"You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. [Faith] is trust, not certainty." - Flannery O’ Connor
It seems related to my sacramental fiction ideas, mainly because of the reference to darkness.
1 comment:
I realize this is an old post, but just came across it from a link to your blog. Reread The Heart of the Matter recently, also, and am still chewing on it. Scobie perhaps sees his death as a sacrifice that will save his two loves from pain, but his failure is an inability to see pain as sacramental. He wants to efface suffering.
Another O'Connor quote apropos to this fascination with darkness in Catholic lit: "My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable. . . . Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live..." from Mystery Manners.
It sounds like Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos would fit with your theme, but it's been awhile since I read it.
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