Beyond me.

They discovered that Bride Sabbath, whose light hallows the week, was related to the Shekinah, that mourning and roaming woman who represents God's presence in the world, exiled here in affliction until redemption leads the world to God.

When the liturgy concluded, the majority of men took off their prayer shawls and phylacteries and departed; a few remained to study. Later, if the boy noticed a book left open on a bench, he spread a prayer shawl to cover its open pages. In his world, people held books in high regard. When a book became worn out, they buried it like a person.

The omnipotence of God seems senseless if it demands the all-causing nature of God. Good people completely abandon God at this juncture and throw out the baby with the bathwater, perhaps because they last gazed into God during their childhoods and have not altered their views of divinity since. It is not the tooth fairy.

Scratching beneath a suburb of St. Louis, archaeologists recently unearthed thirteen settlements, one on top of another, some of which endured longer than St. Louis has. While excavating the Combe Grenal cave in France, paleontologists discovered sixty different layers of human habitation.

At what number do other individuals become indistinct for me?

Ecstasy, I believe, is a soul's reaction to the waves of holiness as it approaches.

This was a tough, dense read, but well worth it.

For the Time Being is like a whirligig of a book. It gracefully dances between Dillard's profound thoughts on various subjects. She delves into the terra-cotta warriors, the ever-changing clouds, a paleontologist's arduous trek across the Gobi Desert, the fine grains of sand, her own travels, and a significant amount of Jewish Hasidism. Dillard constantly quotes others, and frequently takes what seem to be random detours into other topics, often just for a single paragraph. My brain really had to stretch and work hard to make it through this relatively short book.

I was consistently astonished at the connections Dillard was able to forge between her disparate topics. She masterfully used them to support her central arguments regarding the purpose of life, the nature of god, and the search for space for the individual within the vast expanse of humanity. She made numerous points that seemed to pierce my brain like an ice pick, addressing specific thoughts that I have had about the whole "human situation" we find ourselves in. Dillard was clearly extremely well-read, widely traveled, and had an unending fascination with people, nature, and history. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her and her ideas through this book, and it provided me with a wealth of new things to think about.

I will admit, though, that a great deal of this material went over my head. Dillard jumps around a great deal, and I often found myself having to reread passages multiple times in order to extract some understanding from them. Other passages made absolutely no sense to me at all. I would love to return to this book when I am a bit more well-read, as I still sense that there is more valuable insight to be wrung out of it. For now, I'll just have to be content with what I was able to glean.

The guru of metaphysical inquiry, Annie Dillard, has a unique way of doing things. Through her wryly observed nature writing, she delves deep into the profound questions of mortality and suffering. She takes us on a journey to various places such as the vast Gobi desert, an Israeli kibbutz, and a Florida hospital birth ward.

In the Gobi desert, she may have witnessed the harsh reality of life and death, the struggle for survival in the unforgiving environment. At the Israeli kibbutz, she might have observed the community's way of life, the shared joys and sorrows. And in the Florida hospital birth ward, she could have been confronted with the miracle of new life and the accompanying pain and uncertainty.

Annie Dillard's writing is not only thought-provoking but also filled with fun facts. She has a knack for finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, making us see the world in a different light. Her work invites us to reflect on our own lives and the mysteries that surround us.

Well, this one truly boils down to an individual's personal style preference, in my opinion.

It contains some truly brilliant and challenging passages. I was especially captivated by the stories and quotes sourced from the life of Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist, as well as from certain rabbinical writings.

However, the text is so rife with twists, turns, and non sequiturs that I could scarcely make heads or tails of it for a significant portion of the time.

I simply had an extremely difficult time remaining focused on it.

It seems that while there are some gems within the text, the convoluted nature of it makes it a rather arduous read for me.

Perhaps others with a different penchant for complex and circuitous writing styles might find more enjoyment and value in it than I did.

Nonetheless, it does offer some thought-provoking material that could potentially be explored further with greater effort and concentration.

