“you wake up with fruit on your hands”

Anne Dillard's Holy the Firm is 5 x 7.5 inches x 0.2 inches & 76 spiritual pages.

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Though the very first word of Holy the Firm’s title is “holy,” to my ever-oblivious surprise, that was literal. This is a very spiritual text. “Holy the Firm” is a concept from esoteric Christianity, about a substance beneath earth (never on the surface!) that is like “waxy deepness of planets.” It’s the very essence of things.

The central question of Holy the Firm, the book, is what do I believe? The book’s answer is in God, but it’s so complicated. It’s a loud whisper of book and it’s deeply moved about its own reverence. For example:

I started Holy the Firm knowing only that this book documented two days in November in Puget Sound. I arrived for the Annie Dillard nature notes; I was greeted with a will-they-won’t-they pondering about religion with some descriptions of the sky + a spider’s massacre. You can imagine my reaction. You are right! (It was regretful/half-resentful/respectful, like I’d accidentally wandered into a church when I thought it was a municipal building where I was supposed to get paperwork about a parking permit.)

However, there was one Christian-centric passage that I loved about the anxious acquisition of communion wine: 

And there is a Grand Thesis that I really think has some Truth (split into two passages):

Physical comedy, a gift of fruit, injurious and indifferent nature, a bonk on the brain where we store our useless logic and our sense that we’re adding meaning to things? This part I absolutely believe!!

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Finally, I want to leave us all with a note from another reader of this copy, unknown to me:

“What Do You Think This Book is About”