Blog Assignment #3 Church on the Golodnaya Steppe

Across the Golodnaya Steppe

A symphony of bells scatter across the sky as the inhabitants make their way across the flatlands of the steppe. The horizon gives way to a couple of small points that are distinguishable from arrows on a barn, closer it becomes more apparent that those are actually Russian orthodox crosses. Since the rule of the Russian empire not much has changed, the farmers are left to farm and go to church, those points might actually be the only signal that they are living in a Russian controlled Kazakhstan. The bell tower from which the sounds originated stands no taller than eight meters. It is a makeshift structure made from wood and rope, there are actually a series of small bells that hang from top and the main big bell is hidden below in the middle of the tower. These bells are all strung together to make a indomitable sound that is meant to heard for miles. On Sunday the steppe people arrive at this unassuming church settlement and fill the small church which is also made of wood. From out the window they can see a stone cottage close by and the plains stretching endlessly and disappearing into an afternoon haze.   

blog assignment #2 Total Eclipse Annie Dillard

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord,” Joel 2:31

When Annie Dillard watches in horror as 'the sky snapped over the sun like a disk' she was not merely observing a rare astrological event but the coming of the apocalypse. The very fabric of space and time transmuted into something totally unfamiliar, it was something that even she could not describe without a level of psychosis setting in, "I was watching a faded color print of a movie filmed in the middle ages; I was standing in it, by some mistake. I was standing in a movie of hillside grasses filmed in the middle ages.". She repeats the phrase twice, rewording it as if trying to make it into something that will bring her back to reality but of course it is in vain. She does this again when describing the eclipse, "In the black sky was a ring of light. It was a thin ring, an old, thin silver wedding band, an old, worn ring. It was an old wedding band in the sky, or a morsel of bone", she struggles to comprehend something that would simply be described as a lifesaver and why is that? Why is an event that was well understood at the time such an enigma? Why does this fascinating yet simple occurrence prove to be such a traumatic experience? What does she gain from her primitive fear of the forces of a wrathful God that she couldn't get from just marveling at an awesome scientific event?