To call for two styles and to find impetus for the wintry sort of search demands boldness. It receives so little attention that anyone who defends it may well express the old reformers’ anxiety: Am I alone right, and is the whole church wrong?

Why in our era does the Christian public relations industry speak only of one style? Is the wintry kind to be forgotten, after its honored place for centuries? Has something happened in human evolution to screen out the factors that once saw the spirituality of the wintry heart to be so natural, so common?

Worse, have market conditions led the advertisers to concentrate on what in slang is known as the “quick fix” in matters of the spirit?

from A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart