Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear friend,

In college, when professors realized I was from Roanoke, Virginia and that I loved being both Episcopalian and being outdoors, they would say “Oh you have got to read Annie Dillard.” I finally did, once I received about four used copies of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek!” Since then I’ve occasionally picked up one of her books, generally jumping in in the middle. She did her college and graduate work in Roanoke and her Pulitzer Prize winning work was based near there on the intricacies of one small corner of the Roanoke River watershed, Tinker Creek. The most recent book of hers that I've read is “Holy the Firm,” a reflection based in another part of the country, the Puget Sound in Washington.

Two paragraphs stand out as we walk together into a holy Lent:

Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are… “God is at home,” says Meister Eckhart, “We are in the far country.”

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home.

As we walk through the wilderness with Jesus, reflecting on and repenting of our sin, complicity, and misdirected prides and passions, we are beckoned “come and see” just to whom we are repenting, and just what this turning is for. We seek with the disciples, what are you looking for, where are you staying, Jesus-can you show us the way home?

'What are you looking for?' They said to him, 'Rabbi' (which translated means Teacher), 'where are you staying?' He said to them, 'Come and see.’ The Gospel of John 1:38-39

In Christ,
Mtr. Taylor

Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, 1977, p. 62.