The humiliation I go through when I think of my past can only be described as grace. We are created by being destroyed.

How does one write from within an absence of memory, from within a loss that is less remembered as a story or an image or a thought than as a mood, an existential void, or a sense of annihilation? Writing is performed in the shadow of a lost object. Writing is the shadow of an absent voice. Writing assembles an undergrounded body's fragmented speech.

People sometimes say that God becomes clearer in moments of suffering, but this is not necessarily true. What becomes clear is one's longing for God. Everything is stripped away, and very little else seems to matter.