Experience as an end in itself is a dead end--a quote

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

“If God is not IN your experience, then experience is always an end in itself, and always, I think, a dead end.” Christian Wiman, MY BRIGHT ABYSS, p 58

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Christian Wiman was an atheist poet who began to wonder about faith when he got cancer. My Bright Abyss is a very thoughtful and beautifully written book.

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

Here is the synopsis of my new novel: They called them heroes. They thanked them for their service. Then forgot about them. Joe Kirk lost a leg. Lonnie Blifield lost his eyes. Victoria Roundtree lost her skin. “Zan” Zander lost his mind. Four homeless and hopeless Iraqistan VETS who accidentally end up living together on an old school bus. With nowhere to go, and nothing else to do, they lurch from one VAMC to another, getting no help because, like the thousands of other Iraqistan VETS who are homeless, unemployed, and suicidal, they do not trust the system and refuse to “come inside.” After another fruitless stop, at the VAMC in Iron Mountain, Michigan, a doctor is found dead, and the VETS are accused of his murder. Distrustful, strangers to America, to each other, and even to themselves, they must become a unit to learn who really murdered the doctor, so that they can stay free. In doing so, they uncover far more, about themselves and about their country, than they dared even to imagine. Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books.

$8.49 or $12.99, according to which site you look at, for paperback and $3.99 for Kindle. eBooks for Nook and other formats will soon be available, perhaps already.