Podcasts about he held radical light the art

In our fast-paced world, how can we cultivate a sense of wonder and open ourselves to the possibility of joy, even amidst life's inevitable hardships? In this episode, we're joined by Christian Wiman as we continue our chapter-by-chapter exploration of Falling Upward with Chapter 10: "A Bright Sadness." In this conversation with Christian Wiman, we explore how suffering and joy can coexist and transform us through a poetic experience of Christianity. Before we dive in to the interview with Christian, CAC staff catch up with Richard at his hermitage to hear his reflections on the tenth chapter a decade after he originally wrote it. Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art; Every Riven Thing, winner of the Ambassador Book Award; Once in the West, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Survival Is a Style―all published by FSG. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and at Yale Divinity School. Resources: A PDF of the transcript for this episode is available here. Grab a copy of the newly revised version of Falling Upward, with a new foreword by Brené Brown here. Check out Christian Wiman's latest book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair here. We also reference his book, My Bright Abyss. You can find that here. Connect with us: Have a question or thought about this season that you'd like to share with us? Email us: podcasts@cac.org Send us a voicemail here: http://www.cac.org/voicemail

"To be a poet is to be an exile," says poet Christian Wiman. He echoes the most influential writer on his early life and work, Simone Weil, who wrote in her Gravity & Grace: "We must take the feeling of being at home into exile. We must be rooted in the absence of a place." Wiman spent most of the 2020 leg of the pandemic curating a story about home using 100 poems, seamed with prose from some of the wisest denizens of our species to narrate the tale. He joins Evan Rosa to read some of the poetry from the collection, talk about the connection between poetry and faith, and continue to examine the meaning of home through exiles' eyes. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.Show NotesHome: 100 PoemsJoseph Brodsky, exile from RussaDefining "Home"Mahmoud Darwish, "I Belong There""I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them, a single word: home."Josef Pieper on tautologyPoetry as a way of inhabiting rather than definingThe epigraph from He Held Radical Light: "The world does not need to come from a god. For better or worse, the world is here. But it does need to go to one (where is he?). And that is why the poet exists." (Juan Ramon Jimenez)Why does the poet exist?"Existence is not existence until it's more than existence."Jack Gilbert, "Singing in My Difficult Mountains""My fine house that love is.""To be a poet is to be an exile."Simone Weil: "We must be rooted in the absence of a place." (Gravity & Grace)A traveling placeModern humanity in exile, a secular notionWeil, The Need for Roots"I think all poets though, experience the feeling of displacement that comes with perception."W.B. Yeats on Maude Young, "I might have thrown poor words away and attempted to live.""Life is the thing. Words are always a kind of displacement."Wendell Berry's Sabbath: "There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way, but a place."Frantically nomadicRestlessness and the pull toward securityRooted in relationships"In my 20s, Simone Weil was the most important writer in my life. ... But now in my fifties, I feel a little differently. I still love Simone Weil, but I appreciate very much the work that someone like Wendell Berry has done to secure an existence against all the odds, secure a kind of existence in one place, and make it out of language as well."Vincent Van Gogh and Gaston BachelardStabilizing and DestabilizingVan Gogh: Life is roundBachelard: Dwelling in images and wordsSome real element of the past, brought into the present with metaphysical power: "I think there's some real element of the past of memory, that is made alive and volatile and even salvific, and it's not an image of youth. It is the actual thing being brought into the present."He Held Radical Light: seeking, through poetry, "those moments of mysterious intrusion, that feeling of collusion with eternity, of life and language riled to the one wild charge.”Poetry: the main way faith sustains Wiman"All poets are Jews." (Maria Sativa)"All poets are believers." (Christian Wiman)Something in poetry itself to further existence"If you do not believe in poetry, you cannot write it." (Wallace Stevens)Glory to God for dappled thingsThe role of mystery in poetry and faithFollowing the music of poetry in a physical, physiological, improvisational wayWendell Berry on the Kingdom of God: "We contain that which contains us."Home in painful division in Wendell BerryCarson McCullers: ImprovisationBraithwaite, "Bass"How is poetry in conversation with perplexity?James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" (Christian Wiman's "favorite short story in the world")"Dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing an order on it."Deep consolation in poetryResponding to the music of poetryRead poetry out loudCan you write good poetry without suffering much?George MacKay Brown, "Old Fisherman with Guitar"What is a life worth living? Creating and lovingThe pursuit of God is wrapped up with creating art and being freed to love.The impact of Christian Wiman's "Prayer"About Christian WimanPoet Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He's the author of several books of poetry, including Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, and his most recent, Survival Is a Style. His memoirs include the bracing and beautiful My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art. He edited an anthology of 100 poems on Joy a few years ago, and just released Home: 100 Poems this month.Introduction (Evan Rosa)"To be a poet is to be an exile," says Christian Wiman, a poet and Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. Wiman knows this personally. When