For the Time Being

Rating:
Summary: Awesome taken apart makes "A we so me"
Review: Annie D. does it again and gives us a work of the illumined heart - an awesome witness for the bird's-eye view of the snail's eye view - and in her unique way of always unearthing facts that shake the foundation pillars that our beliefs have erected to the heavens, above and below. When Aunt Annie writes, we feel the cosmos move in us. By her life in the writing - "In the beginning was the Word" - universe means uni-verse, "one song", a we - interconnected and experienced (the butterfly effect) - so me. The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. As it is in heaven, so it manifest on earth: As within, so without.

This personal narrative surveys a panorama of our world, past and present posing questions about God, natural evil and individual existence. Personal meanderings by the author with diverse topics such as the natural history of sand, the different types of clouds, visiting an obstetrical ward, and the story of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit paleontologist digging in the desert of China. Filled with information and Dillard's relentless curiosity.

Compassionate, informative, enthralling, always suprising, For The Time Being shows one of our most original writers - her breadth of knowledge matched by keen powers of observation, all of it informing her relentless curiosity - in the fullness of her powers.

Rating:
Summary: This is a Book for Thinkers
Review: Annie Dillard has a style unique to herself. She is able to change direction of her book's subjects drastically but continue to hold the readers attention with odd, unconventional listing of thoughts and facts. Dillard takes the subjects Birth, Sand, China, Clouds, Numbers, Isreal, Encounters, Thinker, Evil, and Now; and embarks on a spiritual journey into the questions of God's omnipotance, the importance of the individual, and the innevitablility of death. The book seems to circle after a while, like having a converstation with 10 different people who each have a wealth of knowledge and statistics about their own subject. But this is a power of Dillard's style: being able to pull seperate unrelated factors all together, like a mosaic, only comprehesible as a whole work of art from a distance. I liked this book from the beginning of Dillard's description of a few children's deformation from birth. Her knowledge is impressive, expecially that of French paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin, who battles with questions of God in midst of finding ancient human remains. Dillard incorporates quotes from near and far to weave this quilt of human question and answers that remain to be enshrouded in clouds of mystery, shifting with each generation. She uses a countless number of successive statistics that will drive any reader into a deep tunnel of thought. The end will challenge anyone to continue on their own encounter with the meaning of existance.

Rating:
Summary: beautifully written, but.....
Review: Annie Dillard has been widely recognized as one of the finest prose stylists writing in the English language. She confirms her reputation in this beautiful book, movingly written and organized around the theme of human greatness (and smallness) in the face of transience. "We live in all we seek," and, "What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color" are two of the many quotable sentences in this book. The pieces on Teilhard de Chardin, the scientist-priest hobbled hand and foot by Rome, are particularly moving.

Like a previous reviewer, however, I was surprised she had not moved much beyond positions set out in her earlier books, especially the exemplary HOLY THE FIRM. Maybe it's just me, but I find myself increasingly impatient with the "why is God silent" question, as though the Almighty ought to be personally managing affairs down here. Sartre's question comes to mind: asked where God was during WW II, Sartre replied, "Where was man?"

I was also surprised to learn that the author does not consider herself an environmentalist or nature writer--until I read this book, that is. Pointing out that the people of other historical periods considered themselves in an apocalyptic time, she makes fun of our end-of-days preoccupations: "People have made great strides in obliterating other people, too, but that has been the human effort all along...New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the people of dynastic Egypt have been any different?"

To this question, which ignores the fact of our contemporary capacity to obliterate just about everything (83% of the planet surface has been interfered with, 1/3 of its corral reefs are gone, 50% of the animals are headed into history, etc.), I would counterpose the opening paragraph of LISTENING TO THE LAND (available here at Amazon.com) edited by Derrick Jensen:

"We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity. Why do we act as we do?"

Offhand, I would say that makes our situation somewhat different than that of dynastic Egypt.

Rating:
Summary: Breath-taking, stunning work of genius!!!!!
Review: Annie Dillard propels me to a precipice far above the mind-numbed, robotic routine that is my life and shows me----what? Clouds, my mortality, my smallness, eternity, a grain of sand, my own soul? She illuminates the magnificent in the ordinary, the magic in the mundane, God in a deformed child.

For a moment it's as if I'm Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", sitting on that bed in Auntie Em's house which is spinning out of control in the midst of a tornado, and life is passing me by in fast-forward like the characters whizzing by the window and I'm just amazed, clutching Toto, too stunned to react. And then in the next moment of reading, serene illumination. I get it! It all makes sense and I no longer feel like a tiny, insignificant morsel of clay, but a vital, significant part of the whole. What a breathtaking patchwork quilt of wisdom and philosophy this tiny book is!

