Hana and I were discussing life after graduation and the various career paths suited to her diverse gifts and interests. We talked about the choice between following a safe, well-marked trail or setting off into the wilderness to blaze her own. We talked about passions and calling – and this is where the weasel comes in.

In this brilliant essay, Ms. Dillard begins:

A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. 

The paragraphs that follow reek of pungent creek life in all forms and finally jettison the reader into the very brain of a weasel. (Really, this essay is not to be missed.) But it is the closing section that strikes a particular chord with me today.

We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience–even of silence–by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

The passion in this writing both startles and grips me, no matter how many times I ‘ve read it. I can’t help but reflect on my own way of living, my own calling, my own trail.  But today, it’s about Hana.

As your high school years draw to a close, I have only one piece of advice for you, dear daughter – courtesy of Annie Dillard: live like a weasel. Live as you are meant to live, grasp your one necessity and do not let it go. Dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.  Stalk your calling.

And go read this essay. (Yes, I own the book and yes, you can borrow it.)

I pledge my honor that I have completed this work in accordance with the Honor Code.
Alexandria Smythe

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

“I alternate between thinking of the planet as home
- dear and familiar stone hearth and garden -
and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.”
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone To Talk

I find it very difficult to admit I am as temporary as a dew drop on a leaf, a mere mirrored reflection of this incredible place where I dwell.  I want it to last, I want it etched in stone, I want to be remembered beyond the next generation, I want not to be lost to the ether.

Yet I, like everyone, am sojourner only, not settled and certainly not lasting.   As a garden flourishes and then dies back, so will I.  This is exile in the wilderness until I am led back home.

Home.  Really home.

Forever etched on His heart.

Forever dwelling within His Hand.

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

“Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles” (16).
-Annie Dillard, “Living Like Weasels”

        Annie Dillard does not approach life passively. She advocates that humans live like weasels and hold on tightly to the necessity that moves them. For Dillard, this idea involves holding on to the reader and not letting go, through metaphors, narratives, moments of uncertainty, the author remains fully gripped to her idea even as she is wandering along at breakneck speed (swift wandering seems at first a contradiction but seems to describe her style well). Dillard’s voice is one of action. She creates elaborate metaphors in fast-paced retellings wherein active descriptive verbs push the reader along and then plunges him into the action. She asks questions and leaves them unanswered, often employing the second person “you” to throw her reader into the midst of her personal experiences and the implications of the connections she draws. Dillard’s writing style is active and fluid, changing from one topic quickly to the next, but she never fails to bring the reader along for the ride.

        Dillard’s style is one to be read quickly at times with an excited, anxious tone. Although the sentences often wander down the page, never ending but merely kept alive with colons, commas, semicolons, they do so quickly. They are made up of successive fragments and short bits that continue swiftly and eagerly. In Dillard’s essay “God in the Doorway,” she reflects on her terror of Santa Claus, having seen him appearing in the entryway: “I wouldn’t come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas” (140). There are no breaks in this sentence, but rather the essayist propels the writing forward without room for interruptions in her thoughts or the reading of this section. This excerpt could be broken up and maintain its grammatical integrity, but it would not produce the same effect. It would not properly capture the wild thought process that moves this author from one seemingly disconnected idea to the next in swift, seamless motions. In her essay “The Deer at Providencia,” Dillard also captures an active tone this time through descriptive action verbs that give the sense that the experiences are unfolding on the page. Of a suffering deer she notes that “it thrashed, kicking, but only one leg moved; the other three legs tightened by the rope’s loop. Its hip jerked; its spine shook. Its eyes rolled; its tongue, thick with spittle pushed in and out” (62). Just as Dillard does not approach life passively, noticing the minute details of her experiences before they pass her by, the author also does not approach writing in this manner. She uses these descriptive verbs in a way to dramatize her experiences and continue her fast-paced narrative. Events are in motion in Dillard’s essays and in using the active voice and allowing the reader to be present in the actions she creates a highly enthusiastic tone that carries into her descriptions of the scene and her actions within it.

