Exploring Doubt by Alex Wright

Exploring Doubt by Alex Wright

Christianity has often seemed impatient with the idea of doubt. Certainty, not irresolution, has been seen as the test of faith and key to unlocking participation in the supposed life to come. But when his marriage collapsed, Alex Wright knew that all his own certainties had been reduced to rubble. The future he had planned on the Norfolk coast disappeared as fast as a sea-fret burning up in the noonday sun. In this moving book, written out of his own disturbing experience of deep-rooted uncertainty about the future, the author suggests that it is actually doubt, not conviction, which expresses the more important insights about religion and the spiritual life; and, indeed, about life itself.

'At a time when the public debate on religious faith seems to be more about conviction and ideology than about doubt and ambiguity, this book offers a personal and often moving account of the value of uncertaintyAlex Wright observes the beauty of the physical landscape and combines observation and reflection with memories of human turmoil. His unfolding narrative will take you gently inside yourself.' - Mona Siddiqui, OBE, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, University of Edinburgh';'John Henry Newman once sought to comfort a bereaved friend by noting how the dead can seem more real to us than when they were alive, more present in their absence than when in the flesh. This apparent paradox - of presence in absence - is the theme of Alex Wright's remarkable book. It is a book of bereavements, personal and cultural. Wright weaves together a set of reflections on the loss and remaining of faith in our times with the loss of his first marriage, setting both in the landscape - the seascape - of the North Norfolk coast. For it was there that his marriage both flowered and faded, in a place where the distinction between land and sea is both lost and remembered in the ceaseless flow of the tides. There is a revelation in the sea's withdrawing, a renewal in the passing of relationships, and it is the finding of such returns that Wright's book delivers: a calm, cultured, beguiling - if sometimes unsettling - meditation that will resonate with many, in many different ways. A wonderful and profound book.' - Gerard Loughlin, Professor of Theology, Durham University

Alex Wright is an interaction design professor at the School of Visual Arts and a frequent New York Times writer. Glut: Mastering Information Through the Centuries is his book.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780232530605
ISBN 10	0232530602
Title	Exploring Doubt
Author	Alex Wright
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd
Year published	2017-06-01
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.