{"id":137754,"date":"2025-06-12T12:25:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T16:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137754"},"modified":"2025-06-13T05:47:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T09:47:37","slug":"annie-dillard-on-pentecost-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137754","title":{"rendered":"Annie Dillard on Pentecost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies\u2019 straw hats and velvet hats to church we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211;Annie Dillard, <strong>Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters<\/strong> (New York, Harper Perennial ed., 1988 of 1982 original), pp. 52-53<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The apostles are said to have baptized three thousand on the very day of Pentecost when they had received the Holy Ghost. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ACLbOCw9tz\">pic.twitter.com\/ACLbOCw9tz<\/a><\/p>&mdash; St. Thomas Aquinas (@Aquinas_Quotes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Aquinas_Quotes\/status\/1792238285978505251?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 19, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137754\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573,166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pentecost","category-theology-holy-spirit-pneumatology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137756,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137754\/revisions\/137756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}