he was younger than now, he moved 40 times over a 15 year period. He would come early to work as Editor of Poetry Magazine to write his own, spilling line after line onto page from the driver seat of his car (he wrote my favorite poem of his that way he tells me). And the writer that defined him then was Simone Weil, who wrote in her Gravity and Grace, "We must take the feeling of being at home into exile. We must be rooted in the absence of a place."And I wonder, if all poets are exiles, does that make us all poets? The generalized unease and anxiety that comes with being human often leaves us longing for a home. And each of us imagine a particular place, a perspective, a people, when we think of home. But it's always longing, isn't it. Especially in light of the fact that "we are home to each other"—that home is ultimately a relational reality built and maintained and indwelled with people—if that's true then no wonder we long for home all the more, because we long to be accepted, received, and loved all the more.A recent theme of the podcast has been exile and migration. War correspondent Janine Di Giovanni offered perspective on the vanishing Christian population in the middle east; biblical scholar Francisco Lozada helped us view faith through the eyes of the immigrants hopeful sojourn. Today, that continues, even as we consider the very meaning of home by way of poetry.Christian Wiman spent most of the 2020 leg of the pandemic curating a story about home using 100 poems, using with prose from some of the wisest denizens of our species to narrate the tale. The book came out this month, and you can listen to Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman discuss the project on episode 36 of the podcast.I asked Chris to come back on the show to read more of the poems he selected, talk about the connection between poetry and faith, and continue to examine the meaning of home through exiles' eyes. You might think that's exactly the wrong way to wonder about home. But Odysseus would tell you different as he fights his way back to Ithaca. Moses would tell you different as he leads the Jews through the wilderness. Jesus would tell you different as he goes to prepare a place for you.And what other option do we have as wandering wonderers anyway—always longing for home, always praying for, in Christian Wiman's words, "those moments of mysterious intrusion, that feeling of collusion with eternity, of life and language riled to the one wild charge.”Thanks for listening, and enjoy.Production NotesThis podcast featured poet Christian WimanEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Natalie Lam, and Logan LedmanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Who are the friends that, despite different paths chosen, have remained steadfast in your life?In this poem Christian Wiman recalls the changing beliefs of his friends; this one has a new diet, this one has a new relationship, this one is slipping away, this one is verdant. While doing so, he holds the love for his “beautiful, credible friends” as the thing to hold on to while the planet turns faster.Christian Wiman is the author of numerous works of poetry and prose, including He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art and a new book of poems, Survival Is a Style: Poems. He is a professor at Yale Divinity School.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Poet Christian Wiman and theologian Miroslav Volf, both colleagues and friends, discuss poetry's ability to give voice to the mixed feelings of life today, talking about the mash-up of home and exile, joy and sorrow, saint and sinner; and Wiman reads some of his favorite poetry from his upcoming anthology, Home: 100 Poems.Poet Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He's the author of several books of poetry, including Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, and his most recent, Survival Is a Style. His memoirs include the bracing and beautiful My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art. He edited an anthology of 100 poems on Joy a few years ago, and is currently putting finishing touches on another 100 poems on Home.Our guest last week, the novelist Marilynne Robinson, says of Wiman, "His poetry and scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world.  This puts him at the very source of theology, and enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader's surprise and assent are one and the same.”Show NotesOn being nowhere, absence, place, and homeSimone Weil: “We must take the feeling of being at home into exile, we must be rooted in the absence of a place." Christian Wiman's homeThe resonance of objects and personsCompleting a poetry anthology about home during a pandemicThe ubiquity of home in poetry"The Niagara River” by Kay RyanIndividual life joining with collective life, the circularity and rhythm of lyric poetry; searching for a remembrance of homeWilliam Wordsworth: “Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come”“Innocence” by Patrick Kavanagh"To be a poet is to be in exile." What is it to be a believer?"Poets are not poets most of the time, the rest of the time they're poor slobs like everybody else."Living in and attending to our exile: Abraham “living in tents, awaiting the city, whose architect and builder is God”; Jesus sleeping in the boat in the storm.Gillian Rose, Love's Work and Nietzsche's "tragic joy”; writing when she was dying of cancer and viewing faith as unmaking oneself."The Bennett Springs Road” by Julia Randall: “The bird that sang I am."What is the right relationship of security to precarity?“In a Time of Peace” by Ilya KaminskyHow do we live lives of joy while there's suffering all around us?“Shema” by Primo LeviAlexander Schmemann's “bright sorrow"Marilynne Robinson's model of creating characters with credible lives of faith‚ credible for the very fact that they are attentive to the suffering around them.W.H. Auden: “A good poem is the clear expression of mixed feelings.""Taking life by the throat"Both/And Life“Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop—“Somebody loves us all."

