The writer, Annie Dillard, tells...
Illustration
The writer, Annie Dillard, tells in The Writing Life of an event that comes out of
one Arctic winter. An Algonquin woman and her baby were left alone after everyone else
in the winter camp had starved. The woman walked from the camp where everyone had
died and found a small stash of provisions. She found no food, but she found one small
fishhook. She rigged a line, but had no bait and no hope of finding bait. The hungry baby
cried. She took a knife and cut a strip from her own thigh. She fished with the warmth of
her own flesh and caught a fish; then she fed the child and herself. She saved the fish guts
for bait. She lived alone at the lake, on fish, until spring, when she walked out with her
baby on her back and found people. She said nothing about what had happened to her
until someone noticed the scar on her thigh. The apostle Paul was right: "Love is patient;
love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its
own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in
the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1
Corinthians 13:4-7). The Algonquin woman would have understood Paul's words. Love
at best is always something we do.
Teilhard de Chardin must have been reading 1 Corinthians 13 when he wrote: "Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
Teilhard de Chardin must have been reading 1 Corinthians 13 when he wrote: "Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
