Marilynne Robinson | dual personalities

November 14, 2018

“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.”*

by chuckofish

The Christmas cactus is on the verge of blooming–right on schedule.

I am pretty impressed, considering the abuse it has taken from the wee babes, who are fascinated by it.

We had a little snow, which came before most people had an opportunity to rake/vacuum up the leaves that have fallen. So there is kind of a mess out there. As you can see, there are still a lot of leaves on the trees. C’est la vie.

Every year is different, and that’s what makes living in flyover country interesting.

Yesterday, after a busy day at work, I raced over to Umrath Lounge at my flyover university to find a seat to hear Marilynne Robinson speak. I found a single seat in the second row and sat right behind her. I could have reached out and touched her, but I restrained myself. A member of the English department made an incoherent and self-serving introduction and then Marilynne read her essay on “Holy Moses: An appreciation of Genesis and Exodus as literature and theology” in dim light which frequently caused her to stumble over her words. It was an academic talk and I am no scholar and she is way over my head anyway, but I enjoyed listening to her. In the Q&A section at the end we got a chance to see Marilynne the person and not the scholar and that was good.

Well, I am thankful that I have a job where I am in a position to come in contact with one of my heroes from time to time. To be in the same room with Marilynne Robinson was really something–a Christian in that den of academia, quoting 17th century puritans unironically!

“The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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September 18, 2018

Under the surface

by chuckofish

“That’s the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.”

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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Good luck and vaya con dios, Michael.

“Had he, during the course of his ministry, changed a single life? He recalled the words of a woman overheard when he was leaving his last parish. ‘Father Martin is a priest of whom no one ever speaks ill.’ It seemed to him now the most damning of indictments.”

–P.D. James, Death in Holy Orders

“Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have.”

― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

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August 11, 2016

Throwback Thursday

by chuckofish

Mary CC.jpeg

This picture of our mother circa 1930 at “The Farm” in New Hampshire should bring a smile to your face.

And we could all use that, right?

“I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.”

―Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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September 23, 2015

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

I have been re-reading some old favorites.

First I read One Fine Day by Mollie Painter-Downes, which I highly recommend. You will recall that between 1939 and 1945 Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war from England for the New Yorker. The action of this novel takes place all on one day in the summer of 1946 in a small village in England. It is a quiet meditation on how things change and how we adapt and how we still have so much to be grateful for.

“The country was tumbled out before her like the contents of a lady’s workbox, spools of green and silver and pale yellow, ribbed squares of brown stuff, a thread of crimson, a stab of silver, a round, polished gleam of mother of pearl. It was all bathed in magic light, the wonderful transforming light in which known things look suddenly new.”

Now I am re-reading the wonderful Gilead by the great Marilynne Robinson. Basically it is a meditation by a dying minister, writing to his young son about his life and what it has meant to him.

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

It is all about the beauty of the world and our lives here on earth. Wow.

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us.”

The new Jan Karon book, Come Rain or Come Shine, is out and I have ordered it. In this installment Dooley has graduated from vet school and opened his own animal clinic and is getting married. Sounds good to me.

What are you reading?

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October 20, 2014

Weekend reading

by chuckofish

I had a quiet weekend and spent a good part of it reading Marilynne Robinson’s new novel Lila.

In this third novel that takes place in the town of Gilead, Robinson revisits the characters we have met in the earlier books (Gilead and Home), in particular the mysterious woman who marries the old minister John Ames. As usual, the author examines the mystery of existence. She quotes John Calvin freely–without smirking. It is terrific.

Robinson just blows me away. Her characters are thoughtful and have inner monologues that are deep and penetrating. The story takes place some time after WWII when people did not have attention spans reduced to tweets. They still think about things. And we are encouraged to think about them (and the mystery of existence) as well.

Anyway, of course, I highly recommend this book and the first two if you haven’t already read them. (Why haven’t you already read them?)

Have a great week!

Almighty God, who hast bestowed thy grace upon thy people by thy Son Jesus Christ: Grant us, we beseech thee, to be enriched with his manifold gifts; that patiently enduring through the darkness of this world, we may be found shining like lamps in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he cometh in his kingdom; to whom be praise and glory for ever and ever.

(Prayer posted by Kendall Harmon on TitusOneNine)

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December 4, 2013

What do you seek so pensive and silent?* What are you reading?

by chuckofish

I have been all over the board (and map) recently with my reading choices. I read a good mystery by James Lee Burke, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. I like the detective Dave Robicheaux and the author knows what he is writing about. The characters are not wooden and/or cardboard and the locale is detailed and real. A lot of bad things happen, however, and so I probably will not be in a hurry to read more, but if you like good, well-written mysteries, here you go.

From the low life in Louisiana I headed to lovely Botswana and the fourteenth entry in the #1 Ladies Detective series by Alexander McCall Smith. As I have said before, there is certainly not a lot to these novels. Nothing much happens and some of the characters are downright annoying, but when I am in the right mood, I don’t care. I like Precious Romotswe and her little white van. The author skillfully weaves a gentle tale of friendship and family. We are reminded that people are the same everywhere and the important things in life do not change. It is good to be reminded of this.

From there I moved on to the wonderful Marilynne Robinson and her engagingly titled book of essays When I Was a Child I Read Books. I can relate to that. I love everything Marilynne has ever published–and sadly that is not a whole lot–but she is one of those people who, if I ever met her and tried to have a conversation with her, I would feel like this:

She just knows so much and is so articulate. But she is on my page. She looks at history in context. She likes to give credit where it is due. She questions arrogant scientists. She is a Calvinist. I highly recommend her, if you are up to it.

Now I am back to the what-to-read-next question. What are you reading?

*Old Walt Whitman

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November 26, 2012

Happy birthday, Marilynne Robinson

by chuckofish

“…I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.

Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was much better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you never will have. ‘The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.’ There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them. That’s a bit of fatherly wisdom, but it’s also the Lord’s truth, and a thing I know from my own long experience.”

from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Have you read any Marilynne Robinson? She is so great! She has written three highly-acclaimed novels plus several books of essays. She has been writer-in-residence or visiting professor at many universities and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Iowa City. If you are not acquainted with Marilynne, you are in for a treat. She is wonderful.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with lots of good food:

family:

maybe a little Christmas decorating:

The boy puts up the Christmas lights

and even a little estate saling:

Estate-rescued angel choir

And, of course, some Marilynne Robinson!

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May 7, 2012

The great bright dream

by chuckofish

“I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly . . . I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.”

(Marilynne Robinson, Gilead).

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