“For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth… Be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” (Isaiah 65).   “When I left college and set out to be a poet I thought of nothing but writing a poem that would live forever. That’s just how I phrased it: live forever. It seemed to me the only noble ambition… It was, I suppose, a transparent attempt to replace soul with the self.”[1] Christian Wiman writes this to explain how poetry abandoned him, about how becoming a Christian required him to give up the fantasy that his words could last forever. What fantasy do you need to leave behind for the sake of faith? It is hard to believe that it has been less than a month since the devastating fires here because so much happens every day. On Friday for instance, another school shooting took place here in California (Santa Clarita). The president pardoned a list of American men convicted of war crimes. On the same morning former ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch testified before a Congressional impeachment hearing. As she spoke the president derided her on Twitter. She talked about election interference and its effect on foreign policy. She wondered, “How could our system fail like this? How is it that foreign corrupt interests could manipulate our government?”[2] It feels a little like W.B. Yeats’ (1865-1939) poem “The Second Coming.” “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / the ceremony of innocence is drowned / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity. / Surely some revelation is at hand; / surely the Second Coming is at hand.”[3] Indeed make no mistake the Second Coming is at hand. Our Gospel this morning speaks of three moments, three realizations of this truth. In the 8th century BC the prophet Isaiah wrote to inspire a people who had been held captive in distant Babylon. He conveys God’s message to them, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered…” (Isa. 65). But “the former things” do “come to mind.” The gladness and rejoicing will come as reversals of the terrible tragedies that have afflicted them. Children dying, sinners never finding atonement, people who after laboring have their houses and fields taken from them – these things will no longer happen. Isaiah conveys God’s promise of a new day of peace when the “wolf and lamb will feed together.” By the time of Jesus the temple in Jerusalem has been both restored and corrupted. Every Sunday for the last six months we have been following Jesus’ travels in Luke only to arrive at this very point. This is Jesus’ last public sermon. Immediately before this Jesus warns the people to beware of religious leaders who love being honored, who draw attention to themselves through their long prayers. In contrast Jesus admires a poor widow who gave two cents because it was all she had. Jesus hears people admiring the way the temple is adorned. The Greek word for this is kekosmētai. It combines a sense of both beauty and order like our words cosmos or cosmetic.[4] So imagine someone complimenting the architecture of the United States Capitol and you have a sense for what is happening. Jesus explains that everything they see will be utterly destroyed. What the disciples and these people so desperately hope for is a warrior king who will overthrow the foreign Roman occupying army and the collaborators in charge of all social institutions. The disciples desperately resist what Jesus is teaching them. He gives them a completely upside down picture of servant leadership in which the greatest is “servant of all” (Mk. 9:35). God is not merely changing who is in charge but overthrowing that whole way of existing. In the realm of God, which is unfolding all around us, love matters more than power. That is why Jesus warns the people to beware of false leaders who still exalt power over love. He says people will come in his name saying “Eigo eimi” which we translate as “I am he,” but which really means simply “I am.” John’s gospel repeats this all the time. Jesus says, “I am the true vine” (Jn. 15:1), “I am the light of the world” (Jn. 8:12, 9:5). This is an echo of Moses’ encounter with God at the Burning Bush. Moses asks who God is and God says “Eigo eimi” “I am.” False leaders will say the time is at hand. They will say the chairos, the fulfilled time is near. Do not go after them. The telos, which is more than a simple end but a fulfillment,  a completion, “will not follow immediately” (Luke 21). Jesus’ last public sermon points to a second moment in history. When the region revolted against Roman rule the Emperor Vespasian sent troops to crush the people. After a four month siege in the year 70 AD the Romans (under the future emperor Titus) destroyed the temple and the city. Thousands of people were killed and it seemed like a great culture and religion had been utterly destroyed. Biblical scholars are not exactly sure when Luke composed this gospel but they believe it might have been some time around these events.[5] In the first and second centuries it was illegal to be a Christian. Because we inhabit a different age and culture we have difficulty imagining a world in which politics and religion were so thoroughly intermixed. Christians refused to make the required sacrifice to the Roman emperor and this was regarded as a grave political crime. When things went wrong in society like earthquakes, wars, plagues, famines and signs in the heavens it was common to persecute the Christians.[6] The same emperor Vespasian built a Roman coliseum that seated 50,000 people. Killing Christians in gruesome ways was entertainment in that society. They made no distinction between capital punishment and a sacrifice to the gods. We have a written account of the details around the execution of Perpetua, Felicitas and their companions in the year 203 AD. Perpetua was a twenty-two year old noblewoman and was nursing her infant in prison before being killed in the amphitheater by wild animals and the sword.[7] And to the people of this moment Jesus speaks frankly about the way they will be arrested (paradidomi) and persecuted, brought before kings and governors for his name’s sake (Lk. 21). Jesus says to them. This will be a time for you to bear testimony (marturion). To people in the most extreme circumstance Jesus has such a simple message. Don’t agonize over preparing what you will say, “for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” You will be betrayed by those who are supposed to love you, “[b]ut not a hair of your head will perish.” The final moment the gospel speaks to is of course our own. In this time of political turmoil it is hard for us to see past the headlines. Everywhere so many prominent leaders violate accepted conventions concerning power and civility, and as the internet amplifies the most extreme voices, we cannot help but suffer from a kind of outrage fatigue. And meanwhile we face the most serious threat in recorded history. Modern society may make the planet uninhabitable for humans and countless other species. In the words of a recent commentator we have radically underestimated the effects of our actions. Twenty-five years ago it would have been inconceivable to us that within such a short time, “a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic, produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin.”[8] This is the most important news from summer. This is the story of our generation. I want to suggest two small things that you might do as servant leaders to help. First, in all our conversations we need to be honest about this reality. This week an acquaintance was talking about fires that were “just normal not from climate change or anything.” I just let this go instead of clarifying what she meant by this comment. At your Thanksgiving dinner tables I encourage you to let a lot go – but not this. Our generation has a unique responsibility in all human history. Second, when you work alone it is hard to be effective and easy to become discouraged. At Grace Cathedral everybody counts. Volunteer, make a pledge, join a group or form one. Become a teacher, an usher, an acolyte or a docent. Exercise leadership and worship here because this is part of how God is saving the world. We are so much stronger together than we are as individuals. And the very poorest and most ignored person here may make the offering that will save us. On this ingathering Sunday the world will see in us the opposite of Yeats’ poem. At Grace Cathedral the center does hold, things that fell apart are being repaired, innocence is not drowned but nurtured. The best have conviction and the worst find forgiveness for their sins. Although it may seem strange in this world of wars and rumors of wars, of persecutions and betrayals, the second coming is incredibly good news to us. God has written a poem that will live forever. It is not a political party, or a system of government, or even a religion. It is not even this world. The poem is you. And you will not perish. Leave your fantasies behind because we have reason for a far greater hope. God is creating a new heavens and a new earth. Be glad and rejoice forever.   [1] Christian Wiman, He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, The Faith of Art (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2018) 6-7. [2] Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Ex-Envoy to Ukraine ‘Devastated’ as Trump Vilified Her,” The New York Times, 15 November 2019. The next day (Saturday) we heard that the Chinese government could have sent as many as one million people into internment camps in just the last few years. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage [3] The rest of W.B. Yeats’ poem: “The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming.” https://poets.org/poem/second-coming [4] keko/smhtai [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus and, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE) [6] In about the year 197 the North African Tertullian wrote, “If the Tiber reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky doesn’t move or the earth does, if there is a famine, if there is a plague, the cry is at once, ‘The Christians to the lion…” Margaret R. Miles, The Word Made Flesh: A History of Christian Thought (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 19. [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_of_Saint_Perpetua,_Saint_Felicitas,_and_their_Companions [8] Eugene Linden, “How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong,” The New York Times, 8 November 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/sunday/science-climate-change.html

