We are each of us — every single one of us — meant to be a lens for truths that we ourselves cannot see.

The temptation is to make an idol of our own experience, to assume our pain is more singular than it is. . . . In truth, experience means nothing if it does not mean beyond itself: we mean nothing unless and until our hard-won meanings are internalized and catalyzed within the lives of others. There is something I am meant to see, something for which my situation and suffering are the lens, but the cost of such seeing — I am just beginning to realize — may very well be any final clarity or perspective on my own life, my own faith. That would not be a bad fate, to burn up like the booster engine that falls away from the throttling rocket, lighting a little dark as I go.

— Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss