Annie Dillard commands the cool intellectual viewpoint; her witness to nature’s glory is balanced with calm reportage of nature’s disregard for the human heart and its attachments. Dillard wrestles with issues obvious to any keen observer of nature who abjures the soft focus required for a sentimental concept of the divine. She tracks the human spirit striving, struggling against all odds. The universe spins onward, heedless, as we flicker for a moment like a lightning bug signaling to fleeting meteors on a clear August night. Should we drink ourselves into a stupor of despair? No. We go outside, into nature, away from the confines of urban detachment. As summer storms charge the atmosphere, super-charging the fireflies, bioluminescence celebrates mystery made dull by science, and we witness the incoherent glory. And watching, our spirit is restored.
The finest writer I ever read. What Dillard does to prose, Hopkins does to verse. Both shake loose the contents and the inside gems fall loosened. And so do the outside. I never got a chance to greet and graciously grasp the hand of Rev. Hopkins and thank him for his lightning volts. Like Dillard, the good Jesuit shook free words like no one else.
Go read Annie's "Holy the Firm". Her "Firm" is not easily found. But it's there....the reality of life and death and moths and candles, and all the flying by which can take us in a flash if we don't pause, look, and reflect. Sometimes again, and again and again. I'm still squinting at the the beauty of it all.
Annie Dillard commands the cool intellectual viewpoint; her witness to nature’s glory is balanced with calm reportage of nature’s disregard for the human heart and its attachments. Dillard wrestles with issues obvious to any keen observer of nature who abjures the soft focus required for a sentimental concept of the divine. She tracks the human spirit striving, struggling against all odds. The universe spins onward, heedless, as we flicker for a moment like a lightning bug signaling to fleeting meteors on a clear August night. Should we drink ourselves into a stupor of despair? No. We go outside, into nature, away from the confines of urban detachment. As summer storms charge the atmosphere, super-charging the fireflies, bioluminescence celebrates mystery made dull by science, and we witness the incoherent glory. And watching, our spirit is restored.
The finest writer I ever read. What Dillard does to prose, Hopkins does to verse. Both shake loose the contents and the inside gems fall loosened. And so do the outside. I never got a chance to greet and graciously grasp the hand of Rev. Hopkins and thank him for his lightning volts. Like Dillard, the good Jesuit shook free words like no one else.
Go read Annie's "Holy the Firm". Her "Firm" is not easily found. But it's there....the reality of life and death and moths and candles, and all the flying by which can take us in a flash if we don't pause, look, and reflect. Sometimes again, and again and again. I'm still squinting at the the beauty of it all.