Nature poets can't walk across the backyard without tripping over an epiphany.

Nature poets can't walk across the backyard without tripping over an epiphany.

God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering.

Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (I know, I know: he was quoting the Psalms, and who quotes a poem when being tortured? The words aren’t the point. The point is he felt human destitution to its absolute degree; the point is that God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering.)

It's just that different emotions and perceptions demand different frequencies and intensities.

Mandelstam - his gift and the untamable nature of it - was like a thorn in Stalin's brain.