An eye for the extraordinary

Annie Dillard died yesterday. I was looking for Bird by Bird on my shelves yesterday (by Anne Lamott). I know it is here — because there is no longer anywhere else — but I kept bumping into Dillard. The Writing Life. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. That weasel essay. I gave it up for the day.

Today I tried again. Book by book. But no Bird by Bird. Instead I pulled Dillard's The Writing Life off the shelf. Its bristling with sticky notes, notes from past Michelle to present Michelle, I suppose. Or a note from the universe to remember Annie Dillard's gifts to me.

I gave the reading at the undergraduate commencement this spring. Traditionally the choice of reading is left to the person giving the reading. And of course, it should be short. The students I had taught in the first year writing seminar were graduating and I wanted something that might reach back to that class (titled  “Women who see through walls” and reading women poets, mystics and scientists — and some people who crossed those lines). I decided no wild life from Mary Oliver . “Antidotes to Fear of Death” by the late Becky Elson (an astrophyscist and poet) felt a little too dark for this event. Annie Dillard’s weasel essay called to me, but also felt a bit violent..stalking your calling? But Dillard? Yes, Dillard! I used a piece from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek written when she was young (though not quite as young as the graduates.) There is some stalking, but no blood.

"For the scientists, mathematicians, social scientists, humanists, poets, writers, for all of you who have peered through the walls of the universe, dug under them, clambered over them, taken them apart, and made something new…stone by stone. From Annie Dillard, “The Waters of Separation” in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

“The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time…unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock…they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish, too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn and unlock—more than a maple— a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.” 

(Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Harpers, 1974, p. 269)

 

Adsum: #usemeinstead

After sliding our way to and from PHL today to get our Egg onto his plane for California College, I spent much of the rest of the day nursing a sore throat while listening to the freezing rain hit the roof. Too sick to go to Mass, I prayed through the propers and readings for today and enjoyed the short reflection from Carlo Carletto in Give Us This Day in lieu of a homily.  Wait on God, he says, until the time comes when we are called, when we must speak out.

Adsum, says Samuel, in the Latin translation of today's first reading.  Here I am. I come to do your will.

Wandering through my Facebook feed tonight, I found Samuel's story replaying in Amy Chanson of Diary of a Contemplative's post:  "Use Me Instead." She is taking part in the #usemeinstead campaign where clergy are offering their photographs to be used in lieu of the African-American men's images currently being used that had been used by the North Miami Beach police department for sniper training.  She is called, and speaking out powerfully.

Adsum.  Here I am. #usemeinstead

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My friend Fran was also writing about being called - for yesterday's Feast of St. Anthony.  Read her reflection, "A compelling call," at PrayTell.