articulate our feelings of separation… — Christian Wiman 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, if only… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
