Hints of a Hunger

“Writing and prayer both involve a lot of waiting, and I think that's a very important discipline. The experience of prayer and the experience of creation are very similar, and there is this kind of, again, attentiveness mixed with an openness that is necessary for both the creation of art and for prayer.”

“This desire for beauty and the desire for meaning are very mysterious, and for me they're hints of something. They're hints of a hunger for something that is not reachable except through something transcendent, some transcendent person. Why do we want meaning? It is ridiculous. Children suffer. Bad people do very well. There shouldn't be a desire for meaning. Life should have told us that there is no meaning, and we keep searching for it, and we keep being angry when we don't have it. So what is that hunger? What is that appetite? I don't know. It's very mysterious to me. But it seems to me an important way of understanding, or at least framing the question, what is it to be human?”

~ Mary Gordon, from “Profile: Mary Gordon,” Religion and Ethics  Newsweekly (10.26.07)

From Mary Gordon’s prayers for the un-prayed for
For those whose work is invisible; for those who paint the undersides of boats; makers of ornamental drains on roofs too high to be seen; for cobblers who labor over inner soles; for seamstresses who stitch the wrong sides of lining; for scholars whose research leads to no obvious discovery. Grant them perseverance for the sake of your love, which is humble, invisible, and heedless of reward.