Hannah Coulter

One day, I found Hannah Coulter. She was in the pages of one of Wendell Berry's novels, and as I found Hannah, I found myself. Hannah Coulter is the literary character that put words to so many of my thoughts and feelings. Hannah helped me to discover myself, and to articulate those things that I could never say on my own. I saved this passage since the first time I read it, knowing that someday I wanted it to describe me. I can say that Hannah's words are my words, once again.

He was trying to show me the shape of his life, and what might become the shape of it.  He was seeing the time to come as a possibility, as a life that he loved.  And though maybe neither of us fully understood what he was doing, he made me love it.  It wasn’t as though I was being swept away by some irresistible emotion.  The thought of resistance never entered my mind.  When I imagined him entering the life he saw, I imagined myself entering it too.  It was becoming a possibility that belonged to us both. 

It is entirely clear to me now.  We were coming together into the presence of something good that was possible in this world… It just seemed that, as we waited together for the coming of this life, it had become wrong to sit apart.