Flannery, Eve, and the Marys

"God is feeding me and what I'm praying for is an appetite." -Flannery O'Connor

Mary Oliver is eating blackberries in August¹. She’s found them on a walk in brambles nobody owns. Did she pray for an appetite, or did she go out into the world, see the blackberries and decide they are precisely what she must have?

Can’t that be what it was like for Eve? Why’d you leave the tree out there in the middle of the garden with apples (seemingly) ready for the picking? Why’d you leave the cookies out - oozing chocolate and smelling up the kitchen thick with butter and sugar - if you didn’t want us to take and eat? ²³

1. From “August” by Mary Oliver

2. Art by Sister Grace Remington

3. Merry Christmas