Discovering and rediscovering and rediscovering Annie Dillard

A couple of years ago, my cousin Jamie, herself a talented and accomplished writer of profound songs and prize-winning short stories, introduced me to the writings of Annie Dillard.  Soon after, I heard the pastor Tim Keller read a lengthy quote from one of Dillard's books during a sermon.  And now, an entire chapter of the Eugene Peterson book that I am reading has been devoted to this author that Peterson calls "an exegete of creation in the same way John Calvin was an exegete of Holy Scripture." Peterson says, "she reads the book of creation with the care and intensity of a skilled textual critic, probing and questioning, teasing out, with all the tools of mind and spirit at hand, the author's meaning." 

And so I wanted to share with you a portion of this chapter that has, at last, convinced me that I must start reading Annie Dillard for myself.  Peterson's chapter is entitled, "Praying with Eyes Open," and this particular section is called, "a World of Scripture." The phrases and sentences in quotations are drawn from Dillard's work Teaching a Stone to Talk, which is now waiting to be read on my Kindle once I've finished with Peterson.  

The sea lion is the most popular resident of the Galapagos, gregarious and graceful, welcoming and sportive, "engaged in full-time play." Visitor's joke that when they "come back" they would like to come as a sea lion.  "The sea lion game looked unbeatable." After long reflection and another visit to the island, she (Dillard) made a different choice : the palo santo tree.  She had hardly noticed them on her first visit.  The trees were thin, pale, wispy miles of them, half dead, the stands looking like blasted orchards.  She chose the palo santo because even though "the silence is all there is," it is not a silence of absence but of presence.  It is not a sterile silence, but a pregnant silence.  The non-human silence is not because there is nothing to say but because, in disobedience or unbelief or sheer terror, we asked God not to speak and God heard our prayer (reference to the request of the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai - Hebrews 12:18-21).  But though unspeaking, God is still there.  What is needed from us is witness.  The palo santo is a metaphor for witness.  

The premier biblical witness, John the Baptist, said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." The witness does not call attention to itself; what it points to is more important.  Being takes precedent over using, explaining, possessing.  The witness points, mute, so as not to interfere with the sound of silence: the palo santos "interest me as emblems of the muteness of the human stance in relation to all that is not human.  I see us all as palo santos trees, holy sticks, together watching all that we watch, and growing in silence." 

Witness is the key word in all this.  It is an important biblical word in frequent contemporary use.  It is a modest word saying what is there, honestly testifying to exactly what we see, what we hear.  But when we enlist in a cause, it is almost impossible to do it right: we embellish, we fill in the blanks, we varnish the dull passages, we gild the lily just a little to hold the attention of our auditors.  Sea lion stuff.  Important things are at stake - God, salvation - and we want so much to involve outsiders in these awesome realities that we leave the humble ground of witness and use our words to influence and motivate, to advertise and publicize.  Then we are no longer witnesses, but lawyers arguing the case, not always with scrupulous attention to detail.  After all, life and death issues are before the jury.  

Dillard returns us to the spare, simple, modest role of witness.  We live in a time when the voice of God has been extinguished in the creation.  We want the stones to talk, the heavens to declare the glory of God, but "the very holy mountains are keeping mum.  We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.  Did the wind used to cry, and the hills shout forth praise?  Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few." 

Our necessary and proper work in such a world is witness like the palo santo trees.  

Click HERE for a Rabbit Room (Andrew Peterson's blog) article introducing Annie Dillard and some of her best works.