A Quiet Mind to Suffer with: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ

While the faithful will appreciate Bryant's efforts to explore a nuanced relationship between mental illness and faith, what stands out the most are his painfully visceral descriptions of mental suffering... rendered with an unsparing honesty that jumps off the page.

--Publishers Weekly, starred review

This book is many things: a harrowingly frank, first-hand account of surviving debilitating mental illness; a thoughtful and complex effort to integrate and synthesize the languages of theology and psychiatry; an artful attempt to offer sympathy and spiritual sustenance to fellow sufferers. But it is, more than anything else, a hymn of love and longing for Jesus, the living Lord who will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a dimly burning wick.

--Wesley Hill, author of Washed and Waiting

In these pages we meet a writer, a comedian, a victim of mental illness, a great sufferer, and, above all, one who has known the astounding mercy of Christ. John takes us through the doors of trauma and tragedy straight into the heart of this mercy, down to its bottomless depths. His story, so important for the church to hear, reminds us who Christ is: God with us, even in hell. And even in hell, our hope.

--Deanna Briody, poet, writer, and postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church

Our lives are not tidy nor are our personal stories always a cheery 'upward and onward' narrative. Instead, we often face deep valleys with frightening darkness and endless unknowns. John A. Bryant's book is not 'tidy' either, but because of his experience with and honesty about mental illness and trauma, we can learn from him; more importantly, because he points us to Christ crucified, we have more than a story, we have hope.

--Kelly M. Kapic, author of You're Only Human and Embodied Hope

Few things catalyze tears to fall freely from my eyes, but this book did that very thing. If you've wondered how dark, seemingly irredeemable pain can fit in Christ's plan for your life, this book is for you. We all want to know what 'getting better' looks like, and John prayerfully gives a faithful answer to that question. I can attest that the framework being presented in this book is not just an esoteric brain exercise--John really depends on Christ, and that encourages me to become a little more needy also.

--Andrew Tyson, frontman of pop -punk band Real Face

John Bryant has chosen to be both fully transparent about his struggles with mental illness and also address the challenges theologically in a way that is utterly transparent, in the open for all to see and with a sensitivity that will encourage all who read A Quiet Mind to Suffer With. This book will make you weep, enlarge your empathy, and, Lord willing, instill a compassion in you for the mentally ill. Please do not merely read this text but understand it as an invitation into the wounds of Christ that gives meaning to all suffering.

--Greg Peters, author of Monkhood of All Believers



This is a stunning book, so rare and so beautiful. I cannot recommend it highly enough. John Bryant does two things that are very hard to do at the same time. He represents the raw agony and disorientation of healing from OCD. And he puts this struggle within a hopeful theological frame. I cried a lot during this book. It will encourage those who suffer and help others to understand the struggle. The book is honest, vulnerable, gripping, and hopeful at the same time. Read this book.

--Matthew A. LaPine, author of The Logic of the Body

It is perhaps one of the great ironies of our therapeutic age that our dependence upon said therapy from time to time does not free us but binds us all the more to our problems. With his Christocentric focus, John Bryant offers a much-needed corrective to our profound difficulties. Perhaps most importantly, he offers hope when our deepest problems are not 'fixed' and a reminder of our Lord's promise that his grace is sufficient for us all (2 Corinthians 12:9).

--Philip Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness: A Pastoral Theology of Shame and Redemption

John is an artist who builds for the reader an interior world with its own cast of characters and a logic all its own. He takes readers on a poetic journey through mental suffering, and he holds his experience up to the light, turning it over and over, so we get a glimpse of it from every angle, observing how the divine and mundane interact. We come away knowing that the divine is what's real after all. And while this story is deeply personal and utterly unique, he gives the reader enough so that they can say, 'Me too, ' even as it inspires in the reader a compassion for someone struggling with darker demons. No matter what, the practice is the same: Christ, have mercy. It must all be an offering.

--Pamela Rossi-Keen, executive director, The Genesis Collective