something i wrote recently

it isn't often that i write anything that i actually am proud of, but this paper from my nature writing class is one that i wrestled with a lot and that i am really happy with. it addresses a major theme that we have been investigating in this class--the paradox of horror and beauty that is in nature, and our methods for negotiating that paradox. if you have some time, take a read, and let me know what you think. i know it isn't exactly short or an easy read...

peace,
b
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On Faith and Finding an Environmental Ethic in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

It seems that it is in the presence of nature, the edges of the ocean for example, that humans gain an intimate sense of the awesome. Coupled with that awe and wonder though, is often a sense of horror, for the world can be beautiful, and beautifully cruel as well. The necessity of reconciling the horror and beauty in nature finds company in a perhaps unlikely realm—that of religion. Religion negotiates this juxtaposition of awe and horror using a curious path: that of faith. Faith is a belief in something that is not guaranteed to be true. Is it possible that the possession of such faith can be an effective approach to the natural world? Moreover, could such an approach be a path to more than mere acceptance of the realities of the natural world, but a deeper love and appreciation for it—even the foundation of a new sort of environmental ethic? Throughout Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard negotiates the paradox of horror and beauty in nature, using faith to glean meaning from it, and in doing so provides the basis for a novel environmental ethic: one that is shaped by faith.

Understanding Dillard’s concern with and conclusions about the horror and beauty that she sees in the natural world first requires an examination of her worldview. It is clear that hers is one that is deeply shaped by religious belief, as illustrated by her obvious knowledge of theology. She frequently utilizes Biblical metaphors—ranging from Cain, to the fall of Adam, to Moses on Mt. Sinai. This is evidence of her worldview in an explicit sense, but there are more subtle and implicit references as well. The deliberate framing of the world of Tinker Creek in such religious terms suggests a significant relationship between the natural world and the divine. It is also interesting to note that Dillard characterizes nature with the same reverence as “creation” or “Creator”—creating an alignment between them that allows space for the application of religious ideals to nature, and visa versa. An idea that comes up often in the novel is that of “creation.” In her observation of the natural world, often on the minutest levels (the insect world, for example), she frequently remarks on the character of the Creator and of creation. Descriptions of creation range from being “made in jest” to “one lunatic fringe” to “beauty inexhaustible” (7, 144, 139). Similarly the Creator is variously “a generous spirit” and one who “stops at nothing“ (135). A religious approach to the natural world highlights the extremes of horror and beauty, and thus throughout the novel Dillard finds her religious view of the world challenged by a seemingly traitorous natural world. This novel is the depiction of her struggle to reconcile that conflict.

Perhaps because Dillard sees such an intimate connection between nature and creation, she has difficulty reconciling what is observed in the natural world with her interpretation of creation. In her observations at Tinker Creek, she is struck again and again by the paradox of horror and beauty in nature (in creation). This paradox is highlighted in the recurrent images of the giant water bug and the mockingbird. The water bug is a fearsome creature not for its appearance (as the locust is), but for its method of gaining sustenance: it bites a frog, injecting poison that kills it and liquefies its insides so the bug can suck them out. Dillard writes, “Soon, part of his skin, formless as a prickled balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing” (6). Certainly the world of the water bug cannot be the same as the creation spoken of in scripture, for a loving and merciful God would do no such thing. Or would he? For he who creates the water bug, also creates the mockingbird—a creature of exquisite grace:

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating… [and] [j]ust a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care… and so floated onto the grass. (8)

Dillard’s religious view of the world is undone by this paradox that she observes in the natural world. It suggests that God is indifferent in a way, for he creates things of horror and of beauty, seemingly with no preference shown to what humans would deem “good” or “beautiful.”

But Dillard does not turn away from God or nature in disappointment—instead, she embraces it fully, horror and beauty alike. She explains in the chapter “The Horns of the Altar” how she comes to peace with the paradoxes she finds, showing how the presence of horror does not inhibit one’s ability to feel love toward this world. “Can I say then that corruption is one of beauty’s deep-blue speckles…?” she asks: “It is very tempting, but I honestly cannot” (242). Dillard sees that she cannot love the world by denying the horror or by calling it something else, because she would be loving a world that doesn’t exist. But neither does she say that she loves the world because of the horror. This world is anything but perfect, but that imperfection only intensifies the love one feels for it, as Dillard explains:

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along… I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about in a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them… (242)

In this quote, Dillard is pointing to grace; the fact that it is enough that beauty persists, that the world possesses a sort of wholeness. That there is such an inexplicable goodness and beauty in that whole is cause enough for love. It is possible to love fully, without full understanding.

Dillard possesses more than a love for this world, however; she possesses a deep and abiding faith in it, illuminated by her understanding of its nature, and fed by the world’s constant, small instances in which it reveals itself (as illustrated by the mockingbird). Faith can be described as belief without guarantee of benefit, without certainty of protection or comprehensible meaning. For Dillard, the faith she has in the natural world is born out of her struggle with the reality of nature itself: that which constantly rubs up against her deep, visceral love for it. Struggle plus love equals understanding and care, and out of that comes faith. Just as belief in God requires love and trust, so does the love of nature. Neither offers guarantees. And so, the relationship of the individual to nature becomes one that is deeply religious. This is where Dillard steps beyond the deconstruction of previous notions of the world, and lays the foundation for a new environmental ethic, or way of being toward the world. She is saying that to love the world makes the individual implicit in it. Each body belongs to the world, turns to it for sustenance, for joy, for meaning, and therefore has an obligation to it. This obligation is to do well by it, to preserve the grace and beauty that provide for each of these lives. Indeed even to preserve the horrors, for without them it would not be the one that so provides for us. And so, a religious approach to the world evolves, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, into the foundation of a necessary ethic towards it—one that recognizes how beholden each life is to the natural world, and therefore commits itself to its protection. The reason for this ethic arises fundamentally from the grace of the natural world, and the recognition of this grace is an admission of faith.

The wonder is… that all the forms are not monsters, that there is beauty at all, grace gratuitous, pennies found, like the mockingbird’s free fall. Beauty itself is the fruit of the creator’s exuberance that grew such a tangle, and the grotesques and horrors bloom from that same free growth… This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given… given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. (146)

One must recognize the running over of the world—the beauty freely given, and further recognize that to partake in this grace requires one to act gracefully in its presence.

Dillard embarks on a journey in this work. It is a journey from a preconceived understanding of the world, to entirely novel one. It is a journey run through with complications, losses of hope, the burden of new understandings, and with joy inexpressible. She begins looking out at the world through a relatively rigid religious framework, which is constantly challenged by the natural world; she emerges from the tangled, messy, glorious paradox of reality with a new faith that is well informed and grounded in the immediacy of this world and which revels in the very qualities that once made it shrink and cower. Dillard is able in this book to address a concern that arises in the minds of many, who walk through the world, and witness horror at one turn, wonder at the other. What can one do in the face of such a world? The answer turns out to be fairly simple, though it is no simple task to live out: love the world for what it is, and rejoice in its grace—the fact that beauty remains even in the face of horror or pain or death. What is offered to us in this book is not only a deeper understanding of the natural world, but a path forward. If each individual can come to a similar understanding—that is, reconciled to but also in love with the world and all its complexity—it would be possible to do something real to save what is left of this natural wonder. And with such an understanding it is possible to step forth, and as Dillard writes, “and my left foot says ‘Glory,’ and my right foot says ‘Amen’” (271).