I'll Pretend This Post Was Sponsored By Annie Dillard's *Living By Fiction*

Slept late this morning, staying in bed until almost 6 am. Slept hot and didn't sleep well. Forwent (is that a word?) the Bible reading this morning. Hoping the children will stay in bed a while longer, long enough for me to knock out some sort of blog post. Hoping I'll get to take my dog for a walk before Michael goes down to work, hoping I finally make it to the bank today after five days of failing-ailing expectation. Reading Annie Dillard this morning, trying to make sense out of her arguments concerning the lack of interpretative possibility in the natural world, that all things must be interpreted as though they were art objects, and that, in the end, this requires the positing of an artist. She isn't making a creationist argument or anything. Whatever it is she says, she says it well. The trouble I have in making sense has to do with the limits of my understanding, my lack of patience in untangling the threads, to borrow a metaphor from Dillard, and the fact that I am not as widely read in every area as I would prefer to be.

It's sort of funny, that, this idea of not being widely read. I read a lot, and my tastes are rather eclectic, if limited to particular themes. I try to expand those limitations and find that every area of different reading brings up the painful recognition of further limitation. I imagine that I could read every book in the Tuscaloosa Public Library, or better, Gorgas Library at The University of Alabama, and still feel that I hadn't read enough. This plays into Dillard's arguments concerning meaning, I think. Read Living By Fiction for me and see if you can explain to me how.

I was already convinced that the things we apply our reasoning to are based ultimately in faith. I know (and how do I know, I cannot tell) that God is a reliable guide to the universe. It is, as Dillard might point out, a tremendous leap of faith to believe even that the universe exists. I have often imagined, spontaneously, that everything I know and see and touch and taste and experienced is a dream. It is actually possible in some abstract way to imagine that these things don't really exist. Maybe this imaginative ability is a peculiar blessing of this age, or maybe it isn't peculiar at all. Philosophers claim, and I include literary critics under the heading of “philosophers,” that interpretation is the only thing our brains can use to make sense of the universe. I think the reality is that it all comes down to faith, a word that many have misunderstood and will continue to misunderstand until as the Bible promises, faith has become sight.

In no way can I abandon metaphysics, because reason in its essence is a metaphysic, and even if you choose not to believe in God, or choose not to believe in anything, you still wind up putting faith somewhere. Humanism, from what I've seen, is the one that makes the least amount of sense.

Do I know if I've said anything true in my ramblings above? Nope. Sure don't. But I'm not going to let that stop me. Luckily, since rarely does anyone comment on here anyway, I don't have to worry about being challenged on an argument half made or half explored.