Ministry Call
Resumé
Other Materials:
Church Service
Creative Pilgrimage
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by Annie Dillard
Read for free on Internet Archive
Devotions
by Mary Oliver
Available at Penguin Random House
A Creative Exploration
In this season of my Creative Pilgrimage, I have journeyed with three guiding voices: the ancient poetry of Isaiah, Annie Dillard’s sharp meditations in Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek, and Mary Oliver’s prayerful verse in Devotions. Each writer has shaped how I see my place and survival in a world filled with dread, renewal, and glimpses of the Divine.
Isaiah’s writing commands with the authority of vision and prophecy, inviting awe at creation—a rhythm that binds community and Creator through urgent lyric and sacred metaphor. Isaiah declares,
“The mountains and hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)
This vivid imagery transforms the natural world into a chorus of praise, signaling hope and divine renewal. The verse invites us to see beyond the ordinary, to witness creation as alive with spiritual joy and possibility.
Dillard’s prose, dazzling and intricate, unsettles with its mixture of description and philosophical provocation. She writes,
“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.” (Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek)
Her voice often stands apart, commanding attention with its sharpness and control, capturing both beauty and brutality. Yet as Dillard has admitted, her youthful writing sometimes tiptoed too close to overwriting—an exuberance that can overwhelm the reader with verbal brilliance rather than inviting stillness.
Mary Oliver enters with humility. Her form is spare and her pace gentle. She writes,
“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” (from “Messenger”)
Oliver crafts moments of quiet wonder, encouraging readers to slow down and pay attention to the simple miracles weaving through ordinary life. Her poetry invites connection and tenderness, sharing her vision rather than asserting mastery.
Wonder and Teaching
Isaiah and Oliver share a gift for pointing beyond themselves—each urging others to see the world anew and to listen for Divine presence, even in brokenness and rebirth. Dillard’s art often marvels at her own capacity for description, sometimes at the expense of shared wonder. Oliver—and Isaiah—work to make wonder visible and possible for everyone.
The Stump: A Living Parable
On a recent walk, I found a beech stump surrounded by shoots, ringed with new life surging out of what seemed lost. It called to mind Isaiah’s prophetic image of hope—the shoot from the cut-off tree—and made me look again at resilience. In the spirit of this pilgrimage, I wrote these three poems—each an effort to meet the Divine under the tutelage of these authors, to survive these frightening days through connection and creation.
In the Spirit of Isaiah:
Isaiah’s poetry is urgent and collective, commanding the world into praise. Writing this way made me hear the shoots not just as survival, but as creation’s refusal to stay cut off.
The stump wears a crown of shoots.
The scar now a mouth,
the wound proclaims.
Shattered, axed, laid low,
yet the root is not forsaken.
The earth shall answer with green.
The remnant shall thrive.
The Holy One declares:
See—
I make all things new.
In the Spirit of Annie Dillard:
Dillard’s voice dazzles and unsettles. Writing in her spirit made me lean into the rough edge of the scene—how renewal feeds on loss, how persistence can feel both wondrous and harsh.
The stump is a scar of last year’s storm.
A tonsure of shoots explode upward, ragged and insistent.
The ants are still busy in the ribs.
The soil chews the wreckage.
I can’t decide if this is violence or mercy:
growth feeding on its own ruin,
sprouting like laughter from the split seam.
In the Spirit of Mary Oliver:
Oliver pares everything back. She teaches me to bless what is in front of me without overworking it. Writing this way gave me permission to let the stump speak simply, and to treat its return as prayer.
Here is the stump,
cut clean,
yet cradled—
a circle of new shoots,
bright as blessing.
You were broken.
Now you return,
many times over.
I sit with you.
This is enough.
To write in the spirit of these poets is to search for a way through despair—finding lineage and companionship that make faith and survival possible. In Isaiah’s promise, Dillard’s challenge, and Oliver’s invitation, I learn how creation calls us to endure, connect, and remake meaning even in the broken places. Nothing can truly be broken in God’s creation–we name phenomena as ends, as forevers, and dones. No. God makes all things new, in God’s time.
Looking Ahead
September’s practice with Isaiah, Dillard, and Oliver has taught me how to stand before a broken thing and see its return — not just as survival, but as promise, witness, and blessing. The stump still holds, and its riot of shoots will keep me company as I move into October.This month the focus shifts: All Saints and All Souls — legacy, grief, and ancestry. My companions will be the Book of Luke, Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation (free PDF via FishEaters), and Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss (Macmillan Publishers). If September was about rooted growth and resilience, October will ask harder questions about what remains, what we carry forward, and how faith meets us in loss.
Next Month:
OCTOBER | All Saints / All Souls: Legacy, Grief, Ancestry
- Book of Luke
- New Seeds of Contemplation
by Thomas Merton
Free PDF from FishEaters - My Bright Abyss
by Christian Wiman
Available at Macmillan Publishers