Glimmerings

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. His books include Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, winner of the 2002 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.Christian Wiman is the Clement-Muehl Professor of the Arts at Yale Divinity School. He is the author, editor, or translator of fifteen books, including Zero at the Bone and Hammer Is the Prayer. His work appears regularly in Harper’s, The New Yorker, and Commonweal.

“For decades as both poet & proser, Chris Wiman has infected nonbelievers and believers alike with books that mesmerize with both salvation and catastrophe. So I devoured Glimmerings—a marvel of discourse between him and theologian Miroslav Volf—in one sitting: beautiful & wise, provocative, bold, and haunting. It’s destined to become a classic.” — Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author of The Liar's Club, Cherry, and Lit“Reading the letters between two of the finest minds and souls of our times—Volf, a renowned theologian, and Wiman, an inscriptional poet—feels like curling up in front of a fire, unseen, to half-overhear and half-understand two contemporary ancients groping toward meaning. In the profound friendship so alive in these tender epistles, a poet and a theologian wrestle with their distinct understandings of God, faith, and faith’s absence. Glimmerings is an act of devotion and of divine consciousness at play.” — Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Circle of Hope“Reading these letters, you know you are in the hands of craftsmen of language who use that language to explore questions of God, mortality, fear, limitations, regrets and ambitions. Theirs is a friendship electrified by intellect and fruitful divergence. Where they differ, they engage, reflect and ask more. These letters are an intimate glimpse into lives caught up in a brotherhood of exploration.” — Pádraig Ó Tuama, Irish poet and theologian"'We are trying,' writes one of the authors of this remarkable exchange, 'trying to understand each other—to articulate and make plausible... our experience with God, Christ, faith, and the lack of it.' What results, wondrous to behold, is lived theology in the making. Thanks, one writes, for 'helping me to understand what love of God looks like.' They are not afraid to disagree; but their disagreements are never impasses but prods to explore more deeply the matter at hand. Probing intelligence, rhetorical eloquence, passages of extraordinary self-disclosure, expressions of affection. I know of nothing like it. Take, read, and savor." — Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University"Arresting in beauty and remarkable in its all-too-rare honesty, Glimmerings is a gem of a book I will be returning to time and again. Miroslav Volf, a renowned theologian, and Christian Wiman, a celebrated poet, invite us to listen in as they wrestle with faith and doubt, with yearning and disappointment, with embracing life and confronting death. This is a deeply Christian book yet, as a non-Christian, I was able to find both challenge and inspiration on almost every page. What a beautiful book this is." — Shai Held, President of the Hadar Institute and author of Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life"Here are two exceptionally intelligent, imaginative people, pushing, challenging, deeply appreciating and supporting one another, as together they think through the sheer strangeness of belief. A profoundly honest, moving conversation that will prompt the reader again and again to want to join in." — Rowan Williams, theologian, poet, and former archbishop of Canterbury"In Glimmerings, love, language and faith are subtly yet indisputably tied up with the kitchen counter, political institutions, the healthcare system and all the other systems, rituals and entanglements of “barefaced communion” and ordinary, intimate mess. In the end, perhaps these material moments are the “glimmerings” that come closest to showing us God’s face." — Times Literary Supplement