Overall, it's a text that requires a certain level of patience and perseverance to fully appreciate.

This is a book that I began reading several years ago.

At that time, I was in search of a short read. I had previously enjoyed Dillard's earlier books, namely Holy the Firm and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

However, the subject matter, style, and general feel of this book are completely different from those of the other two. It serves as a great example of the fact that just because one likes some of an author's work, it doesn't necessarily mean they will like all of it.

Personally, for me, this particular book failed to capture my interest. As a result, I gave up on it, deeming it not a suitable match for my specific reading preferences.

It's important to note that this is not a criticism of the quality of the thought or the writing itself.

Everyone has different tastes when it comes to reading, and what may appeal to one person might not appeal to another.

This experience simply highlights the diversity of literary works and the importance of finding books that resonate with our individual interests and sensibilities.

I went to a café and purchased a drink that was outrageously overpriced. I intended to have it with me while I completed this task.

A significant portion of this book reads like theology, which doesn't necessarily conform to my personal tastes. However, it ultimately proves to be compellingly meditative. The world is in a perpetual state of motion, and the earth has been undergoing changes every day through infinitely diverse and minute processes over billions of years. This will always remain incomprehensible to us, who are here for only a fleeting moment. Dillard presents some beautiful moments in equally beautiful language as she attempts to frame human existence within the geological time scale. I truly liked the following passage: "How can we doubt our own time, in which each bright instant probes the future? We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe's bow parts water." She also incorporates many striking quotes from others, especially from the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard, which I found enjoyable.

It is difficult to rate this book precisely, but I think I'll settle on a score of 3.5 out of 5.

My head simply refuses to fathom the enormity and weight of such extensive research. I can vividly imagine that if I were to stuff my head so full with all those countless numbers, facts, and quotes, it would likely split along its seams.

Human nature has an inherent tendency to tie together disparate data points, whether they are events, quotes, numbers, or any other litany of things. We have this remarkable ability to create connections, establish relations, and bring order to the chaos. This is the very essence of how the human brain functions. In other words, perhaps this book, with its rich tapestry of information and the simplicity with which Dillard writes, may be more in tune with the essence of humanity than I am.

[4 stars for a sky full of strings and the simplicity with which Dillard writes.]

I have a profound love for this author.

She once said, "A few years ago, I grew interested in sand." This simple statement led her on a remarkable journey of investigation. She delved deep into the world of sand, uncovering its mysteries and sharing her fascinating findings with us. What's more, she didn't stop at just sand. She artfully swirled her exploration through other related topics, creating a web of ideas that intertwined and amazed.

Her work is filled with wonderful questions about life and God. These questions make us pause and reflect, challenging our preconceived notions and expanding our perspectives. One of her most thought-provoking statements is, "We live in all we seek." It makes us realize that the answers we are looking for in life may already be within us, waiting to be discovered.

In conclusion, this author's work is a treasure trove of inspiration and wisdom, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

So many people I know (or have known) read this in our university days, so of course I picked it up 20 years onward.

And, damn, just too many gorgeous little passages to quote any as if above the others. As this read went on, I wondered how Dillard would wrap it up. She didn't do so tidily, of course; the way this ends is as profoundly simple and existential as the rest of this book.

Truly, there are a couple dozen poignant, almost-staggering questions posed in this book that made me glad I was sitting down at the time.

Chock-full of esoteric information and compelling narrative, mostly from decades and centuries ago, Dillard moves among naturalist and literary ponderings, anthropology and archaeology, with great ease and greater wit.

She weaves together these diverse elements in a seamless tapestry, making the reader feel as if they are on a fascinating journey through time and space.

So much stories and morsels throughout this tome could be just as easily read as scattershot and oddly packaged. But I find Dillard binds them all together in clever, perceptive ways.

Everything that has been still is and always will be.

Everything from terra cotta warriors to newborn babies being swaddled by nurses, from the famous to the everyday person, gets some time in the light here.

