Glory in the Wreckage
'Is this where we live, I thought, in this place at this moment, with the air so light and wild?'
Hello, readers!
We are nearly done with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Thank you to everyone who’s joined in this fun summer book club. We’re nearly to the finish line. I hope the time outdoors, the discussion questions, and the chapters have blessed you in some way. We’ll be moving back to our regular content soon—but in the meantime, I look forward to reading these last few chapters with you all.
Cheers,
Gracy
In Chapter 12, “Nightwatch,” Dillard considers the Genesis story of Adam and the idea of a fallen world, in which death and darkness have entered the picture. We do not live in uninterrupted light and happiness, free from suffering. Instead, our lives churn with sorrows. The structure of things feels dilapidated—even, at times, abandoned. Each of the world’s joys hold their own shadow, as Dillard has noted elsewhere in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Locusts are grasshoppers, grasshoppers are locusts.
As she considers these biblical themes, Dillard moves her narrative to an old, empty cottage, in which she spends the night. In this broken-down spot, Dillard considers the rise and fall of creation, the tensions between dark and light. The dark interior of the empty cottage disappears. Each of its five broken windows offers a bright frame on the world without. The messy emptiness of the house contrasts with everything she sees outside, young and free: “bumblebees the size of ponies,” “a young cottontail rabbit,” “two dog-faced sulphur butterflies,” “a female goldfinch.”
The goldfinch, lighting on a thistle, captures Dillard’s attention. As it perches on the thistle, it empties its seedcase, “sowing the air with down… [It] strayed like snow, blind and sweet.… Is this where we live, I thought, in this place at this moment, with the air so light and wild?”
Thistles were included in Adam’s curse, Dillard writes: a source of frustration and sorrow resulting from the fall. But, Dillard adds, “If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed.” Perhaps even in the brokenness, there’s beauty to celebrate. Eels can turn silver, can pull themselves across meadows to the ocean. A goldfinch can spin air into snow. The dogged persistence of such creatures, their determination to relive and remain, speaks to our souls’ despair. There is still light, and goodness, and hope. The goldfinch, of course, has long been a symbol of Christ and resurrection.
“That I fall like Adam is not surprising,” Dillard writes. “I plunge, waft, arc, pour, and dive. The surprise is how good the wind feels on my face as I fall. And the other surprise is that I ever rise at all. I rise when I receive, like grass.”
This week, read Chapter 12: “Nightwatch.” As you read, consider the following questions:
How do you experience the tensions explored here between darkness and light, the “fallenness” and hope of human experience? Do you agree with Dillard’s considerations of these things? Why/why not?
What places, like Dillard’s cabin, offer you a different and needed perspective on things? What creatures and/or places challenge your pessimism regarding the world as it is?
For this week’s outdoor challenge: try to spend four to five hours outside! In that time, return to one of your favorite haunts and try to spend an evening there. (Not overnight, if that’s unmanageable.) How is the space different in the evening? What new observations do you make?