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Dillard, Annie - Teaching a stone to talk - There is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind
Identifier
023496
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Annie Dillard – Teaching a stone to talk
It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a sacred grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it, we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.
Did the wind used to cry, and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few. Birds may crank out sweet gibberish and monkeys howl; horses neigh and pigs say, as you recall, oink oink. But so do cobbles rumble when a wave recedes, and thunders break the air in lightning storms.
I call these noises silence.
It could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water-and wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song and dance.
The show we drove from town.