There's a lot of reliance on the thoughts and writings of Simone Weil. Among holy books, Dillard is as apt to quote from ancient texts as the Torah, Buddhist teachings or the Qur'an as the Bible.

This is among the litany of reasons I appreciate her. She contextualizes perspectives, places and people and frames them in ways that honor their times and cultures, their nuances and contradictions.

Her topics and characters always contain multitudes.

Particularly poignant are those passages about ancient and more modern-day China, Israel and Palestine, given current states of these lands and peoples. Also gripping are the late-in-book vignettes about a schoolgirl in the Northeast who goes missing during a trip to a forest.

I believe Dillard makes her something of a literary sister to the young girl, her face disfigured by a fire, who is central to Dillard's brief masterpiece, Holy the Firm.

The reign of China's Emperor Qin was a significant period in history. It was a time of great change and expansion. Emperor Qin unified the country and established many important institutions.

The life and expeditions of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin were also remarkable. He was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who made important contributions to the fields of paleontology and theology.

The conditions described in Smith's Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation provided valuable insights into the study of human anatomy and development.

The life and teachings of Baal Shem Tov were influential in the Jewish mystical tradition. He was a spiritual leader who emphasized the importance of direct experience with God.

These stories, along with numerous others, form Annie Dillard's fractured survey across time and space. She attempts to unearth the meaning of human existence, but unfortunately, this didn't quite work for me.

Many of the histories she tells are interesting, but it feels more like an extended research project or journal. A large portion of the book consists of quotes from other people, which, while great, doesn't make it a fully-formed Annie Dillard book.

I love Dillard's other works, such as Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm, where her ability to write ecstatic and edifying prose about nature and divinity is on full display. However, in this book, she wasn't able to tie it all together for me. As she herself put it, "I don't know. I don't know beans about God." (p 169)

Annie Dillard is yet another writer in an extremely long line who delves into the profound questions of what death and suffering signify, especially their implications for the existence and nature of God.

I was quite fond of Dillard's writing style, and I found some of her metaphors to be quite revealing. Overall, I did find this book to be of interest. However, I am deeply troubled by the fact that reviewers are lauding this book as "mind-expanding." Annie Dillard takes the fundamental issue of human existence and seemingly "discovers" it. She attempts to personalize it, which is a good approach. But in truth, it is not novel in any way. The realization that everyone dies and that bad things occur to people is... well, not a modern revelation. The idea that this might have certain implications for the monotheistic, omnipotent God of the Jews, Muslims, and Christians is... also not new. The book of Job is considered by many scholars to be the first book written in the Old Testament, dating back over 3500 years. Its topic? A good God and bad things. Astonishingly, ancient people were not ignorant; they were simply of an earlier era.

Regrettably, the depth of Annie Dillard's engagement with this rich, millennia-long discussion amounts to making various caustic remarks such as "Well, that's dumb and it doesn't work." Instead, she ventures to the fringes of monotheistic thought: the Gnostics, the Kabbalists, and so on, and discovers, yet another surprise, the common religious beliefs of modern man as expounded in every New Age belief system... that all men are part of God, God is part of us, we carry out His work on earth, and so forth. To paraphrase Albert Schweitzer, she has examined the history of religion and seen her own reflection there. In other words, I could have read Paulo Coelho or Eckhart Tolle and gleaned the same ideas. Add to that some truly absurd statements about Christians - for instance, "The majority of Christian intellectuals are pan-entheists." What you end up with is a collection of engaging stories and interesting historical figures that showcase one woman's choices regarding what she wishes to believe from among the world's religious traditions, but presented with an undertone of arrogance towards other seekers that I find deeply disturbing.

So, I am grateful that Annie Dillard made an attempt to put things into perspective. I believe that being aware of the true scale of reality and our minuscule place within it is one of the never-ending tasks of humanity. But, I don't particularly enjoy reading books by authors who think they are superior and more intelligent than their readers... even if they might actually be.

