One doesn’t follow God in hope of happiness but because one senses — miserable flimsy little word for that beak in your bowels — a truth that renders ordinary contentment irrelevant. There are some hungers that only an endless commitment to emptiness can feed, and the only true antidote to the plague of modern despair is an absolute — and perhaps even annihilating — awe.

— Christian Wiman, “I Will Love You in the Summertime,” The American Scholar, February 29, 2016, https://theamericanscholar.org/i-will-love-you-in-the-summertime/.