        Although Dillard’s process is indeed wild and in some ways unrestrained, Dillard also has a way of engaging one in her world, using questions and second person often to the effect of pulling one into the unique, excitable world of her mind. Also in “The Deer at Providencia,” Dillard mentally address her companions asking, “Gentlemen of the city, what surprises you? That there is suffering here, or that I know it” (64)? Although wondering what compels her fellow travelers to assume that she is unaccustomed to the unfairness of the world, she is also addressing her audience, begging the question of why there is such needless suffering of innocent, dignified creatures. She leaves this question unanswered. There are no ready responses for the inquiry, but she invites further thought on the matter. In keeping with this engaging style, she also makes ready use of the second person, as exemplified in her essay, “Life on the Rocks: The Galapagos” when the author writes that “you come for the animals…you walk along clattering four-foot iguanas….you swim with penguins” (112). She does not keep her experiences to herself. Instead, Dillard seeks to emerge one in her own personal world, making it no longer personal but rather a collective experience. In this way, Dillard expresses the often disjointed process of her mind that skips rapidly along the page but still manages to keep the reader as an integral player and coconspirator in her thoughts. The essay takes shape according to what the reader’s potential answers and experiences may be. The “you” of Dillard’s essay is as important as the “I.”

It is no secret that Dillard is very interested in the different faces of nature that she has encountered in her life. Actually, the topic of nature within man’s life is something to take a brief notice of: Dillard’s pieces mostly do not concern nature as we have begun to consider it: walking in the woods, traipsing through the jungle and communing with wildlife to find some deeper meaning. She, on the other hand, focuses on events that happen in “man’s wildlife”- walking through the park, or standing with a gaggle of people to witness an eclipse. These events, interestingly enough, do not require much from any reader. These are simple passing moments that the audience can relate to or have experienced in any capacity.

However, the unique outlook Dillard has doesn’t just stop at where nature is examined- “man’s natural experiences” or conventional nature experiences. Dillard’s thoughts about nature are examined with careful choice of tone.

Dillard’s choice of how she addresses the audience is a curious one. As mentioned before, the essays are personal in each beginning. Every essay begins with a personal anecdote, or even continues it into a metaphor for the essay to use. The titular deer in “Deer at Providencia” serves as a metaphor about honoring death through understanding life and fighting honorably until the last moment, made clear later when Dillard juxtaposes the deer with a suicidal burn victim.

In what could be described as emotionally gripping moment (and something that is loaded with upsetting moments), Dillard removes herself from her own narrative and desensitizes the situation. The deer is described in precise terms- “about the size of a whitetail fawn, but apparently full-grown.”  Her own description is not grounded in fantastic ideas or personification- it is only the facts that she presents. The word “apparently” is interesting in this context because even though she presents the deer in concrete terms, she considered the thoughts of others around her to accurately present the image.

Continuing with the case study of “Deer at Providencia,” Dillard continues to describe the deer’s struggle in accurate words that leave little to the imagination. In many ways, this scientific approach to an distressing situation is a very apt way to reach her philosophy: the removal of emotional aspects of writing, and life, sometimes allow humans to understand the heart of the matter. Dillard’s clinical way of examining the deer shows the noble manner in which animals face death and humans do not only strengthens the actual personal aspect of her essay- the address to the audience.

Halfway through “Deer at Providencia,” Dillard switches from clinical removal to personal involvement by out rightly addressing the audience. “Gentlemen of the city, what surprises you? That there is suffering here or that I know it?” Here the reader is confronted with raw anger, disbelief, and defeated acceptance of the truth. This is the one instance of the entire essay that Dillard reveals her truth in such an expressive and upfront manner.

After this one admission of anguish that there is suffering within the world, she immediately turns for her other voices. The men continue to detail that their wives “couldn’t bear to see a creature  in agony like that.” By returning to other’s words, such as the news article, and clinical terms again, she forces the reader (even myself) to consider which is the more unbearable fate- to struggle valiantly through pain to live or to scream in agony and desperately search for a death to end it all?

“Deer at Providencia” in itself in an exercise in tone. Word choice, using other’s quotes, the approach the author is handling a subject manner- is something that changes the meaning of a essay in itself. Instead of an overwrought sensitive piece, we receive a close examination of a different side of nature- the nature of animals and the nature of men. Without the careful choice of alternating voices, the audience could not reach the conclusion without the manufactured sentimentality on the author’s part. It is only with the careful balance between calculation and emotion that Dillard can evoke the audience to truly consider the world from her perspective_.

photo by Josh Scholten

At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum in the silence…
There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life’s length to listening, and nothing happens…
The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God’s brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to “World.” Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
There is a moment that I anticipate every time I wash long-impacted ear wax out of a patient’s ear canals when they have had difficulty hearing.   It can take one minute or maybe thirty to accomplish, but it is worth the effort.  When the wax dislodges and flows out into the catch basin, I see the same anticipatory look on each patient’s face.  Their eyes widen, their mouth forms an “O” in sudden recognition of their new readiness to hear.  There may not be a sound in the room, but there is something different about the new silence that was not true before.  This silence is ready to be broken, its vibrant hum no longer suppressed.

