Flannery O'Connor
1925-1964 20th century
Praying with what one is (ambition, dryness, doubt) and letting faith deepen there.
Who was Flannery O'Connor?
A novelist from Georgia, Catholic in the Protestant South. The lupus that had killed her father struck her at twenty-five and brought her back to the family farm at Andalusia, where she raised peacocks and wrote every morning after Mass, two hours hard-won from illness. Her novels and stories, peopled with violent prophets and disconcerting grace, stand among the great American books of the century; her student prayer journal, published in 2013, revealed the hidden spring of the work.
In their own words
Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see, and my self is the earth's shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon.
I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.
I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened.