On Wiman, Belief, and Friendship
A Commentary on Christian Wiman's 'All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs'.
Christian Wiman’s All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs has been a solace for me the last few years: I send it to friends deconstructing, and to those unsure about how to feel towards their friends choosing another way of life. But, significantly, this poem has become a friend to me. So, I thought it apt to begin (re)figure with a commentary on such a fine companion, which I hope sets the mis-en-scène henceforth.
As an aside, the New Yorker released a beautiful editorial on him this week.
All my friends are finding new beliefs.
This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.
In a highly literary and hitherto religiously-indifferent Jew
God whomps on like a genetic generator.
Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.
Exercise regimens so extreme she merges with machine.
One man marries a woman twenty years younger
and twice in one brunch uses the word verdant;
another’s brick-fisted belligerence gentles
into dementia, and one, after a decade of finical feints and teases
like a sandpiper at the edge of the sea,
decides to die.
Priesthoods and beasthoods, sombers and glees,
high-styled renunciations and avocations of dirt,
sobrieties, satieties, pilgrimages to the very bowels of being ...
All my friends are finding new beliefs
and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track
of the new gods and the new loves,
and the old gods and the old loves,
and the days have daggers, and the mirrors motives,
and the planet’s turning faster and faster in the blackness,
and my nights, and my doubts, and my friends,
my beautiful, credible friends.
Wiman begins by juxtaposing the implicit absurdity of what it means to believe: for Catholicism, which locates its God’s Glory on a tree; and, for the one who sees the God-ness of trees; or, for the “religiously indifferent Jew” who represents those of us who have inherited religious systems, yet the sophistication of intellect crescendos toward indifference—God just does its thing. But, after this, Wiman begins to hone in on the undisclosed rituals we all partake in, and subtly—or explicitly—consume of: paleo, keto, zone, South Beach, and bourbon. Is Wiman intuiting the Platonic Form in this, like Ken from Barbie would go on to do: he does “beach”? Maybe...
I think he is inviting us to see that lives are being lived in particularity, and offering the tools to, slowly, comprehend what is interwoven between belief, the fabric of which stitching impresses upon. Or, perhaps said otherwise: what is the ontology for believing another?
He goes on to think about time: one man (presumably middle-late aged) believes in youthfulness and the cosmopolitan adornments of brunch and overuses of the word ‘verdant’, whilst another begins to accept his dementia. A sombre reversal of belief becoming undone, the implicit hope that the community you’re a part of is one you can forget but not be forgotten with. Still, another comes to see death as his only friend. Amidst this trio is the oscillation of what it means to believe when memory fades toward praxis: do we hold on to the ‘new’, or, on the cusp of the sea, choose to see what’s beyond the veil of belief?
Whose are you when a change, or disintegration, in belief manifests?
Death is not an easy friend to become acquainted with. “Priesthoods and beasthoods”, negotiating our afterlife like a game of poker with their divinised wafer and wine. Still, somehow, these belief systems point to something deeper; they are invitations to move toward “the very bowels of being”.
And, even more so, for Wiman, this figure amidst trying so hard to identify the common ground of all these friends and their new beliefs, he acknowledges that, well, frankly, it’s hard. Some fall in love with the new gods, and others the old. This person, this friend, they’re looking into the mirror and seeing themselves, their motives, doubts, and their Self, and their friends. They are beautiful, credible friends.
For them, the commonality of these different beliefs—how ancient or fleeting they may be—isn’t that they believe the same thing. What is common, Wiman asserts, is that beneath these beliefs are wonderful, trustworthy friends. Although it gets harder and harder to keep a tally of where each stands ideologically, what she sees when looking upon her friends is the friend herself. And because they are her friends, they are worth believing in.
The pilgrim returns from the bowels of being to declare, “Ahh ha! You are worth being in the presence of simply because you are my friend.” And for some of us, that pilgrimage is to Starbucks.
When I first discovered this poem, it was at a time when I didn’t know how to be there for my friends who were finding their own beliefs. Some had become agnostic, Muslim, Marxist, and still others fundamentalist. But, underlying these subscriptions to a creed or ideology, there my friend stood. Their stories and perspectives are worth believing simply because they are my friend.
As time whirled, I began to see myself as the one standing in the mirror, checking his motives and contemplating his doubts. And, what I discovered—and where I think Wiman is brilliant in this piece—is that the friend can be representative of one’s own beliefs. Here, he invites us to see ourselves as the friend. The inherent witness and validity you give to others by being with them is the same inner witness we ought to give ourselves. Gazing upon the mirror's motives, Wiman offers us a hand in acknowledging that amidst one’s own confusion and sacred journeys, there, too, is me, as my own lovely, tenable friend. Would you take his offer to be your own beautiful, credible, friend?
Your idea of god is not God, but your friend is your friend because you choose friendship, and that might be the closest we get to God in this life. (There is no greater love than to give your life to a friend, John 15:13)
May this holiday season—sat around tables filled with humans worthy of love, simply because they share in the same need of food as you—be one filled with belief toward the Other and their story. But, at a more fundamental level, may you extend that to yourself, too.
A few days ago, Nick Cave in The Red Hand Files shared this, which I leave you with:
in regard to your dilemma, Jean-Marc, I can’t think of an act more generous than an atheist at prayer, who temporarily puts aside their disbelief in a god in order to bring comfort to a friend. Loosening your position for a moment, and doing something difficult because it has been asked of you by someone you care for, demonstrates a confidence in your beliefs, and shows that they are not so prideful or absolutist that they manifest into a smallness of being…. What is true friendship if we are not tested at times, if we are not prepared to soften our cherished ideals as an act of fidelity and commitment to those we love. In the end, this act of friendship may be the most eloquent prayer of all.
With love, Isaiah
P.S. If you fancy something to listen to, Headache’s The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows the Truth has been on repeat this week.
