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Author Annie Dillard asks this question in her book “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”: Why is there beauty? Pastor Sean Palmer invites us into the writings and faith of Annie Dillard to urge us to go outside and become aware of the beauty around us. The pace of our lives often leaves us with little time to intentionally slow down and seek beauty.

Live Teaching Podcast

Scripture & Quotations

Psalm 19:1-6

John 20:11-15

"It's all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there; so that creation need not play to an empty house”

- Annie Dillard

“After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”

- Annie Dillard

I could not write this little cheerful nature book, nor could I write a new version of the argument from design. I had to write for people who are dying or grieving—that’s everybody. The images of my sister and her husband were right there in the room as I wrote the book.”

- Annie Dillard