He wanted me not to like Christian Bobin’s writings, I really did like them. He is a poet, he tells himself, and if there is one thing that I am extremely skeptical of, it is poets who write not poems but prose. All great poetry is driven by form and when form is absent, modernist and zeitgeist claims to the contrary notwithstanding, what we have is prose. As I say, I wanted to dislike Bobin’s writings, but I found that I couldn’t: he is a true poet, although he writes in prose, and his work is enormously interesting from both a literary and theological point of view. And, as an inset, also from a specifically Quaker perspective, because Bobin has a lot to say about many of the core concerns of Quakers, and especially silence and its depth. Against GK Chesterton, a Catholic, for example, who stated that “gratitude is the highest way of thinking”, for Bobin “Silence is the highest way of thinking” and explores it in an original and unique way, although apparently without trying. . In fact, otiose seems like a word made for him. Here is one of his comments on silence, which gives a flavor to his style: “Yesterday, thanks to a quick movement, I took a piece of Christ’s robe. It was a patch of silence.”

But here I go: doing something very different from Bobin: contrast and compare. One joy about Bobin’s job is that he doesn’t seem to be arguing with anyone; Instead, he moves through life and picks up stone after stone, examines each one, gives it due consideration and attention, and then moves on. These stones can be objects, they can be flowers or nature or living things (trees are models of acceptance for Bobin), or they can be his father’s Alzheimer’s or the death of the love of his life. There is a feeling of ruminating and getting to the heart of things; and alongside this, there is a rejection of contemporary illusions and delusions. Bobin is someone who is not fooled by the modern world: “It is because each of us strives at all costs to suffer as little as possible that life is hell.” Wow! – surely, anyone with a spiritual notion on their little finger would see how that more or less defines and condemns Western spirituality: people want a religion that conforms to their preferences rather than a religion that is true, or more accurately that it is according to the Tao, or the nature of reality. We in the modern world discover that we are not comfortable with Christ or with death, so we relegate both to the back of the mind and close their door; And yes, we rarely get there to examine its content. The joy of Bobin’s work is that it does this for us: death, especially, stalks its pages: “I was born into a world that begins to close its ears to any conversation about death: it has gotten away with it, without realizing it that there was thus forbidden to hear of grace “.

That should not surprise us: the title, The Eighth Day, is curious. The closest thing to an explanation is: “What is strange, in fact, is that grace still comes to us, when we do everything possible to become unattainable. What is strange is that, thanks to a wait, a look or a laugh – sometimes we access that eighth day of the week, which neither dawns nor dies in the context of time. ”As I understand it, the eighth day is the same as“ the third day ”: it is the Sunday on which Christ rose again from the dead. On the sixth day the world was created, and Christ was crucified, and on the seventh day God rested, like Christ in the grave; but on the eighth day the resurrection signified a new creation, a new order, and one that is independent of time and death. This, then, is what Bobin’s work is constantly veering towards and what it alludes to: the magic of that Eighth Day that is now strangely accessible to us, but in glimpses. he himself says, “the unique concept of a presence that is never again s would be lacking, of a beauty that would never again be subject to the outrages of night, evil and death. ” Bobin helps us to locate that presence and also to celebrate its joy.

A notable aspect of Bobin’s writing is his aphoristic style; it is eminently quotable because its language is very concise and loaded with meaning. Let me close by sharing three wonderful observations from her writing.

“I like to put my hand on the trunk of a tree that I pass by, not to make sure that the tree exists, I have no doubt about that, but yes.” This reminds me of one of CS Lewis’s wonderful apercuses where he reminds us that when Christ appears to his disciples after the resurrection and they are huddled together in a closed room, he seems to come through the wall; This is not because Christ is insubstantial and ghost-like; It is that the wall is insubstantial compared to the reality of Christ! Things are not what they seem, but the other way around. In short, what is really real?

“One gram of light serves as a counterweight to kilograms of darkness.” Here we have such a hopeful and illuminating perception; There is no doubt that Bobin feels the full weight of darkness and evil in the world, and he himself has a somewhat melancholic disposition; Yet despite it all, even small amounts of light are so powerful and antidotes to darkness and evil. I see this as a stimulus for arms; to fight the good fight because each contribution carries more power than we can imagine.

Finally, and perhaps most poetically, about writing itself, Bobin declares: “Writing is like drawing a door in a wall too high to climb and then opening it.” That, without a doubt, is a great image; speaks of the counterintuitive fact that all true writers understand. Essentially, you don’t write to say what you want to say, but to find out what you really know. Interestingly, the meaning does not appear to be pre-existing in the mind, but rather created through the act of writing itself. I am sure that if I had space and time here, one might want to reflect on the ‘Word made flesh’ and how somehow human creativity reflects – is in the image – of the divine process.

Suffice to say, I have become a huge Bobin fan. I highly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in the spiritual journey, which of course is also one of healing. This book will reward constant reading and rereading many times in terms of your ideas and suggestions. And like true poetry, it will live in your mind, if not it will haunt it.

And one last quick note: I am not qualified to comment on how well the original French of this book has been translated into English in terms of precision and nuance, but I can say that I suspect the translation is excellent at what one reads in English is so clear and powerful and effective, and I can only imagine that it stems from being faithful to the intention of the source; outstanding for Pauline Matarasso.