“In For the Time Being, Annie Dillard attempts to keep God around and keep Him nice (if weepy). And so she (like many others) scraps omnipotence, ‘The very least likely things for which God might be responsible are what insurers call acts of God.’

Go that route. Katrina wasn’t Him. Nothing involving fault lines is Him. Stop looking at Him like that–He’s never so much as touched a tornado. He exists, and He’s friendly, but if you’re in some kind of trouble, you might just want to make a deal with the devil. Go to the man in charge, I always say. You can renege later, and you might get really good at the guitar in the meantime.” (Nate Wilson, Notes from a Tilt-a-Whirl, p. 64)