The endless, useless urge to look on life comprehensively, to take a bird’s-eye view of ourselves and judge the dimensions of what we have or have not done: this is life as a landscape, or life as resume. But life is incremental, and though a worthwhile life is a gathering together of all that one is, good and bad, successful and not, the paradox is that we can never really see this one that all of our increments (and decrements, I suppose) add up to. “Early we receive a call,” writes Czeslaw Milosz, “yet it remains incomprehensible, / and only late do we discover how obedient we were.”
— Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013)
I finished this book last night. As Henry David Thoreau said: “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Notes:
- Photograph: Poetry Foundation
- Related Christian Wiman Posts: The most blinding illumination; Screaming into Silence; Bang our very bones to roust our own souls; Something is off; Sunday Sermon and Lighting a little dark as I go
This is on my list…granted, the list keeps growing but with thoughts like those above, how can his writing be denied? We stand in judgment all the time – and it’s really hubris…
This man writes on another higher plane, so much higher. Inspiring. (And yes, we do stand in judgment, all the time.)
and we walk right into the universe’s plan for us no matter which path we take.
Yes.
I just got this book from the library yesterday!
Hope you enjoy it LouAnn
The older “classics” may be hard to get through at times, but if the mood is right, the timing is right, there is so much meaning and depth that can be gleaned from even a page worth. Very good quote.
Yes, so true…Seneca is a great example of this.
Living in the moment means that our entire past makes us who we are right now……but judging ourself by the past adds or changes nothing. I Am….only who I am right now.
Yes. Well stated.
You’ve shared so many wonderful passages from this book, DK! Cannot wait to read it. 🙂
🙂 Sip Lori. It is a sipper.
On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 2:41 PM, Live & Learn wrote:
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