"There is a passage in the writings of Simone Weil that has long been important to me. In the passage, Weil describes two prisoners who are in solitary confinement next to each other. Between them is a stone wall. Over a period of time — and I think we have to imagine it as a very long time — they find a way to communicate using taps and scratches. The wall is what separates them, but it is also the only means they have of communicating. “It is the same with us and God,” she says. “Every separation is a link.”
-Christian Wiman*
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Ten years ago my dad asked me to not knit in the car. He had a random thought about knitting needles and car accidents, and so for ten years I’ve wanted to knit in the car--and guilt-free---but I haven’t been able to do it. His words carry weight. When I shared with my father my spiritual struggles of the last half decade, he asked me to begin--again--memorizing Bible verses. He offered no sermon, no pity, no suggestion of passages that would convict. Instead, there was the simple belief in the words of his god. It struck me as a beautiful and reasonable request for an elder of a faith to ask of his offspring, and it allowed me to better follow the advice of Father Goodrich: In periods of spiritual drought, put as much time and thought into your beliefs as your disbeliefs. Another opportunity came from my friend Myra. She gifted me with the book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. Written by poet Christian Wiman, it is a lyrical narrative of Wiman's journey to find faith's high places. My faith journey seems to circle around the foot of the mountain with ruts of weariness and sometimes fury (because of the weariness). Yet, I yearn for connection. Wiman's words--the scratches and taps against the wall--offer me hope that spiritual heights happen in silence, and that even the wrenched open and the torn apart can find peace.
Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman
Riven: to wrench open, to tear to pieces.
God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky, man who sees and sings and wonders why
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky, man who sees and sings and wonders why
God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into the stillness where
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into the stillness where
God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.
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