I am Kyle's self-indulgence

I've nearly finished reading Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk, and I'll definitely be seeking out more of her writing after this.

It's hard for me to say exactly why I love her so much. She writes creative non-fiction essays, about which she says, "This is not a collection of occasional pieces, such as a writer bring out to supplement his real work; instead this is my real work, such as it is."

I had previously read her most famous work, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, first for a graduate English class and then a second time, more carefully, after I heard her mentioned as a Christian writer. The first time I read Pilgrim I didn't notice anything about Dillard's faith. The book is mostly observations on nature, and whatever spiritual reflections it contains are of a very general sort.

In Teaching a Stone to Talk Annie Dillard exposes her faith much more directly. She writes on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles, but what keeps me coming back to her is just the way she has with language. She often takes a very roundabout way to get to what she wants to say, but it doesn't matter because every sentence is enjoyable to read. Sometimes I get so engrossed in the way she writes that I don't care if she ever gets to the point. But she always does, usually in one great punch that ties together all of the little anecdotes and loose threads that she had carefully placed along the way.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. It's called "God In The Doorway." It's one of the shortest essays in the book, but it is a great example of how she leaps from thread to thread, not showing the connections until the very last sentence. I also happen to love the point she makes here. This would be a great essay to read to the family on Christmas day.

One cold Christmas Eve I was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner-my parents, my baby sister, and I. We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantle; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.

I had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs. There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold winter blew around my dress.

Everyone was calling me. "Look who’s here! Look who’s here!" I looked. It was Santa Claus. Whom I never-ever-wanted to meet. Santa Claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. My mother’s voice was thrilled: "Look who’s here!" I ran upstairs.

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you’d been bad or good. He knew when you’d been bad or good! And I had been bad.

My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn’t come down. My father encouraged me; my sister howled. I wouldn’t come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down. I don’t know who ate the cookies.

For so many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity. This is really a story about Miss White.

Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure. She would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp. I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.

That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn’t look back.

Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.