Grace and the grotesque …

… Lessons from Flannery O'Connor | Dominicana. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

O’Connor recognized that the world is not a fairy tale. She unabashedly exposed its grotesqueness and, at the same time, revealed the grace at work in it. Her writings clearly show that she understood the dynamic of grace and nature: “The fiction writer presents mystery through manners, grace through nature, but when he finishes there always has to be left over that sense of Mystery which cannot be accounted for by any human formula” (Ibid.). In other words, O’Connor knew that what makes the grotesque so captivating is the way God uses it.