Concluding Summer Book Club

The world is charged with divine fire. The very least we can do is try to show up for a bit of it.

Hello friends!

I have neglected to update you all about the final installment of our book club, as I’ve been carried away with the steady influx of new classes and projects! The past several weeks have been chock full of back-to-back meetings and classes and filling out my application to graduate (I’m not, in any way, emotionally prepared to discuss this one yet!) My marketing job at the Marion E. Wade Center is in full swing, and in the midst of learning new design programs, I’ve been surrounded with Sayers and Tolkien for hours each week and couldn’t be happier. Planning has just commenced for the public library’s annual holiday book sale, and the campus garden I’m involved with just hosted its very first gathering this evening.

All of my little, in-between moments have been spent enjoying the last bits of the summer, as I wandered my beloved marsh in celebration of Mary Oliver’s birthday (it was the 10th, and if you missed it, read some of her poetry to make up for it!) and grabbed early morning acai bowls with Alayna downtown.

The completely lovely marsh.

I say “the last bits of summer” because it is hard to believe that autumn is very nearly upon us (a mere two days away- how can this be!) As I’m writing this, I’m tucked away in my room as thunderstorm rages outside of the window, watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (do we have an opinion on this show? It seemed delightful and spooky and was an impulse watch for me) and drinking hot coffee… I would love to know if you all are scheming about any autumn desserts, planning out escapades to enjoy the colorful leaves, or even just your coziest coffee order. Tell me in the comments!

I digress, however, as I am getting a bit ahead of myself and must first attend to the most pressing business- wrapping up our discussion of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek! First and foremost, I hope that this summer book club was as life-giving for you as it was for me. I so enjoyed reading several chapters each week and then popping on here to chat about it with this bookish little community. Pilgrim itself was both beautiful and challenging, posturing me further in the direction of, to draw from The Rule of St. Benedict, ausculta- devotion, prayer, the act of paying attention.¹ Dillard’s prose often felt like stepping out into the fresh, shining morning at 5:30 AM; while I generally appreciated where she guided me, there were moments when her observations were uncomfortable and startling.

But oh, what a gift everything about it was.

In regards to the final reading: Chapter Fifteen chronicles winter solstice’s arrival at Tinker Creek. Dillard’s prose here deeply resembles the haunting writing found in the Book of Revelation, or in the words of poets like the 13th century Persian poet Rumi. She speaks about finding God through all of the “gaps” of the world and choosing between either ignoring the complexities of the world or seeing them. Meanwhile, the Afterward chronicles Dillard’s writing process for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for the book’s twenty-fifth anniversary.² She writes, (emphasis mine):

“How does Pilgrim seem after twenty-five years? Above all, and salvifically, I hope, it seems bold.”

Because this final reading was so brief, I have chosen to include a “highlight reel” from seven weeks of reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek together. Each week, I chose an illuminating theme to discuss with all of you, and each week, Dillard presented me with ideas that demanded something of me and, as Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar notes in Explorations in Theology, presented me with the “divine summons to change one’s life.”³ I was compelled to mull over her words as I took my morning walks, and the resounding practicality of her voice- being offered in a genre much more known for its abstract approach to spirituality than its concrete, day-to-day wisdom- has proved important to me.

Dillard wrote in Holy the Firm, which I read during spring of this year, that “every day is a god.”⁴ I doubt that she is intending to be heretical. And even more than that, I don’t think that her words are heretical. Perhaps she might even be right- perhaps this is a sentiment worth holding fast to, years and years after reading her work for the first time. Every day is a god. Sunsets can market the idea of a creator very well, sure, but what is one to do when our lives are marked by quiet desperation, crippling mental illness, broken relationships, and devastating news reports? She never gives us any solutions to this.

All that she tells us is this: every day is a god. The world is charged with divine fire- with complexity and emotion and beauty. The very least we can do is try to show up for a bit of it.

Week 1: A Distinctly Untidy Faith

As a young teenager, it is said that she left church for good because of the “hypocrisy.” Pilgrim suggests that what Dillard and so many of us have experienced in the church is indeed hypocrisy, but what we witness in the natural world doesn’t have to be. After all, there is a difference between hypocrisy and duality- the coexistence, not imbalance, of two radically different states. Golden sunsets and the barren hallways of children’s hospitals. The canary that perches atop a globe and sings and the canary whose lungs fill with carbon monoxide. The rose of union and the blood of murder. In Dillard’s world, there is beauty and tragedy, evil and goodness, hope and despair, and somehow, without explanations, life marches on. Dillard rediscovers a church that extends beyond walls- perhaps, a church that could have never been present within walls in the first place- and that gives itself permission to be all things messy, confusing, and untidy. And thank goodness she is inviting us to join in on this discovery.

