The other side of Dillard's mysticism explores with the unanswerable questions, such as -- why must there be pain and suffering? She wonders why God would create creatures in such great numbers that some must die of famine, or why God would create 10% of the earth's creatures as parasites -- creatures that live only by destroying other life - and she provides lots of examples of the gruesome ways that parasites devour their prey. Dillard feels that we give children the wrong idea in regards to the nature of reality -- and muses that perhaps stuffed teddy bears should come with little stuffed lice, to paint a true picture of the way things are. {PTC, 233} However, at the same time she is cursing God for the creation of parasites, she also understands that "these parasites are companions for life...more life to the universal dance." {PTC, 234} The existence of two such diametrically opposed facets of nature is confusing to her, and she finds herself dwelling on this paradox.

Annie really grapples with the horrors of reality. She realizes that death, pain and struggling must spring from the same source as do all of the wonders she experiences. She faces the issues despite her fears because she feels it is her holy duty to understand every aspect of the Divine that she comes into contact with - even if the process is a painful one.

One of the basic themes of the book is what Annie calls the Universal Chomp -- or, the horrors of the food chain. Here is a story she tells about the horrors of the food chain: "When I was in elementary school, one of the teachers brought in a mantis egg case in a Mason jar. I watched the newly hatched mantises emerge and shed their skins; they were spidery and translucent, all over joints. They trailed from the egg case to the base of the Mason jar in a living bridge that looked like Arabic calligraphy, some baffling text form the Koran inscribed down the air by a fine hand. Over a period of several hours, during which time the teacher never summoned the nerve or the sense to release them, they ate each other until only two were left. Tiny legs were still kicking from the mouths of both. The two survivors grappled...in the Mason jar; finally both died of injuries. I felt as though I myself should swallow the corpses...so all that life wouldn't be lost." Annie finds it very hard to come to terms with these types of occurrences in the world - the conditions of suffering which cannot be escaped.

She writes, "It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of its mindlessness. The fixed is a mason jar, and we can't beat it open." Dillard sees that humans, animals, and plants alike are destined to exist as part horrific food chain, where it is "chomp or fast." She laments, "It is ridiculous...what happened to manna? Why doesn't everything eat manna? Into what rare air did the manna dissolve that we harry the free live things - each other?" She is confused and frightened of a God that would thrust such conditions on its creations. "Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me..." she broods, "are my values so diametrically opposed to those that nature preserves? This is the key point!" Her deliberations continue, "We value the individual supremely and nature not a whit. It looks for the moment as though I might have to reject this creek life unless I want to be utterly brutalized. Is human culture with its values my only real home after all?" Her wavering faith in light of the horrors of the world - horrors that spring from that same Divine she adores - is not unusual. On the contrary, she precisely conveys universal questions and doubts about the existence and nature of God.