quotes from Gilead

Gilead: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson. 2005 Pulitzer Prize. It took me a while to get into, but then I really enjoyed it. This book actually made me think, which hasn't happened in a while. I guess that shows what kind of fluff I've been reading lately! It's essentially a letter or journal written by a dying, elderly man to his young son, whom he knows he won't see grow to adulthood. The man is a Methodist preacher, as his father was before him, and his grandfather as well. While it is primarily a discussion of relationships, faith and forgiveness, a belief in God is not necessary to appreciate many of the ideas. I thought the review from the San Francisco Chronicle summed it up nicely: 'Gilead is a refuge for readers longing for the increasingly rare work of fiction, one that explores big ideas while telling a good story.'

Here are some quotes that struck me:

There is reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn't enhance sacredness but acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation . . . There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought - the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord.

Strange are the ways of adversity . . . My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature.

Those people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are. Which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So, you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me . . . you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights.

(talking of a sermon on Abraham and Isaac, and Hagar and Ishmael) Abraham's extreme old age is an important element in both stories, not only because he can hardly hope for more children, not only because the children of old age are unspeakably precious, but also, I think, because any father, particularly an old father, must finally give his child to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God.

I am well aware that people find fault, but it seems to be presumptuous to judge the authenticity of any one's religion except one's own. And that is also presumptuous.

It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.

I don't know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.

And the fact is, it is seldom indeed that any wrong one suffers is not thoroughly foreshadowed by wrongs one has done.

(talking of the Depression and the way in affected people)
. . . it taught them there is more to life than security and the material comforts, but I know a lot of older people around here who can hardly bear to part with a nickel, remembering those hard times.
"There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want." - proverb