The Sleeping God

I've referred to this quote many times in my homilies, but never quoted it in full. It says a lot about how we celebrate our liturgies.

"Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged

tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we

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’ 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 to where we can never return.”

—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters