The Maine Woods Book

I like this book slightly less than Dillard's other books because she uses other people's words more than her own. For some people, that might make this book stronger, but I miss her being the strongest presence. This combines a French philosopher/Jesuit priest who would turn out to be one of the most important paleontologists of the 20th century, Hasidic Judaism, scientific information on sand, and a personal journey through the middle east. But it isn't about those things - the book is really pondering birth, death, existence, value.

"We who breathe air now will join the already dead layers of us who breathed air once. We arise from dirt and dwindle to dirt, and the might of the universe is arrayed against us."

"There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time - or even knew selflessness or courage or literature - but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less."

"You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with God, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without God. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials."

"We know we must yield, if only intellectually. Okay, we're a lousy snowflake. Okay, we're a tree. These dead loved ones we mourn were only those brown lower branches a tree shades and kills as it grows; the tree itself is thriving. But what kind of tree are we growing here, that could be worth such waste and pain? For each of us loses all we love, everyone we love. We grieve and leave."

"Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears."

This book made me want to read the letters of Teilard and Lucile Swan.