Annie Dillard is unconventional, intriguing, and all-in-all enchanting. In her essay “An Expedition to the Pole” found in Teaching a Stone to Talk she subtly likens a deepening relationship with God to an expedition to the North Pole. In this quote she quite rightly observes that God does not demand all of us unless, of course, we want to be close to Him.
God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity, that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these things.
Experience has taught the race that if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means but the condition in which the means operates. You do not have to do these things; not at all…unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on him.
You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1982), 43.
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