Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave—that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. But that is the pulpit speaking. What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again.
I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word “good” so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first moment “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” but for all I know to the contrary, they still do sing and shout, and they certainly might well. Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view.
To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground her as a last wild gesture of love—I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.
I’ll pray that you will grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.
I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson.
What a beautiful novel. I got stung by a bee today, and I wonder how mom did it, how she plucked those stingers from my squirming little girl body when I was young. I could barely pluck it from myself, and she held me still, when I was fidgeting and crying and angry at the little bee for stinging me. So I called her, and I thanked her, and it was good.
Finals are taking over my life right now. And the funny thing about studying poetry, its that you have lonely lines wandering around your brain, like "the lion is alone, and so am I" or "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" or "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, / 'T is woman's whole existence;" and then you find yourself thinking in poetry, and you go for a bike ride and along with these lonely lines, you get new words ever popping into your brain, like promontory or uprooted, and you feel like writing a poem, "On Promontories" or something like that, and everything seems more vivid, from the crystal creek flowing ever so swiftly down past the sandy shore, or the white blossom juxtaposed against the furry green undergrowth, or the silky bark of a white oak tree, stretching upwards towards the sky, or even the scent of dead fish along the riverbank and the smell of lilacs o'erbrimmed with ripeness. You hear the annoying gnats buzzing in your ear. And this is what it must be like to be a poet, or to be a writer, you've got all of these words just hitting you like a correspondent breeze, life is more vivid, you've got all of these waves and leaves and clouds and this whole earth just singing with moments of passion, imagination, life, moral teaching, and then you just know. It hits you, and you cannot help but write.
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