Quote of the Day (Christian Wiman, on Inspiration and Grace)

“Inspiration is to thought what grace is to faith: intrusive, transcendent, transformative, but also evanescent and, all too often, anomalous. A poem can leave its maker at once more deeply seized by existence and, in a profound way, alienated from it, for as the act of making ends, as the world that seemed to overbrim its boundaries becomes, once more, merely the world, it can be very difficult to retain any faith at all in that original moment of inspiration.”-- Christian Wiman, “My Bright Abyss,” The American Scholar, Winter 2009

(In this vivid and spiritually restless essay, Wiman—editor of Poetry Magazine—takes issue with the notion of “returning to the faith of your childhood,” noting that this is impossible—if you think you’ve done so, you either haven’t lived or have “denied the reality of your life.” At the same time, he holds out hope for “radical change” that can transform us “right until the last breath.”

You know what really kills me? That Jesse Ventura interview in which he said, “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.” Somehow, I think, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were a lot stronger than that former professional wrestler could ever hope to be. Wiman shows how faith, far from being a “crutch,” poses one test after another, such that “I find myself continually falling back into wounds, wishes, terrors I thought I had risen beyond.”

If you want to read a 21st century counterpart to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reflection “Experience”—one that takes full account of the tragedies of life, but with a provisional openness to grace—then turn to this unusually thoughtful meditation.)