num_pages: 205
description: With her keen eye, penchant for paradox, and yearning for truth, Dillard renews our ability to discover wonder in life's smallest--and often darkest--corners.Why do we exist? Where did we come from? How can one person matter? Dillard searches for answers in a powerful array of images: pictures of bird-headed dwarfs in the standard reference of human birth defects; ten thousand terra-cotta figures fashioned for a Chinese emperor in place of the human court that might have followed him into death; the paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin crossing the Gobi Desert; the dizzying variety of clouds. Vivid, eloquent, haunting, For the Time Being evokes no less than the terrifying grandeur of all that remains tantalizingly and troublingly beyond our understanding.
language: English
title: For the Time Being
titlecomplete: For the Time Being
genres: Essays, Religion, Theology, Philosophy, Nature, Literature, Nonfiction, History, Spirituality, Memoir
ratings_count: 4024
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay 
publisher: Vintage