Annie Dillard, Sub-creator*

I will close this 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time by Catholic Shire reckoning with a blessing that truly is worth defending. In 1975, Annie Dillard was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction with her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. There certainly are equally famous and rich descriptions of the glory of God's creation, but none struck me, a young college kid, quite so much as this long-legged, long strawberry-blond-haired, piercing eyed author/naturalist sitting on a boulder in the rear-cover picture. That got me reading, and then I was hooked by her stunning prose, keen wit, and theological temperament.

Read Eudora Welty's review of Pilgrim in the New York Times. And Dillard’s own website that she maintains.

*J. R. R. Tolkien's coinage for creative human art, music, literature that reflects the creativity of the Lord in whose image we are created, imago dei.