About 20 years ago, I had the encounter with a guy who was a writer. His opinions were ones that I respected and even admired. However, his response to Annie Dillard's writing completely took me aback. He detested it. As I remember, he used words such as "pretentious," "overrated," and "pretty" (the last one might have had its own quotation marks around it).

Given that I was deeply enamored at that time from my first exposure to her work, I could only muster a defense of the to-each-his-own sort. Since then, though, being a non-confrontational person myself, I've been careful not to simply assume that everyone would be as smitten as I was. I could kind of see what he was getting at (without fully buying into his reading).

Consider a passage like the following from early in For the Time Being: "An infant is a pucker of the earth's thin skin; so are we. We arise like budding yeasts and break off; we forget our beginnings. A mammal swells and circles and lays him down. You and I have finished swelling; our circling periods are playing out, but we can still leave footprints in a trail whose end we do not know." There must be at least a thousand more straightforward, less oblique ways to convey what this passage says, and many other writers on the same topics have chosen that path.

Indeed, a common initial response to such a cluster of sentences, even among Dillard's fans, is to think: "Huh? Whazzat?" But wait. If you are stopped short in this way but remain patient and curious, you can circle back (yes, "circle") to the first words and go through them again, and again if needed. Each return trip reveals new layers and shadings not obvious from the words' ostensible "meanings." If I do this often enough (I can't speak for you), I find that I have to do it less often as I progress through the rest of the book. It's like I enter a trance state where the shapes of the sense become intuitively easier to make out. And the vividness of the language, the cadences, the metaphor, make it stick in my mind much longer than a straightforward series of declaratives.

(You may know of a phenomenon familiar to astronomers and others who spend a lot of time in the dark: while the most obvious way of seeing something in the night sky is to look directly at it, only when you're attentive to what's going on peripherally do you see some things at all.)

Still, I was right in that earlier defense: not everyone will (or should) "get" her in this way. It's a bother, after all. We're all busy, with so many books and so little time, and so on. But I myself find that her writing rewards patience.

Dillard's overall topics this time around, directly expressed in the title, felt darker and deeper than usual, perhaps as a consequence of age (hers and/or mine): time, and also being. What does it mean to "be" human, especially? What does it mean to say that God "is"? What sort of creature "is" God, anyway, especially vis-à-vis human beings? Along the way (as you can see from the other reviews here on Goodreads), she looks at deserts (literally sand) and paleontology; the life and work of Teilhard de Chardin; the life (and paranoias) of a Chinese emperor of antiquity; the vast numbers of people there are or ever were; genetic anomalies; understanding evil and (less obviously) goodness; the ideas and the lives of rabbis and other students of the Kabbalah; a host of small digressions (divagations) and (yes) circlings-back.

One of my favorite side-trips had to do with the Solutreans, a tribe (or a culture?) of humans who thrived some eighteen thousand years ago in France. (They thrived for all of three thousand years.) They invented the bow and arrow and the needle, and they also made long thin yellow knives of quartz-like materials, knives which are among the sharpest things anyone has ever made. With "a cutting edge only a few atoms thick," these knives were made "wittingly, too fragile to use."

What does such a knife have to do with a human being, i.e., with being-human? Dillard says: "The maker knew he was likely to lose many hours' breath-holding work at a tap. The maker worked in extreme cold. He knew no one would ever use the virtuoso blades. He protected them, and his descendants saved them intact, for their perfection. To any human on earth, the sight of one of them means: someone thought of making, and made, this difficult, impossible, beautiful thing."

Of course, Dillard in that passage refers to physical artifacts of prehistoric peoples. It strikes me now, as I write this review, that Dillard's own body of work operates in the same dimension, at the same level, as those ridiculously thin blades. Why in the world would you ever want to pick up and handle something so precious, pointless, and fragile – yet with so much potential for drawing blood? Because only by doing so do you get to hold it up to the sky's light and see the transition from its "dully, waxy gold" center to the translucent and finally transparent edge. There, "At its very edge," she says, "the blade dissolves into the universe at large." Yeah. I think that's about right.