I am Kyle's self-indulgence

I’m re-reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I say re-reading, even though I didn’t properly read it the first time. I purchased the book for a graduate English class a couple of years ago. We spent less than a week reading and discussing it before moving on to our next work. This is a very dense book to cover in so brief a time, and I got less than halfway through, even with speed-reading. I obviously wasn’t reading it very closely, because I didn’t find out Dillard is a Christian until I read about her in Philip Yancey’s Soul Survivor.

So, I’m giving the book another chance. I’m taking my time with it now, and discovering lots of little nuggets of revelation and wisdom in it. Dillard draws upon the science books she’s read and her own observations of the creek where she lives to make profound discoveries about the natural world and the nature of God. Most of what she writes feels fresh, exciting, and new, but I’m actually surprised at how much of it is very similar to ideas I have thought about. One of the broader ideas Dillard explores is the wonder of nature as seen on the microscopic scale. It puts me in mind of one of the most moving spiritual experiences of my own life.

Follow up:

In the summer of 2000, I went to work at a camp in Northeast Oklahoma. For several years, I had been struggling with doubts about my faith. Most of the time, I was able to ignore them and go on with the daily business of my academic studies and college swimming. Now that I had committed myself to teaching young kids about Christ, though, I could no longer ignore those doubts. I could not teach something I did not genuinely believe. On the second or third day of staff training before the campers arrived, I set out on a path through the woods, searching for answers.

My path began alongside Flint Creek, which ran through the valley of New Life Ranch. It is a narrow and slippery path that sits atop the steep creek bank. The hilly forest rises sharply on the left. As I carefully walked along this path, I thought hard about the source of my doubt. Through my studies in college, I had realized that the form of Christianity I had been taught all my life did not seem to fit with what we have learned about the world through science. Research shows that the earth is billions of years old, not thousands. There are species of animals that existed millions of years before man walked the earth. I had always assumed that belief in these facts was incompatible with a belief that God created the world. I thought that people have to choose one or the other, and I was beginning to see which side the hardest evidence pointed to.

As I walked the path along Flint Creek I tried my best to reason God into existence. I called upon the arguments and evidence I had been taught in church to combat evolutionary theory. For every argument, though, I had a counterargument from science that trumped it. No matter how long and hard I thought, reason was bringing me no closer to being convinced that God truly exists. Frustrated, I gave up this mode of thinking. I turned off the Flint Creek trail and begin up a path into the woods. As I walked, I began looking at the environment around me, quietly taking it all in. I listened to the invisible birds singing around me. I watched the trees’ branches sway in the breeze. I felt the soft earth beneath my feet. The tranquility of the scene was a nice break from the struggle that had been going on in my mind.

I stopped beneath a particularly large tree to enjoy this silence. Near the ground, I began observing some of the smaller details that I hadn’t noticed while I was walking. I was amazed at just how much there was that existed on a small patch of ground. Underneath this tree were stems of grass pushing up through a layer of decomposing leaves, ants running about their work, beatles scurrying out from under a displaced log, and moss growing on the trunk of the tree. Here was a tiny, separate world, absolutely teeming with life. I picked up a single leaf and examined its complex structure. I could see a complex system of veins running through it, beginning at the thick stem and narrowing out the tip of every point. I looked even closer, at the texture of the leaf. With my naked eye, I could see tiny geometric forms on its surface. I imagined that I could even make out the individual cells that did the work of the leaf’s photosynthesis. Each one was composed of a complex system of organelles, like a tiny factory, miraculously transforming sunlight into energy the plant can use.

And somewhere amidst all of this is the magical spark of life—but where? If scientists were somehow able to build a leaf from scratch, to start with atoms, then molecules, to create all that a plant cell needs, there would still be something missing. The truth is, for all that we have learned about how biological organisms work, we are no closer to understanding what, exactly, life is. It is perhaps the easiest thing to identify in nature—there is no doubt that a moving insect is alive—and it is terribly easy to destroy. But to define it, to understand where it comes from, and, ultimately, to create it from something not alive, is impossible. As I held the leaf in my hand, I considered what a miracle it is—an object made up on tiny, living cells, each one wholly mysterious. Still in awe of this miracle of life, I began lifting my gaze to look at the trees around me and I saw at first hundreds, then thousands, then millions of leaves. The sight of this miracle I had discovered multiplied millions upon millions of times was overwhelming. In this moment, I had no doubt that God must exist. There was no other explanation for the forest of miracles I beheld.

For years I had tried to use reason to combat the threat to my faith posed by scientific research. That day in the woods, though, I realized that knowledge of the natural world can actually deepen my faith, by revealing to me the wonder of the physical world. It would take some time for me to fully reconcile science and religion, beginning with the rejection of a purely literal interpretation of biblical creation. At the moment, though, it was enough for me to simply stand in awe of something in this world that is miraculous and unexplainable.