Week 2: Christianity as Anti-Epiphany

Dillard ultimately seems to be telling us something like this: seek beauty, posture yourself towards compassion, and then put a stake in the ground and water whatever begins to bloom there. It might be deemed “Lutheran” for some, “Methodist” for another, and “Roman Catholic” for that one friend from college. Sometimes it will leave you with twenty annoyed DMs from Christians in your social media inbox, and sometimes it will mean taking a really long walk amongst the trees. Sometimes it will leave you tithing to places other than church, and more often than not it will leave you with courage. This is when shadow resolves into beauty- when we make peace with unknowing and lean into living within the paradoxes of the world.

Week 3: To Fall or to Dance

In addition to this, I think a good rule of thumb overall is to live your life like you are a character in a Studio Ghibli movie. Because goodness, the Studio Ghibli cast of characters give us plenty of examples of cultivating wonder in their daily lives: tending to the garden, walking by the seaside with a friend, enjoying mouth-watering ramen after a long day. Being thoroughly alive isn’t just about the arbitrary, overarching narratives throughout our lives- it is about the everyday sort of magic, experiences that prompt nostalgia ten years later because you wish you had been more present in that sweet, sacred moment. And that is why Kiki’s Delivery Service could never just be described as the story of a witch who loses her ability to fly and then gets her powers back. To do so would be to miss the point of the movie entirely. Coming-of-age tales are rarely just about the transition from Point A to Point B- they are about the in-between, the messy, the not-yet, and the becoming. They are about life, in its complete fullness and complexity and overwhelming beauty. Kiki’s story is no different.

Week 4: Birthdays and Blue Horses

If a particular storyline is compelling to you, allow it to be compelling. If you read romance novels at night or really enjoy watching Love is Blind, there is no need for you to repeatedly feel bad about loving what you love. When something compels us, I think that it deserves both our undivided attention and also our hesitancy in immediately belittling it. Just because your favorite book wasn’t written by Proust or Tolstoy doesn’t mean it isn’t transformative. If your favorite movies aren’t foreign films or A24 movies, that doesn’t mean you aren’t an interesting person. I think that part of being human is inheriting the duty of learning to delight in things- looking beauty straight in the eye and accepting it for all of its mystery.

Week 5: From Certainty to Mystery

It is in our nature to want to be comfortable- to sit securely inside the set of beliefs that are best serving us, whether that be a lifestyle decision, religion, or political opinion. Dillard knows that these frameworks will always come crashing down eventually, though, and that is what I believe she is getting at as she elusively describes moths mating and gooseneck barnacles. Why? Because we are human, and the longer we spend trying to remain fixed and unchanging in anything, the more likely it is that questions and doubts are bubbling beneath the surface, begging to be explored. Somewhere deep in our bones we know that it is okay to not know how to reconcile things, and yet we persist in trying anyway.

Week 6: Learning How to Die

Learning how to die is necessary, soul-staining work. It equips us with courage and compassion, drawing us closer in relationship with our family and friends and offering us the opportunity to remember the dead through the work of the living. It helps us to identify the everyday instances of death in our lives. Death inevitably carries with it so much pain, tragedy, and grief, and that isn’t something we should try to escape. Accepting our own mortality is necessary because it better equips us to handle all of the emotions that death can bring. This is the most hopeful story that we can tell about the world around us: remember death. Memento mori. We are all going to die. We are all going to die, but that was never the truest thing about the world and never will be.

Week 7: Architecture of Community

Dillard’s vision of community, as evident from this paragraph, is not necessarily about complete and total isolation from the people around her. It’s also not about trying to adhere perfectly to any ever-extensive list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. Rather, it is about making a home in the world, and knowing that God can be found here, with us, too. Marketing God as accessible only to a specific kind of person (straight, white, heterosexual men) at a specific kind of place (the American evangelical church) loses so much of who God is and what the Incarnation really means for us. We don’t have to deny the truest parts of ourselves in order to become closer to God, or to experience the depth of Christian community. God loves us for all that we are and all that we are not. Isn’t that what being in community means: to feel safe being honest about who we are, what we love, and the God that is greater than our imagination?

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Anyways, regardless of how much you participated, please know that I’m so grateful for your presence in this space and any of your beautiful thoughts and contributions. It’s been an absolute delight to read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in this community, and to befriend Annie Dillard through her words.

Here are the (final!) discussion questions from this week’s reading to chat about in the comments, if you so desire!

Which section of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek spoke to you the most- the via positiva or the via negativa? Why?

Would you consider Pilgrim’s genre to be nature writing, autobiography, or religion/spirituality? What specifically influences your choice?

How do you think this book would have been different if Dillard wasn’t a woman?

How has this reading been life-giving or meaningful for you? Since finishing it, has it affected your daily life on a practical level?

Well, friends- signing off. I hope that your first day of autumn is completely enchanting, brimming with warmth and the strongest and very best coffee.

Warmly,

Julia

1. Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. Timothy Fry (New York: Vintage, 1998).

2. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: McGraw-Hill College, 2000).

3. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology, Vol. 1: The Word Made Flesh, trans. A. Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989).

4. Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998).