In a Dark Wood: Journeys of Faith and DoubtLinda Jones, Sophie Stanes Doubt is as natural an experience as faith and what theologian Paul Tillich called an indispensable component of authentic faith. In this book an extraordinary range of writers talks about the moment-often devastating-when they turned to God only to find neither God's presence nor consolation. Where once silence was filled with peace, now that silence signals only emptiness. In a Dark Wood features a diverse group of voices describing unlikely and often moving journeys toward or away from faith-Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; laypeople and religious professionals; activists, poets, politicians, and ordinary people. In addition, dozens of readings, poems, and prayers reflect on belief and doubt, on the loss of faith and its rediscovery, from the Psalmists, medieval saints, and such luminaries as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, James Baldwin and Joseph Heller, Maya Angelou and Isabel Allende, Henri Nouwen and Walter Brueggemann, Nelson Mandela and Daniel Berrigan. |
Contents
Jane Harvey | 19 |
Loydell | 39 |
Sr Petra Boex | 61 |
Christopher Hall | 75 |
Colin Parry | 91 |
Chris Cole | 113 |
Part Three The Phoenix of Faith | 119 |
Acknowledgments | 209 |
Index of Authors | 217 |
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Common terms and phrases
arms trade atheism aware became become believe Bible Bishop CAFOD called Catholic Christ Christian church dark David Hodges dead death divine Don Cupitt doubt earth everything experience Extract eyes faith father feel felt friends give God's Gospel grief hand heart heaven Holy hope human Isabel Allende Jesus Jewish Joseph Heller kind knew light Lionel Blue liturgy lives look loss Loydell Marilyn Nelson mother moved never night ordained pain Pax Christi peace person pray prayer priest Psalm questions R. S. Thomas realize relationship religion religious remember reprinted by permission Robert Frost seemed sense sing somehow someone soul spiritual Stanbrook Abbey strong struggle suffering suppose talk thee there's things thou thought understand walk Walter Brueggemann whole wonder words Yahweh Yehuda Amichai young
Popular passages
Page 13 - THE sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; — on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Page 72 - The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; — The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Page 97 - If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Page 199 - Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped : All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Page 27 - I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Page 53 - THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth...
Page 73 - The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost.
Page 10 - About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along...
Page 72 - Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids; O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye ; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat.