Beliefs are not a substitute for seeing

Reading today's Sunday Oregonian, I came across a nice Q & A in an interview with poet Mary Szybist.

What do you believe about the world? 

I like what Flannery O'Connor has to say about beliefs. She advises writers: "Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing." I am wary of fixed beliefs because they can and sometimes do become "substitute[s] for seeing." I'm also wary of cynicism.

Perhaps a belief can be a "light by which you see." I begin "Incarnadine" with an epigraph from Simone Weil: "The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation." I tend to believe that too.