“I pray to God to take me away from Him.”
When “God” cooperates for exclusion, domination, and self-interest, one happily thinks of Meister Eckhart’s famous prayer. Christian Wiman is right: “The moment you start talking about God with conviction, God is gone.” Nothing makes the truth sound like a lie like overzealousness. We live in a reality that is much greater than our beliefs.
Wiman added: “There are times when silence is not only the best, but the only piety possible.”
Silence, not retreat. The world continues to report corruption, evil, and treason at the highest levels of power. Another day? You only had one?
Here’s a surprise. Wiman, who has been battling cancer for 20 years, still wakes up with surprise. The darkness of death emits a strange light, growing brighter the closer you get. A famous poet and essayist, he has been called “America’s most important Christian writer.” The Dish “The greatest pious poet who wrote in the English language” poemhe has lived a life on the brink of death through chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, and experimental drugs that keep him alive month after month.
Wiman, a popular professor of religion and literature at Yale Divinity School, is challenged and encouraged by her students. He also said that his twin daughters asked him, “Why are you a poet? why?”
In his latest book, Zero at the Bone: 50 Entries Against DespairWiman shows how joy and awe can turn into anguish. In the face of modern despair, he offers surprise rather than reassurance. A serious response to a crisis begins with a restored consciousness. Before an action can be effective, it must remain human. Love, beauty, and the sheer fact of being alive keep the flame from extinguishing.
What you pay attention to expands. It has become so large that we seem to live completely inside it. Once an idea takes root in our mind, it influences how we feel and behave. We are not our thoughts, but our thoughts shape our world. They can become spiritual forces that replace mystery with mastery.
Beliefs begin with “I believe,” not “I know.” A life of faith is bigger than that standard. Experience is beyond description. Awe comes before consent. In times of suffering, faith does not end the struggle. It sends us deeper into it. You can be specific, but you can also be narrow. It can stabilize the mind, but it can also harden the mind. Before faith, above custom and inheritance, respect points the way. After confession, respect is assured.
We set limits beyond which grace can reach. Worship does not answer any questions or dispel any darkness. It sharpens our alertness and prevents us from mistaking our limits for God’s limits. “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.” —John 1:5
At Wiman’s insistence on awe, I returned to Caracas. There, the wonder arrived before I could name it. I loved the night sky over the city in the valley of the Andes. I was a third-grader fresh from Detroit, and there was smoke and flames rising from the Chrysler plant down the street. I had never known the quiet space above.
Caracas gave me a star. With my dad’s help, I made a “telescope” by taping soup cans together and attaching a 100-watt light bulb to a strap. We figured the best way to see in the dark was to shine a lot of light. It didn’t reveal anything. it doesn’t matter. I was proud of that. It didn’t matter how it worked.
The mountains also fascinated me. As we grew, a friend and I carved a trail across the foothills and named it after our last initial. Two of them started with A, I started with G and the other started with Lo, so the name became “Double Angelo”. We carried lunch, full water bottles, and compasses like proper explorers, but the only options were up or down.
The mysteries of the sky were revealed in the mist, wet rocks, undergrowth, and gnarled roots of old El Niño trees.Guillantella caribensis). Its branches are inhabited by mosses, lichens, ferns and orchids. Actually, I found out later. Thoreau would not have been impressed. “Your greatest success is simply recognizing that such a thing exists, and you don’t need to contact the Royal Society.”
Even though I knew less, I saw more. Things sounded true before they made sense. There was nothing spiritual anywhere else. It was there before I knew what to call it. There is a way to observe nature, which is itself a form of prayer.
Ecologist Arne Naess wrote, “The smaller we feel compared to the mountain, the closer we come to its greatness. We do not know why this is so.”
The reverse is also true. Scientists have long suspected that, on the smallest imaginable scales, another layer of physical reality may underlie quantum theory, perhaps even reversing cause and effect. Strict physicalism, which reduces spirituality to matter, still cannot eliminate mystery. It settles on “extraordinary.”
The problem arises when the effort to name and know the experience supersedes the experience itself.
Faith begins with respect. If you’re lucky, it will end in tears of joy.
notes and reading
memento mori–“Remember that you must die.” Rooted in Roman Stoic practice, this phrase refers to the discipline of keeping death in sight so that desires, beliefs, and love can be seen more clearly.
Christian Wiman—My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer; Survival is Style: Poetry;and Zero at the Bone: 50 Entries Against Despair. Before teaching at Yale University, Wiman edited poemone of the world’s leading literary magazines. Rowan Williams writes that Wiman “interrogates pain, joy, and God with rare sincerity” and draws on allies “literary, mystical, and scientific.”
Meister Eckhart – “…remove me from God,” from Sermon 52, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit.” Eckhart is not rejecting God, but seeking freedom from the “God” we possess, weaponize, and reduce to our own image. sacred unconsciousnot a divine certainty.
Henry David Thoreau—journalOctober 4, 1859. See also Uncommon Learning, Solow Institute, 1999.
Diane Ackerman—“…Looking at nature” Moon and other adventures of bats, penguins, crocodiles and whales by whale light (1992). Ackerman is an American poet, essayist, naturalist, and author of the following books: natural history of the sensesan exploration of sensory perception.
Arne NessAlways a mountain, David Rothenberg (2007), 14. Ness coined the term “deep ecology” while promoting a biocentric worldview. Rothenberg is a philosopher, musician, and writer.
“On the smallest imaginable scale” — Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, see “Stepping Beyond the Quantum Realm” new scientistMay 2-8, 2026. “The Nature of Reality” is also published in the same issue. The first considers whether deeper layers of physical reality underlie quantum theory. The second question asks whether reality can be reduced to physics, or whether conscious experience resists such a reduction.
Romaric Janel—“Against Certainty: On Language, Science, and the Discipline of Not Knowing” (mediumApril 26, 2026). Jeannelle is a French scholar of Japanese and comparative philosophy, with a special interest in the encounter between Buddhist and Western thought. He also writes for a broader audience at Substack. Philosophy and beyond.
responsibility
find what is not lost
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
