[1] Christian Wiman grew up in an evangelical church in Texas, living a dark childhood with \u201cmy father vanishing, my mother wracked with rage and faith, my siblings sinking into drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
[2] Now a professor teaching religion and literature at Yale Divinity School, he is the author, editor or translator of thirteen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, and is a winner of the Ambassador Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.<\/p>\n
[3] As an adult, Wiman has lived for almost 20 years with a rare and brutal cancer. In this new book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, <\/em>Wiman lays bare his own wrestling with despair, God and faith.\u201cI have found faith to be not a comfort but a provocation to a life I never seem to live up to, an eruption of joy that evaporates the instant I recognize it as such, an agony of absence that assaults me like a psychic wound.\u201d (15) He seeks a language, a form, for the mystery of living a faithful life moving in and out of despair, belief and unbelief, encompassing the void that one never quite fills.<\/p>\n [4] Zero at the Bone<\/em> draws from poetry, literature, film, theology and scripture.\u00a0 Its form is that of a commonplace book of jottings, musings, quotations, poems (his and others), critique, and memoir.\u00a0 Though this sounds disjointed, the book is not. \u00a0It is, however, a mixed experience for the reader.\u00a0 For those who do not have some experience with theology, philosophy and literary criticism, there will be parts of the book you\u2019ll want to skim. The beauty of the book\u2019s form, however, is that it lends itself to just that. It is not a sustained argument, but rather a set of impressionistic expressions that invite you to pick and choose the portions that speak to you at any given time. The power and poignancy of the book is not diminished by such an approach. Readers who are not academics need not avoid this volume \u2013 it will touch the hearts of those who open it.<\/p>\n [5] Perhaps the best way to illustrate the book\u2019s form is to offer below some snippets\/examples in a form that replicates Wiman\u2019s own.<\/p>\n [6] Wiman addresses deep grief and despair, but the work is not limited to suffering brought on by obvious major tragedies. A poem by Lucille Clifton (p29) illustrates:<\/p>\n BOUQUET<\/p>\n i have gathered my losses<\/p>\n into a spray of pain;<\/p>\n my parents, my brother<\/p>\n my husband, my innocence<\/p>\n all clustered together<\/p>\n durable as daisies.<\/p>\n now i add you,<\/p>\n little love, little<\/p>\n flower,<\/p>\n who walked unannounced<\/p>\n into my life<\/p>\n and almost blossomed there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [7] As Wiman points out, the loss could be anything — a friendship, a potential romance, a dog \u2026.\u00a0 He discusses both the particularity and universality of suffering.\u00a0 There is a particularity in our personal suffering in which we can immerse ourselves, erasing others. But in this pain, we may also experience a universality that awakens us to the pain of others.\u00a0 (29)<\/p>\n [8] We may feel, as did Nietzsche, that \u201cOur personal and profoundest suffering is incomprehensible and inaccessible to almost everyone,\u201d but Wiman believes we are not as atomized as that. (279)\u00a0 Everyone has had a bullet in them. Everyone has experienced the hope and loss of Clifton\u2019s little flower that didn\u2019t blossom. \u201cThe whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.(St. Paul)\u201d (280).<\/p>\n [9] There is pain in each other<\/em> to which we are \u201ccalled to witness and perhaps ease.\u201d(41)<\/p>\n [10] For the grief in our selves<\/em>, he quotes Simone Weil, \u201cThe soul has to go on loving in the emptiness, or at least go on wanting to love.\u201d (280)<\/p>\n [11] Wiman turns to God and the cross.\u00a0 We know a suffering God, present with us in our pain. \u201cI know in my bones there is no escape from necessity, and know in my bones that God\u2019s love reaches into and redeems every atom that I am.\u00a0 I believe the right response to reality is to bow down, and I believe the right response to reality is to scream. Life is necessity, and love is grace.\u201d (278)\u00a0 George Herbert expressed this poetically when he was newly, happily married and simultaneously dying of tuberculosis:<\/p>\n I will complain, yet praise;<\/p>\n I will bewail, approve:<\/p>\n And all my sour-sweet days<\/p>\n I will lament and love. (11)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [12] I close with an image from the Zohar, \u201cReal tears are a prayer beyond words.\u201d (284)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [1] Christian Wiman grew up in an evangelical church in Texas, living a dark childhood with \u201cmy father vanishing, my mother wracked with rage and faith, my siblings sinking into drugs.\u201d [2] Now a professor teaching religion and literature at Yale Divinity School, he is the author, editor or translator of thirteen books of poetry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-grief","category-mental-health"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n