The former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman is both a poet and an essayist who teaches Literature and Religion at Yale Divinity School. In an interview he discussed what he hopes readers might take from his work: I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people. His most recent book is He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art, released in 2018. Other books include My Bright Abyss, Ambition and Survival, Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, Hard Night, and The Long Home. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33947]

The former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman is both a poet and an essayist who teaches Literature and Religion at Yale Divinity School. In an interview he discussed what he hopes readers might take from his work: I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people. His most recent book is He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art, released in 2018. Other books include My Bright Abyss, Ambition and Survival, Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, Hard Night, and The Long Home. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33947]

The former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman is both a poet and an essayist who teaches Literature and Religion at Yale Divinity School. In an interview he discussed what he hopes readers might take from his work: I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people. His most recent book is He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art, released in 2018. Other books include My Bright Abyss, Ambition and Survival, Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, Hard Night, and The Long Home. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33947]

The former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman is both a poet and an essayist who teaches Literature and Religion at Yale Divinity School. In an interview he discussed what he hopes readers might take from his work: I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people. His most recent book is He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art, released in 2018. Other books include My Bright Abyss, Ambition and Survival, Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, Hard Night, and The Long Home. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33947]

The former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman is both a poet and an essayist who teaches Literature and Religion at Yale Divinity School. In an interview he discussed what he hopes readers might take from his work: I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people. His most recent book is He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art, released in 2018. Other books include My Bright Abyss, Ambition and Survival, Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, Hard Night, and The Long Home. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33947]