Spoiler Alert: Gilead

 Yesterday I hosted bookclub! We had a special guest baby Huxley, literary namesake so of course it's necessary he attends book club his first month in the world! This month we read Pulitzer Prize winner Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series—Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack—is an intergenerational story about faith, race, and love from the interwoven histories of two families in a small Iowa town to encompass American life: ideals and beliefs, our contradictions, failings, and hopes. I plan to read the rest of the series, as I found Gilead a valuable read. A few points I found thought provoking in this novel (I read it on my Kindle so page numbers correspond :

Page 75: The protagonist narrates the story, a Caucasian preacher from Iowa in his late seventies who feels he is near the end of life - "...because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face...It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it...But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any." 

Page 76: I truly admire Marilynne Robinson's ability to basically impersonate and embody this old mad at the end of life in such a devout and specific manner. Here is an example of the main character pondering per usual but with clarity and wisdom, "People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and that would not if I had a dozen lives. That's clearer to me every day. Each morning I'm like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes - old hands, old eyes, old mind, a very diminished Adam all together, and still it is just remarkable."

Page 140: This section at present has 3,284 *highlighters* on Kindle - "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? 

Page 141: "...[he] did have a mind of his own, a mind worth of respect. I'm not sure that's true, either. Worthy of respect of course. But the fact is that his mind came from one set of books as surely as mine has come from another set of books." I thought that was a funny and great point. A lot of what we think and know in our minds has come from what collection of books we have read. Drives me crazy when people say they get all of their information from youtube these days. Books are important building blocks for continued growth and development. 

Page 143: The narrator is writing a letter to his young son - "I have not been writing to you for a day or two. I have passed some fairly difficult nights. Discomfort, a little trouble breathing. I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earthly solution to the problems that confront me." WOW. Ain't that the truth. There is no earthly solution to end of life problems! None of the billionaires have cracked immortality quite yet (shout out Ray Kurzweil). We are all going to die and not a single one of us know what happens when our soul leaves our bodies and we are pronounced dead. 

Page 156: Still writing to his son - "I believe there is a dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low. This does not mean that it is ever right to cause suffering or to seek it out when it can be avoided, and serves no good, practical purpose. To value suffering in itself can be dangerous and strange, so I want to be very clear about this. It means simply that God takes the side of sufferers against those who afflict them. (I hope you are familiar with the prophets, particularly Isaiah.)" Isaiah means "God is Salvation" in Hebrew. According to the Bible, Isaiah saw God, became a prophet and was a man of good character that sympathized with the poor. He did a whole lot more than that but you can go do some research. 

Page 171: "I tell them there are certain attributes our faith assigns to God: omniscience, omnipotence, justice, and grace. We human beings have such a slight acquaintance with power and knowledge, so little conception of justice, and so slight a capacity for grace, that the workings of these great attributes together is a mystery we cannot hope to penetrate." 

Page 196: "Do you ever wonder why American Christianity always seems to wait for the real thinking to be done elsewhere?" I haven't thought of this point before but it's an interesting one to think about. 

Page 201: "Young people from my own flock have come home with a copy of La Nausee or L'Immoraliste, flummoxed by the possibility of unbelief, when i must have told them a thousand time that unbelief is possible. and they are attracted to it by the very bppls that tell them what a misery it is. and 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." This reminds me of Matthew 16 in the Bible when the Pharisees ask Jesus for proof. 

The next section of the book is very thick with plot I won't spoil. The last few pages are quite special and deserve to be read in full, so I won't quote them here! This is not a long book, but it's not a binge read. I read it over the course of 2 months and enjoyed how though provoking it was when read carefully with time to refelct and reread passages. 

xoxo

maddymo