"Peace................................"

“Wherever there is life, there is twist and mess.”…”Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

Annie Dillard’s writing may not be “inspired” in the same sense that we apply that term to the Bible, but reading her mental observations often takes me to a place where I and the Holy Ghost connect in thought. In the above mentioned book, she opines in one chapter that not only did the creator create everything, but he is apt to create anything! So many forms! Off on one tangent after another (or millions simultaneously) with an exuberance suggesting He loves pizazz!” She applies no capitalization in any reference to Him, her acknowledgement of His existence still in question. She can see the demand for divinity, there being too much evidence of design in such a puzzle as exists around her. Religion, robed in all our humanity, however, makes no sense to her; and, rather than simply surrendering to His reality, taking the leap and allowing the Mystery to explain Himself, she pours herself into books that feed me in my journey… The teacher over our Elementary Special-Ed unit is twenty-eight, married, no children thus far, and deeply rooted in his Catholicism. Our conversation, almost every day, turns to faith in those rare moments when the room is calm, kids either elsewhere in something like an art class or occupied on a computer. We speak openly, me of Pentecost, he of his own bunch, both of us giving insight to the other’s beliefs. There is no attempt to convert anyone. What I hear in him is “water coming up out of the well”, a love for Christ discovered in an encounter and maintained through a relationship. I hope it’s the same with this old man. If our terminology differs to the point of needing clarification at times, if our experience has been nurtured in different environments, yet we converge with Him at that point where He abides! Indeed, it seems to me that, while there may well be a lot of “twist and mess” in this, much of it is no more than what we, ourselves, create……