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# Respond to cruelty as a witness to beauty
- URL: https://there-might-be-cupcakes-podcast.ghost.io/respond-to-cruelty-as-a-witness-to-beauty/
- Published: 2025-02-06T19:55:32.000Z
- Updated: 2025-02-22T17:17:09.000Z
- Author: Carla Pettigrew
- Tags: Annie Dillard, episode 26, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

> Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light…beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous, as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star…beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

—[Pilgrim at Tinker Creek](https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9780061847806), Annie Dillard

More about *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*: episode 26, Pilgrim at Little Piney River: [ad-free for subscribers](https://there-might-be-cupcakes-podcast.ghost.io/pilgrim-at-little-piney-river-26-81c/), [with ads](https://there-might-be-cupcakes-podcast.ghost.io/episode-26-pilgrim-at-little-piney-creek/) along with resources

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