Thank you, Annie, for yet another priceless gem from your wonderful intellect. I'm reminded of my favorite quote by Kafka: "The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves. . .A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."

Rating:
Summary: Real faith harbors real doubt.
Review: Award winning novelist and essayist Dillard explores the nature of faith in a world that seems to be running out of control. She has no easy answers, just a lot of potent questions and reflections. Do not expect straightforward analysis from an Annie Dillard book: she instead employs the elliptical style of a midrash, going off ontangents about any number of subjects, from the life of priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, to China's Terra Cotta Warriors and the emperor who built them, to the ever changing nature of clouds, to the history of Hasidism,
to the tragedy of birth defects, and on and on, always looping back to the central thesis: "God, where are you in all this?" Not a safe book by any means: challenging and disturbing, but also inspiring in its determination to take both God and the world we find ourselves in seriously.

Rating:
Summary: for the time being
Review: For the Time Being by Annie Dillard is an oddity as far as modern literature is concerned. In a day when the only rule is there are no rules, Dillard takes every advantage of that in her book. Probing, asking, and speculating about God, death, and life is what the book is all about, but in an often obscure way. Without warning Dillard will spit out a random fact or change the subject on hand to something more jadded than the one before. None of this seems to make any sense until her final chapter where it all comes together with one natural motive. Dillard brings her points into perspective through examples of the unnoticed, such as the short lives of clouds, or tragic and strange birth defects, never ceasing to illude her underlying theme that now is our time for being. By examining her own experiences and the sometimes odd experiences of others, Dillard constructs an awe inspiring book digging into some of the deepest questions of man about life and death, and the existence of God. I believe this book to be a treat for anyone who reads it and I recomend it to everyone and anyone. If I were to describe Dillard's work in one word the most appropriate word would be melting-pot. Dillard combines several ingredients (none of which seem to have anything in common with the other) and creates a delicious and enlightening peice of literature, surely filling to any reader.

Rating:
Summary: not a light read
Review: For the Time Being is one of my favorite books. Annie Dillard, as always, is taking on the Big questions. She's asking the questions that we all have to ask (whether we realize it or not), and she does so in the most honest, most innovative, and most insightful ways possible.

In For the Time Being, Dillard is exploring the problem of evil. She discusses such horrors as birth defects, torture, and mass murders, and she cries out to God, "What's with all the bird-headed dwarfs!" She's referring to a debilitating birth defect. She's asking how does God allow such atrocities? Is there a God if this type of world exists?

Dillard reviews the traditional arguments about the problem of evil. Her conclusion: "I don't know beans about God." She quotes Augustine, "We're talking about God. What wonder is it you do not understand? If you do understand, then it is not God." But though she doesn't understand God, she still does decide to live in a universe for love. Love (=God) is still worth living for, and that's her message, I think. Delve into the mystery that is God and that is love.

I can't do justice to this book. It is one of those that I love a bit too much. Just read it. It's an experience like no other.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Having read and enjoyed Dillard's Holy the Firm to some degree I thought this book might be a tremedous read. After all she's much older and more wise, right? This is probably true. Dillard is an intelligent person. Unfortunately, the book does not (for me) suggest much progress in her approach to the world.

Perhaps a contrast of writers would be helpful. I have come to view writers like Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders and Annie Dillard (and others, like Barbara Kingsolver) as part of a loose band of grassroots theology. For example, Wendell Berry consistantly asks us throughout his works, be it in poems, essays or fiction, to reassess the world as part of a vast Creation, as a God-gifted place worthy of care, to which we are inextricably connected. He asks difficult, extended questions and he also offers us intelligent prescriptions based on deep rooted cultural traditions and religious wisdom, primarily Christian. He shows an opinion.

Sanders moves down similar lines adding quasi-Christian confessional elements. There is clearly a clashing of ideas in Sanders writing that leaves him with many unanswered questions, but he goes after them with an intense curiosity. Unlike Berry, he lacks the roots to hold his thoughts in place and is far more reserved (perhaps deferential) in sharing advice.

Holy the Firm and For the Time Being are strongly confessional and are filled with questions. Annie Dillard is clearly an intelligent woman. She is desiring but lacking the sturdy life of roots leaving her thoughts floating in a hard to define (mystical?) language. Like Wendell Berry she is a Christian (Catholic) seeking answers.

At any rate, both of the books mentioned left me uneasy. Holy the Firm has startling persuasive poetic prose. For the Time being does not. The latter is far more dry and confused in its content. Questions are raised about why the seemingly Created world is filled with birth defects, for example, but she never pursues the reasoning. Such perceptions are simply not unique to most of us and disappointingly they lack the poetic qualities necessary to stand alone as an unanswered thought. It seems odd, but she appears to be disturbed at the possibility of emotionally and spiritually involving herself (her thoughts) in this book. It comes across as an uncohesive descriptive journal. But as I said, she lacks the poetry to pull it off. Random thoughts sit alone with the clash of ideas never really taking shape.

