Annie Dillard

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Itch-A-Sketch

Church folk and artists haven’t always been friends. Ha. Get it? Because it seems they’ve almost never been friends, though that’s not true, and shouldn’t be, but just how much it shouldn’t be isn’t clear. It’s as someone said about once about a poet: Dylan Thomas wrote six great poems, but no one knows which

Read More »

Not For Teacher

There’s an unfortunate instructor-y thing where the guy on stage [I’ve found it’s usually a male doing this] asks a question he already knows the answer to, one of the people in the audience … err, classroom … is the target, the answer given is wrong, and the stagehand just goes and gives the answer

Read More »

Giant in the Land

Dallas Willard revised his affairs yesterday, moving to the headquarters of the Kingdom of the Heavens to live slightly nearer to God, whom he spoke of, served, embodied. The life he continues to live today. Unceasingly infused, this life was and is. For these ideas and Our Lord were everywhere in what Dr. Willard said

Read More »

The Professional

  shows up every day stays on the job all day commits to the long haul sets the stakes high, sees they’re real is patient seeks order demystifies acts in the face of fear accepts no excuses plays it as it lays is prepared doesn’t show off masters technique asks for help doesn’t take failure

Read More »