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Home by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Home tells Gilead's story from another point of view. First, Robinson is amazing in how she is able to change the tone and nuance of her writing to reflect another point of view. While I missed Ames' rambling, here we get Jack's sisters point of view in a third person narrator. We see through her eyes what Jack has done, why he says he has come home, and what he goes through to try to redeem himself. Having read Gilead first it is interesting to see things from another perspective--fit the pieces in, if you will. Although there are no new real surprises, the trajectory of this prodigal son told from the viewpoint of a sister who desperately wants to help him, a father who loves so much he actually forgives him of things he hasn't done, and a son who wants to come home so badly, but even at home, he cannot find peace. Boughten is no Ames--he is emotionally tied up with his son, cannot separate his shame from his son's sins, and is maybe too old to struggle against his better half anymore. So reconciliation is hampered by fear and guilt and an inability for either of them to truly say what's on their mind. I may have to read it another time to get the same thoughtfulness and joy out of this novel. While I liked seeing the other side, it felt a little too long and drawn out, and like it was treading the same ground several times. It's also not as hopeful as Gilead.

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There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but this is an error, so Papa used to say.  You must forgive in order to understand.  Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. 

Worry or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful.  He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home. 

Gilead

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this ten years ago, but wanted to read Lila and Jack, so I returned to Gilead. Honestly, I thought it was Home I had read before, and so started reading Gilead as though I had never read it. Yet, at almost each paragraph, I remembered reading it and the thoughts I had when I read it then, yet for the life of me, I couldn't remember what was going to happen next, so I was remembering and discovering at the same time. Reading my last review, I apparently read it twice then. So technically this is my third time and I added a star. I fell in love with the good reverend John Ames and his quiet pondering and strivings to do right despite his natural inclinations. He has feelings of fear for his little family whom he feels he will leave sooner than later, and those devolve into feelings of jealousy and contempt really for his friend's son that has come home. The son is notorious and has done some cruel things but is looking now for a shred of faith and looking to Ames to supply it. Ames struggles to let this young man repent of his sins, especially if that means he will enjoy a life Ames is done living. It is so beautifully written. and the characters so well drawn. I suppose it might not recommend it that I could not remember I read it, but I did remember that Robinson was a great author and I look forward to the other Gilead novels.

(2011) As I was carrying this book around forever trying to finish it, I told everyone it was eh, ok. It was a story without much of a plot, just a lot of ruminations about religion, faith, forgiveness, and it was murder to get through. But then I finished it and I thought there were a few good quotes that I wanted to re-read, and I ended up reading the whole thing again. The whole thing. It isn't a book that excites you, it definitely is not a page turner, but the letter by a dying priest to his young son born in his old age is full of gems of wisdom. The themes of the prodigal son resonate throughout--what it means to be a son in need of forgiveness, what it means to be a loving father, what it means to be the righteous son feeling unjustly looked over. In the end, it culminates into a beautiful story of what it means to love and to live. If you can barely get through it the first time, read it again.

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You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it.  A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

You two were too intent not he cat to see the celestial consequences of your worldly endeavors.

Ludwig Feurbach says a wonderful thing about baptism.  I have it marked.  He says, "Water is the purest, clearest of liquids, in virtue of this its natural character is the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit.  In short, water has a significance in itself, as water, it is on account of its natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit.  So far there lies the foundation of Baptism a beautiful, profound natural significance."

It seems to me some people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled.

my father was in the attic or the woodshed, in some hidden, quiet place, down on his knows wondering to the Lord what it was that was being asked of him. (Abraham).

water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash.  I wish I had paid more attention to it.  My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know what they are, really.  This is an interesting planet.  It deserves all the attention you can give it. 

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

There was the feeling of a weight of light--pressing the damp out of the grass and pressing the smell of sour old sap out of the boards on the porch floor and burdening even the trees a little as a late snow would do. 

when I speak of the long night that preceded these days of my happiness, I do not remember grief and loneliness so much as I do peace and comfort--grief, but never without comfort; loneliness, but never without peace.  Almost never.

I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.

"Never mind," he said, "there's nothing cleaner than ash."  But it affected the taste of that biscuit, which I thought might resemble the bread of affliction, which was often mentioned in hose days, though it's rather forgotten now.

wonderful weariness of the arms.

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 an 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, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights.  Your are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person.

It is a s though there were a hoard of quiet in that room, as if any silence that ever entered that room stayed in it.

His name is set apart.  It is sacred (which I take to be a reflection of the sacredness of the Word, the creative utterance which is not of a kind with other language).

It seems to me almost a retelling of Creation--First there is the Lord, then the Word, then the Day, then the Man and Woman--and after that Cain and Abel--Thou shalt not kill--and all the sins recorded in those prohibitions, just as crimes are recorded in the laws against them.

not deciding to act would be identical with deciding not to act.  If I were to put deciding not act at one end of a continuum of possibility and deciding to act at the other end, the whole intervening space would be given over to not deciding, which would mean not acting.

nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

I don't know exactly what covets 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.

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. 

we all do live in the ruins of the lives of other generations.

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