To her credit however this book is searching - as her books always seems to be - for an appreciation for the simple God-given (and taken) things in the world. But after decades of writing I suppose I expected Dillard to offer more rooted thinking. She has not changed much since Holy the Firm.

If you're eager to read about simplicity and the sublime; If you're looking for the tradition and wisdom of roots; I suggest reading Holy the Firm, then picking up a writer like Wendell Berry. This may seem too dismissive but there are more well written and enjoyable books seeking out the things Dillard is seeking in For the Time Being.



Rating:
Summary: For the time to Come!
Review: I just don't get it, Annie.

You've got two trains of thought going here, in opposite directions. Eventually they should clash spectacularly, and after the wreck we would know what's what. But it never happens.

First train: eternity. The way you write about this is breathtaking. Beautiful even as it's unsettling, you make us realize how small we are, how many of us there have been, how insignificant our lives are. We are like sand, so numerous, and like clouds, so fleeting. No one tries to remember the clouds or get to know the sand. Why should we be any different?

Second train: Calamity. Birth defects. All of the ugly and tragic things that have happened, are happening, will happen. A tidal wave kills 108,000. Bird-headed dwarves. Baal Shem Tov, the exile of Teilhard. Who can cope with all of this suffering?

Do you see how they must clash?

Yet you come away with some strange conclusions. That God must have his hands tied, cannot be omnipotent and good simultaneously. Annie, don't you see that this conclusion is riding on that second train? You carry suffering back onto that first train and wave it around like a weapon..

We could go insane thinking like this. Insane like Mao, distancing himself from the individual and focusing on the eternal. That's how he could say things like "I'm willing to lose 600 million." What, after all, in the face of eternity, is 600 million deaths? But the other insanity is even worse -- the one that comes from focussing on the suffering and forgetting the eternal. For in this case, you may save the suffering individual, but you murder God. And without God, there is no healing for the suffering.

Once you've been on that first train, how can you walk away with any confidence in your own ability to reason and understand the big things? Things like eternity, the Absolute the Reasons? How can I attempt to know the mind of God? Where He begins and ends? I cannot even get my mind around the beginnings and endings of beetles.

When the two trains clash, what must emerge is a profound humility. Yes, there is profound suffering in the world. But it is an incomprehensibly vast world. Suffering is not what defines this universe. Defining the universe in terms of suffering -- letting that be the data from which you draw your conclusions about God and Evil and the Point of Things -- is like defining the universe based on beetles. There are so many other things out there!

And maybe, Annie, maybe that's the leap you're unwilling to make. If this life, in its terrible shortness and insignificance, is our only shot at things, if pain can define us and death can end us, then the conclusions we would have to draw would be quite frustrating. If the physical world is our only chance at understanding God, we have no chance. We are doomed to make bad guesses.

Death comes often and unpredictably. A hundred thousand die of the plague, a holy man is tortured and killed at the hands of the Romans. And if that's the end of the story, it's a horrible story and I want no more of it. But what if it isn't? What if that's just chapter one? What if there are a thousand other pages of life, and justice, and joy? What if the Reason doesn't come till the End? Will you still give up in chapter one?

Annie, hang on. You can outlast this life, this terribly limited perspective and tiny brain. You can outlive the tragedy of the bird-headed dwarves to see the beauty and glory of the bird-headed dwarves. Don't come to any final conclusions yet; the votes aren't all in.

I am more and more convinced that one day we will look back on our years in this meatbag in much the same way we look back on puberty. With a laugh. Aware that it was formative, amazed we didn't kill or permanently scar ourselves. Heck, we didn't even know which things were important and which didn't matter. Most of the big questions don't get answered; most of the big issues never get addressed. You just realize, eventually, that they're not that big. Actually, they're pretty stupid and embarassing. The product of a small mind working too hard.

Will it be this way in eternity? I think so. I strive today for understanding of God and His ways. I make progress one hard-earned step at a time. It is right that I should do this. I am like an adolescent trying to grow up. But there will come a time when all the progress I have made in a lifetime will be surpassed in a few seconds, if seconds exist in eternity. I will look on the face of God, and will understand.

So who is God? Why is there so much suffering? WHAT'S WITH THE BIRD-HEADED DWARVES? I don't know. I am as yet miles away from God. How can I know His mind? My very best, most intelligent guesses fall short. How can I put any stock in them? But I have learned this -- I don't have to put any stock in them. It's ok that they're wrong. I don't want them to stay wrong, but I'm confident that they won't, and in the mean time, all I have to do is keep them from killing me. Just hang on. There is no test, there will be no test on how many of my ideas about God and the Universe are right. I will be held accountable for the lives of my fellow human beings, and I will be judged on whether or not I spent my little life crawling towards God or away from Him. That's all, I think, but it's plenty enough to keep me busy for these seventy or eighty years. And it's small enough that I can get my little brain around it.

