My Bright Abyss

A person cannot think their way through pain and suffering. Knowledge and wisdom are essential to seeing the path but are incomplete. Trials and especially traumas take a unique heart to empower a person to place one foot in front of the other.

Christian Wiman has written a soul filled book sourced from living in the desert. I recommend to you My Bright Abyss, Meditation of a Modern Believer. He is the author poet who gives us new eyes to see in the dark.

Christian Wiman is a poet, translator, editor, and essayist. He was raised in West Texas and earned a BA at Washington and Lee University. A former Guggenheim fellow, Wiman served as the editor of Poetry magazine from 2003 to 2013. The book is a bit autobiography, poetry, and essay.

The title of the book is taken from a poem that still resonates deeply within my heart,

My God my bright abyss

into which all my longing will not go

once more I come to the edge of all I know

and believing nothing believe in this:

The poem is a stark four lines and ends abruptly. Some of the worst trials interrupt a nice cosy life, even if you did not realize your life was going so great before. The book is not a catalogue or explanation of poetry. But there are poems throughout. There are stories and reflections. Personal essays and metaphysical reflections are contained within.

I still find the most power and helpful truths in shorter doses. I have read my share of long form story telling and theological treaties. But during and since my life lived in desert times, I hold on to truths found in proverbs, short stories, and salient exposition.

Wiman is no complainer. He is still living with incurable cancer. He does not attempt to crate or devastate platitudes. He writes what he has found in the dark.

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote:

Christ, though, is a shard of glass in your gut. Christ is God crying I am here, and here not only in what exalts and completes and uplifts you, but here in what appalls, offends, and degrades you, here in what activates and exacerbates all that you would call not-God. To walk through the fog of God towered the clarity of Christ is difficult because of how unlovely, now “ungodly” that clarity often turns out to be.”

So go ahead and order it HERE and start reading. Wiman is a good guide to show you what you never saw even though it was before you the whole time.