Status Updates From For the Time Being

“We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious—the people, events, and things of the day—to which we as sophisticated children have long since become oblivious. What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.”

“Dancing is no mere expression; it is an achievement. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav noticed that if the dancers could persuade a melancholy person to join them, his sadness would lift. And if you are that melancholy person, he taught, persuade yourself to dance, for it is an ‘achievement to struggle and pursue that sadness, bringing it into joy.’”

“‘Throughout my whole life,’ he noted later, ‘during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.’”

i love you annie dillard even when you start out a book in the most intense and off-putting way