Day Twenty One

Psalm 81

6 I heard a voice that I had not known, saying:
'I eased your shoulders of the burden, and your hands were freed from the load.

7 'You called to me in trouble and I rescued you:
I answered you from the secret place of my thunder, I put you to the test at the waters of Meribah.

8 'Listen, my people, and I will admonish you:
O Israel, if only you would hear me.

9 There shall be no strange god among you:
nor shall you bow down to an alien god.

10 'I am the Lord your God. who brought you up from the land of Egypt:
open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

Annie Dillard: Teaching a Stone to Talk Pan Books, 1984, p 40