Usually we don’t even realize what we can’t hear over time; we don’t know what we are missing or how we are losing connection.    The day comes when we wake completely deaf, too full to hear or acknowledge anything outside ourselves.

So it is necessary to be washed clean, the blockage removed, the barriers broken down, the connection restored to everything and everyone around us.  We are emptied out in order to be filled through listening.   Our eyes widen in order to see again, our mouths open to pray in gratitude without ceasing.  The silence is no more.

Even the stones will cry out.

And we will be ready to hear.

Click for source.

“What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn’t us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we’re blue.”

– Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Annie Dillard knows all the things.

Who’s really ready for this election to be over?? I am! I am! I don’t think I’ve ever been more exhausted by politics and its relentless charade. Someone on NPR referred to the Republican National Convention as “theater,” and I thought, Yes, that is what all of it is, regardless of your party. One big performance, predicated on fear.

I am going to the mountains this weekend to celebrate at Kelsey’s bachelorette retreat! Hard to believe lil sis is getting married so soon. Can’t wait to see her and spend some time in the Blue Ridge, hanging out and teaching her how lingerie works.

Talk to you later.

For as long as people have been writing, they have been writing about nature. But economic migration, overpopulation and climate change are transforming the natural world into something unfamiliar. As our conception and experience of nature changes, so too does the way we write about it.

Here are 6 favorites 

(to my surprise I just discovered that these books are all written by women…)

1. Teaching a Stone to Talk – Annie Dillard
2. Wanderlust – Rebecca Solnit
3. A Field Guide to Getting Lost  - Rebecca Solnit
4. Dart – Alice Oswald
5. Findings – Kathleen Jamie
6. A Book of Silence – Sara Maitland

Do you have any book or authors you would like to recommend?

Click for source.

“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular–shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?–but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.”

– Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A little more on my animal theme this week. I also have sad news: We learned that dear Aoive, Guion’s parent’s springer spaniel, had to be put down last night, after an excruciating cycle of non-stop seizures. She was such a sweet, affectionate girl. Rest in peace, Aoive; I hope you are stalking birds to your heart’s content in heaven. Happy weekend, everyone.

On the whole I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs [Annie, might you include Chinese believers who suffer under Communist rule or Middle Eastern Christians who willingly accept beheading rather than forsake Jesus?], sufficiently sensible of the conditions.  Does anyone have even the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no-one believe a word of it? . . . It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church, we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping god may awake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to a place from which we can never return (Quoted by Bruce Milne, The Message of Heaven and Hell, 32).

Do we Christians really have a clue as to what we are talking about, when we speak of heaven and hell?  Why do we live with such urgency in this life, and so little care about the next?  Do we really know the God of the Bible?  These are penetrating questions.  If we take the Bible seriously, we learn quickly: God is the One who created you and me and everything else; who consumes mountains with raging fire, who causes the earth to swallow men and the sea to drown the world’s strongest army, who disembowels dictators with worms, who demands perfect holiness from all men, such that without it, no man shall enter his presence.  This is the One, True, and Living God. He is the God who is full of wrath against man’s sin.  Your sin!  My sin! And thus Annie Dillard is right, we should wear helmets when we come to church.  Too often Christians make church a social club, a fellowship of the moral, instead banqueting hall for beggars, addicts, pimps and whores.

Still, God is patient!  That doesn’t mean that he has changed from the days of the Old Testament.  The most powerful images of judgment are found in the New Testament, after all.  It simply means that in this age of evangelism, God is patient with his world, in order to redeem his sons and daughters.

And yet, he is the God who also poured out his wrath on his Son, so that men and women who pay too little attention to him, might still find grace in order to stand in his judgment.  Indeed, the kingdom is not entered by religious zealots–liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican–it is entered by those who are born again.  Those who have been born from above trust not in their religious works nor fear their spiritual lethargy; they trust in the Son and exalt in his work alone.

