My Bright Abyss

Christian Wiman is first and foremost a poet and, second, a man grappling with his own mortality in the form of a virulent type of cancer. As a fellow human being, I had no difficulty in understand Wiman's writing relating to his illness and its treatment and sharing the feelings they unleashed. It is the first of those characteristics, Wiman's poetic nature, that gave me the most difficulty and challenged me in following the trajectory of his spiritual quest. Wiman quotes Auden who described poetry as "the clear expression of mixed feelings." If that is so, then it is true that Wiman is a poet through and through because his spiritual ruminations are loaded with paradoxes. Yet, puzzled as I may have been when I pondered those especially paradoxical paragraphs, I respected and admired the work that Wiman put into searching for a faith for the 21st century. I am grateful that along with his fears and doubts, he shared his very personal insights, many of which were the result of his extensive study of luminaries in the fields of literature, art, philosophy, and religion. While this book provided no easy answers to my questions about faith and meaning, I feel my life has been enriched by having read and digested–at least partially–Wiman's beautiful meditation.