Art Helps Us Inhabit Our Fears

Christian Wiman reflects on the ways art helps us process fear, pain, and loss

Abstract painting using blues and specks or orange to give a moody feel

One of art’s functions is to give form to feelings that would otherwise remain inchoate and corrosive, to give us a means whereby we can inhabit our fears and pains rather than they us, to help us live with our losses rather than being permanently and helplessly haunted by them.

— Christian Wiman in He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018), 64–65.

About Ryan

Ryan writes for weary pilgrims learning to follow Jesus through the wilderness. He serves as a lead pastor at a church in Southern California.

The Weary Pilgrim

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