Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
2004

Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is a severely contemplative work of great complexity and beauty.  Reading this was like looking at a frosted window.  You know that all of the frosted patterns are completely original, and not one part of the pattern is like another, and not one part of it is exactly like any other that has ever been before, and it is a wonder, one you wish would stay as it is, so you may study it again at will.

This is the life reflections of a Preacher, the Reverend John Ames, in the form of a long, and un-interrupted letter to his son.  It is the attempt to leave some sort of an explanation for his self, and to expunge ghosts. But it is also a letter to clear up any mysteries about his life events, while simultaneously adding weight to the mystery of the weight of who God is, and the fact that mystery is good.  I’ll paraphrase here a passage I remember: “I hate what radio, and especially TV has done to theology.  You spend all your life working up a theology and position that make mystery not only acceptable, but good, and to be accepted, only to have some radio preacher come along and undo the whole thing in a single broadcast.”

Gilead is also the story of a struggle, main bulk of the book, with Ames' alter-ego, Jack Boughton.  As a child Jack bewildered Ames with pranks and pratfalls, which eventually turned into adult misbehavior.  This story is about how John Ames comes to work that out.

It is mystery and faith that John Ames wishes to contrast so well with his real life, aptly setting himself apart from any semblance of saintliness.  The text as a whole offers up the greatest of contrasts of the sinful condition of man and the far reaches of the personhood of God, and how grace is the only relieving channel through which we receive anything.

It is also, though, an intimate portrait of a small town; one that amounts to next to nothing, but could also be our small town, or one that you know.  He has accepted his position in it, despite that his preacher father, and mother with him depart the small town, bending his ear to hear that he should move as well and broaden his experience with the rest of the world.  They tell him that there is no shame in shedding the likes of a place like Gilead for a broader experience.  Ames finds grace and peace in just such a place, however, cutting through the thickly veiled world of opportunity and advancement that so easily persuades most of us.

This book is filled with many gems, of which I hope to find again on another reading in the near future.  Here are a couple that I marked along the way, marveling at their simplicity, yet profundity at the same moment:

“…they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them “proofs.”  I just won’t do it.  It only confirms them in their skepticism.  Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”

“Harm to you is not harm to me in the strict sense, and that is a great part of the problem.  He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom.  But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I’m afraid theology would fail me.”

“…putting the Lord to one side, so to speak, since I knew perfectly well at that time, as I had for years and years, that the Lord absolutely transcends any understanding I have of Him, which makes loyalty to Him a different thing from loyalty to whatever customs and doctrines and memories I happen to associate with Him.”

 I would highly recommend tackling this book if you like a challenging text that will force you to reflect on the totality of life.  There are moments of reality, and moments of great wonder and reflection on beauty, and where it can be found.  It is also a treatise for facing that which we normally would hate in another, carrying prejudice or bitterness or superiority, blame, retribution, and judgment, and doing the exact and superlative opposite of those natural responses.

Great book.  This needs to be on your Must Read list.  Published in 2004, it won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.