“Holy the Firm”

Annie Dillard closeted herself in a small room along Washington’s Puget Sound, alone with her cat Small, a spider and the carcasses of its moth food. In the quiet and the coastline, she wrote this tiny masterpiece: a metaphysical exploration into God, suffering, man’s existence and the nature that integrates it all into a whole.

Dillard spend 14-months crafting 68 pages and this exquisite thoughtfulness shows in every single word. Widely considered a work of Christian Metaphysics but with a poet’s fluidity and command of language and Dillard’s characteristic playfulness, this book is a beautiful bedside companion for the dying.

I’d heartily recommend this book for anyone who has wondered at why God would allow the suffering of the world and the relation between the two. But my disclaimer: if you read this book, you must read it twice and you must read it aloud.

Here’s the first two lines to give you a taste:

"Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split."