Rating:
Summary: For the time to Come!
Review: I just don't get it, Annie.

You've got two trains of thought going here, in opposite directions. Eventually they should clash spectacularly, and after the wreck we would know what's what. But it never happens.

First train: eternity. The way you write about this is breathtaking. Beautiful even as it's unsettling, you make us realize how small we are, how many of us there have been, how insignificant our lives are. We are like sand, so numerous, and like clouds, so fleeting. No one tries to remember the clouds or get to know the sand. Why should we be any different?

Second train: Calamity. Birth defects. All of the ugly and tragic things that have happened, are happening, will happen. A tidal wave kills 108,000. Bird-headed dwarves. Baal Shem Tov, the exile of Teilhard. Who can cope with all of this suffering?

Do you see how they must clash?

Yet you come away with some strange conclusions. That God must have his hands tied, cannot be omnipotent and good simultaneously. Annie, don't you see that this conclusion is riding on that second train? You carry suffering back onto that first train and wave it around like a weapon..

We could go insane thinking like this. Insane like Mao, distancing himself from the individual and focusing on the eternal. That's how he could say things like "I'm willing to lose 600 million." What, after all, in the face of eternity, is 600 million deaths? But the other insanity is even worse -- the one that comes from focussing on the suffering and forgetting the eternal. For in this case, you may save the suffering individual, but you murder God. And without God, there is no healing for the suffering.

Once you've been on that first train, how can you walk away with any confidence in your own ability to reason and understand the big things? Things like eternity, the Absolute the Reasons? How can I attempt to know the mind of God? Where He begins and ends? I cannot even get my mind around the beginnings and endings of beetles.

When the two trains clash, what must emerge is a profound humility. Yes, there is profound suffering in the world. But it is an incomprehensibly vast world. Suffering is not what defines this universe. Defining the universe in terms of suffering -- letting that be the data from which you draw your conclusions about God and Evil and the Point of Things -- is like defining the universe based on beetles. There are so many other things out there!

And maybe, Annie, maybe that's the leap you're unwilling to make. If this life, in its terrible shortness and insignificance, is our only shot at things, if pain can define us and death can end us, then the conclusions we would have to draw would be quite frustrating. If the physical world is our only chance at understanding God, we have no chance. We are doomed to make bad guesses.

Death comes often and unpredictably. A hundred thousand die of the plague, a holy man is tortured and killed at the hands of the Romans. And if that's the end of the story, it's a horrible story and I want no more of it. But what if it isn't? What if that's just chapter one? What if there are a thousand other pages of life, and justice, and joy? What if the Reason doesn't come till the End? Will you still give up in chapter one?

Annie, hang on. You can outlast this life, this terribly limited perspective and tiny brain. You can outlive the tragedy of the bird-headed dwarves to see the beauty and glory of the bird-headed dwarves. Don't come to any final conclusions yet; the votes aren't all in.

I am more and more convinced that one day we will look back on our years in this meatbag in much the same way we look back on puberty. With a laugh. Aware that it was formative, amazed we didn't kill or permanently scar ourselves. Heck, we didn't even know which things were important and which didn't matter. Most of the big questions don't get answered; most of the big issues never get addressed. You just realize, eventually, that they're not that big. Actually, they're pretty stupid and embarassing. The product of a small mind working too hard.

Will it be this way in eternity? I think so. I strive today for understanding of God and His ways. I make progress one hard-earned step at a time. It is right that I should do this. I am like an adolescent trying to grow up. But there will come a time when all the progress I have made in a lifetime will be surpassed in a few seconds, if seconds exist in eternity. I will look on the face of God, and will understand.

So who is God? Why is there so much suffering? WHAT'S WITH THE BIRD-HEADED DWARVES? I don't know. I am as yet miles away from God. How can I know His mind? My very best, most intelligent guesses fall short. How can I put any stock in them? But I have learned this -- I don't have to put any stock in them. It's ok that they're wrong. I don't want them to stay wrong, but I'm confident that they won't, and in the mean time, all I have to do is keep them from killing me. Just hang on. There is no test, there will be no test on how many of my ideas about God and the Universe are right. I will be held accountable for the lives of my fellow human beings, and I will be judged on whether or not I spent my little life crawling towards God or away from Him. That's all, I think, but it's plenty enough to keep me busy for these seventy or eighty years. And it's small enough that I can get my little brain around it.