Heaven and hell are realities that those in church and out of church take too lightly.  But Christ has a message for both groups. If you have the Son, you have eternal life in heaven; if you don’t have the Son; then hell awaits. Annie Dillard is right that such a God demands that we wear crash helmets when we come to church or go anywhere, but indeed a crash helmet will do nothing to protect us from the blast of God’s nostrils.  We need a Christ helmet, and indeed that is exactly what God offers us in Jesus.  Ephesians 6 says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.  Put on the whole armor of God . . . the helmet of salvation.”

Today,  may Annie Dillard’s words make us think soberly about heaven and hell, but instead of putting on a crash helmet, may we put our trust in Christ, the one whose sacrifice protects us from the wrath of God, and whose resurrection promises his imminent return.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss

“… But enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.”

-Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, page 28

Her English teacher gives the students some time to do their own reading every day (how jealous I am of that; “You must sit here now and read a book you enjoy.”), but Hyla’d forgotten to pack her own book this morning, so she selected one from her teacher’s classroom library.

In the car, she told me about the book. “The first chapter is about weasels. And the second chapter is about the south pole. I really think you’d like this book, Mom.”

When we got home, she dug the book out of her heavy backpack. I smiled with recognition. She had picked out Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk, a book of essays by one of my favorite authors. A book I’d read and loved years ago, then shelved and half-forgotten, until I saw it my twelve-year-old’s hands.

How well this girl knows us, her parents.

We’ve studied her all these years, since the very first hours, when we stared and stared and stared, trying to memorize every feature, knowing how soon she’d grow and change, and how soon we’d forget the things we told ourselves we could never ever forget.

It never occurred to me that she has been studying us, too. But of course she has.

She knows more than she ever lets on, the beautiful and the embarrassing. She knows the foods I loathe and the books I love, the things that make me cry and the things that make me angry, that ducklings make me happy and cold weather makes me impatient.

I suddenly feel exposed, in the nicest way.

Seen. Known. Loved.

me, you, and annie dillard. here is your thursday morning inspiration. enjoy. don’t forget to share.

oh, and check back later for a surprise about finally being free.

“We could, you know. We can live any way we want.

People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience–even of silence–by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting….

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.”

- Teaching a Stone to Talk

In a section of  her book, 

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.

It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

Do you have any thoughts about Annie’s ideas? Do you think that some churchgoers take the power of God too lightly? Do you think sometimes our actions indicate a lack of belief in the deepest essence of what we say is true about God and life and ourselves? What of her playful suggestion that if we realized the power we were in contact with, we would perhaps be a bit more . . . _____what?____ . . . in our approach? Cautious? Reverent? Courageous? Hopeful? 

The implications of Annie Dillard‘s words are a little unsettling.  They should, I think, radically challenge every one of us who plan to attend a church service tomorrow (which should be every one of us who consider ourselves a Christian).

When we gather for worship, do we realize what we’re doing?  Are we quite prepared to stand together in the presence of the Holy One, the Alpha and Omega, the sovereign Lord, creator of heaven and earth?

God help us, as we gather in Your presence, to stand in awe of You.

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” -Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Experience has taught the [human] race that if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means but the condition in which the means operates. You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things — unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on Him.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

Alas, that is how we view Holiness sometimes. We view it as a series of habits or do-s and don’t-s. We think of it in terms of the things we do, or at least should do, that will make us Christlike.

We think God wants us to go to church. — God wants us to be in His presence.

We think God wants us to sing hymns vs. contemporary music. — God wants us to worship Him.

We think God wants us to do good works. — God want us to love one another as Christ loved us.

We think God wants us to give 10% of everything we earn. — God wants us to give it all to Him and allow Him to use it to build His Kingdom.

We think Gods wants us to DO a bunch of stuff. — God wants us to know Him intimately. And that may mean sitting in the dark sometimes.

Experience has taught the [human] race that if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means but the condition in which the means operates. You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things — unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on Him.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

Alas, that is how we view Holiness sometimes. We view it as a series of habits or do-s and don’t-s. We think of it in terms of the things we do, or at least should do, that will make us Christlike.

We think God wants us to go to church. — God wants us to be in His presence.

We think God wants us to sing hymns vs. contemporary music. — God wants us to worship Him.

We think God wants us to do good works. — God want us to love one another as Christ loved us.

We think God wants us to give 10% of everything we earn. — God wants us to give it all to Him and allow Him to use it to build His Kingdom.

We think Gods wants us to DO a bunch of stuff. — God wants us to know Him intimately. And that may mean sitting in the dark sometimes.