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Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
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Essay 11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Essay 11: “God in the Doorway”
Essay 11 Summary
Dillard remembers a Christmas Eve as a young girl when her family went out to dinner. When they come home, she hears a commotion at the front door, and her parents tell her Santa Claus has arrived. Dillard reacts to the news less than enthusiastically: “It was Santa Claus. Whom I never—ever—wanted to meet” (145). Dillard runs upstairs and hides, refusing to come down. As an adult, Dillard knows Santa was actually Miss White, a woman who lived across the street, and that this incident confused some important figures in her mind, “making of Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity” (146). Another incident causes Dillard to run from Miss White—when Miss White shows her a magnifying glass and lets the glass warm her skin. Afraid because her skin starts to burn, Dillard runs home crying, and even though Miss White calls after her, “I didn’t look back” (148). Dillard wonders if she has similarly misunderstood moments when God tried to teach her something new, but she ran away in fear. Dillard believes that God means only love, but humans often misunderstand him, letting fear overcome them, like when Christ came to the world, “and we were all afraid” (148).
Essay 11 Analysis
In this brief essay, Dillard describes how easy it is to fear what is new and different and to mistake a gesture of love for a gesture of ill intent. Dillard conflates the figures of her neighbor, Miss White, with Santa Claus and God. Though Dillard doesn’t explain the connection between Santa Claus and God as closely, they are both figures associated with Christmastime, giving and withholding based on people’s behaviors (good or bad) and knowing all, even what we try to keep most secret. In dressing up as Santa Claus to visit the family home, Miss White becomes connected to the mythical figure in Dillard’s mind; Dillard also shows how some of Miss White’s lessons for her similarly evoked a symbolic connection to God.
Dillard explains the incident with the magnifying glass, in which Miss White demonstrates the power of the sun through the lens: “The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying” (148). Though Miss White tries to explain herself, Dillard retreats home. Later, Dillard reflects that this incident offers a comparison to the relationship between God and mankind. God offers us wisdom and knowledge, but because these things can cause us pain, we often run away without seeking an explanation. What God offers to us in love, we fear, much like the offering of his son: “So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid” (148). Here, Dillard references Christ as love in bodily form, noting that this was God’s gift to the world. Christ was treated with fear and suspicion because people could not understand what God was offering them, and Dillard suggests that other incidents in her life in which God has tried to give her something have resulted in a similar fear and rejection.
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By Annie Dillard
