Andrei Bădică

“I remember when we parted there was an awkward moment when the severity of my situation and our unfamiliarity with each other left us with no words, and in a gesture that I’m sure was completely unconscious, he placed his hand over his heart for just a second as a flicker of empathetic anguish crossed his face. It sliced right through me. It cut through the cloud I was living in and let the plain day pour its balm upon me. It was, I am sure, one of those moments when we enact and reflect a mercy and mystery that are greater than we are, when the void of God and the love of God, incomprehensible pain and the peace that passeth understanding, come together in a simple human act. We stood for a minute in the aftermath, not talking, and then went our suddenly less separate ways.”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

“I am so glad To come accidentally upon My self at the end of a tortuous road And have learned with surprise that God Unworshipped withers to the Futile One. —PATRICK KAVANAGH, FROM “AUDITORS IN”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

“even in pressing straits the word of God is not bound, not even in preachers who are bound.”
― Augustine of Hippo, The Complete Works of Saint Augustine: The Confessions, On Grace and Free Will, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, Expositions on the Book Of Psalms, ...

“Religion is not made of these moments; religion is the means of making these moments part of your life rather than merely radical intrusions so foreign and perhaps even fearsome that you can’t even acknowledge their existence afterward. Religion is what you do with these moments of over-mastery in your life, these rare times in which you are utterly innocent.”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer