Speaking of religion ...

... God's Truth Is Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

There is too much in this piece to allow for any quick commentary, but the following did grab me in particular:

Contemporary physicists talk about something called “quantum weirdness,” which refers to the fact that an observed particle behaves very differently from one that is unobserved. An observed particle passed through a screen will always go through one hole. A particle that is unobserved but mechanically monitored will pass through multiple holes at the same time. What this suggests, of course, is that what we call reality is utterly conditioned by the limitations of our senses, and that there is some other reality much larger and more complex than we are able to perceive.

It would seem to me that the mechanically monitored particle is also to some extent observed. But the idea that reality is much vaster than the part of it we can perceive seems sound to me. I have, these past few days, been annoyed that I have been unable to make anything good in the way of poems. Then, last night, I realized that the problem had to do with my wanting to make poems. As I said the other day about Debbie's pear, art works best when it is record of engagement with the world and life, not when it is just another artifact, however skillfully that artifact may be made.

I continue to strongly recommend to anyone interested in poetry Christian Wiman's Ambition and Survival.