Gilead (Gilead #1)

by Marilynne Robinson

It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you’re a grown man when you read this—it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then—I’ll have been gone a long time. I’ll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I’ll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.

misericordia.

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

When someone remarked in his hearing that he had lost an eye in the Civil War, he said, “I prefer to remember that I have kept one.”

“The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”

susurrus.

I used to sing, too, “Go to Dark Gethsemane,” until she asked me if I didn’t know a happier song.

And I’d pray for them. And I’d imagine peace they didn’t expect and couldn’t account for descending on their illness or their quarreling or their dreams.

I remember walking out into the dark and feeling as if the dark were a great, cool sea and the houses and the sheds and the woods were all adrift in it, just about to ease off their moorings. I always felt like an intruder then, and I still do, as if the darkness had a claim on everything, one that I violated just by stepping out my door.

When the electricity first came in, they ran it before dawn and at suppertime, to help with the chores, and a few hours extra on Mondays, to help with the wash.

In any case, doctors in those days weren’t good for much. It was poultices and cod liver oil and mustard plaster or splints or stitches. Or brandy.

I do like Calvin’s image, though, because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us.

But to return to the matter of honoring your mother. I think it is significant that the Fifth Commandment falls between those that have to do with proper worship of God and those that have to do with right conduct toward other people. I have always wondered if the Commandments should be read as occurring in order of importance. If that is correct, honoring your mother is more important than not committing murder. That seems remarkable, though I am open to the idea.

it is the consistent example of parents in the Bible that they honor their children. I think it is notable in this connection that it is not Adam but the Lord who rebukes Cain.

tremulous coot

The Lord wept in the Garden on the night He was betrayed,

I say this because I really feel as though I’m failing, and not primarily in the medical sense. And I feel as if I am being left out, as though I’m some straggler and people can’t quite remember to stay back for me.

It could be true that my interest in abstractions, which would have been forgiven first on grounds of youth and then on grounds of eccentricity, is now being forgiven on grounds of senility, which would mean people have stopped trying to see the sense in the things I say the way they once did.

Those saints got old and the times changed and they just seemed like eccentrics and nuisances, and no one wanted to listen to their fearsome old sermons or hear their wild old stories.

So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.

The word “preacher” comes from an old French word, prédicateur, which means prophet. And what is the purpose of a prophet except to find meaning in trouble?

He said, “Just look at this place. Every time a tree gets to a decent size, the wind comes along and breaks it.”

I believe I saw in young Boughton’s face, as we walked along, a sense of irony at having invested hope in this sad old place, and also the cost to him of relinquishing it. And I knew what hope it was. It was just that kind the place was meant to encourage, that a harmless life could be lived here unmolested.