Marilynne Robinson - Gilead

I told Boughton about this, and he said, “I have ong fet that etter ought to be excuded from the aphabet.” Then he laughed, tickled with himself. He has been in high spirits since he heard from Jack. “He’ll be home soon!” he said. When I asked him where he was coming from, Boughton said, “Well, the postmark on his letter said St. Louis.”

I won’t tell your mother about my talk with Mr. Schmidt. She wants very much for you to keep your friend. She suffered when you didn’t have one. She suffers for your sake much more than she should. She always imagines the fault is with her, even where it appears to me there is no fault at all.

She told me the other day she wants to read those old sermons that are up in the attic, and I believe she will do that, I really do. Not all of them — that would take years. Well, perhaps I can get a box of them down here somehow and do a little sorting. It would put my mind at ease to feel I was leaving a better impression. So often I have known, right there in the pulpit, even as I read the words, how far they fell short of any hopes I had for them. And they were the major work of my life, from a certain point of view. I have to wonder how I have lived with that.

***

Today was Lord’s Supper, and I preached on Mark 14:22, “And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is my body.” Normally I would not preach on the Words of Institution themselves when the Sacrament is the most beautiful illumination of them there could be. But I have been thinking a great deal about the body these last weeks. Blessed and broken.

I used Genesis 52:23–32 as the Old Testament text, Jacob wrestling with the Angel. I wanted to talk about the gift of physical particularity and how blessing and sacrament are mediated through it. I have been thinking lately how I have loved my physical life.

In any case, and you may remember this, when almost everyone had left and the elements were still on the table and the candles still burning, your mother brought you up the aisle to me and said, “You ought to give him some of that.” You’re too young, of course, but she was completely right. Body of Christ, broken for you. Blood of Christ, shed for you. Your solemn and beautiful child face lifted up to receive these mysteries at my hands. They are the most wonderful mystery, body and blood.

It was an experience I might have missed. Now I only fear I will not have time enough to fully enjoy the thought of it. The light in the room was beautiful this morning, as it often is. It’s a plain old church and it could use a coat of paint.

But in the dark times I used to walk over before sunrise just to sit there and watch the light come into that room. I don’t know how beautiful it might seem to anyone else. I felt much at peace those mornings, praying over very dreadful things sometimes the Depression, the wars. That was a lot of misery for people around here, decades of it. But prayer brings peace, as I trust you know.

In those days, as I have said, I might spend most of a night reading. Then, if I woke up still in my armchair, and if the clock said four or five, I’d think how pleasant it was to walk through the streets in the dark and let myself into the church and watch dawn come in the sanctuary. I loved the sound of the latch lifting. The building has settled into itself so that when you walk down the aisle, you can hear it yielding to the burden of your weight. It’s a pleasanter sound than an echo would be, an obliging, accommodating sound. You have to be there alone to hear it. Maybe it can’t feel the weight of a child. But if it is still standing when you read this, and if you are not half a world away, sometime you might go there alone, just to see what I mean. After a while I did begin to wonder if I liked the church better with no people in it.

I know they’re planning to pull it down. They’re waiting me out, which is kind of them.

People are always up in the night, with their colicky babies and their sick children, or fighting or worrying or full of guilt. And, of course, the milkmen and all the people on early shifts and late shifts. Sometimes when I walked past the house of one of my own families and saw lights on, I’d think maybe I should stop and see if there was a problem I could help with, but then I’d decide it might be an intrusion and I’d go on. Past the Boughtons’ house, too. It was years before I really knew what was troubling them, close as we had always been. It was on the nights I didn’t sleep at all and I didn’t feel like reading that I’d walk through town at one or two o’clock. In the old days I could walk down every single street, past every house, in about an hour. I’d try to remember the people who lived in each one, and whatever I knew about them, which was often quite a lot, since many of the ones who weren’t mine were Boughton’s. And I’d pray for them. And I’d imagine peace they didn’t expect and couldn’t account for descending on their illness or their quarreling or their dreams. Then I’d go into the church and pray some more and wait for daylight. I’ve often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come.

Trees sound different at night, and they smell different, too.

If you remember me at all, you may find me explained a little by what I am telling you. If you could see me not as a child but as a grown man, it is surely true that you would observe a certain crepuscular quality in me. As you read this, I hope you will understand that 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.

Once when Boughton and I had spent an evening going through our texts together and we were done talking them over, I walked him out to the porch, and there were more fireflies out there than I had ever seen in my life, thousands of them everywhere, just drifting up out of the grass, extinguishing themselves in midair. We sat on the steps a good while in the dark and the silence, watching them. Finally Boughton said, “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” And really, it was that night as if the earth were smoldering. Well, it was, and it is. An old fire will make a dark husk for itself and settle in on its core, as in the case of this planet. I believe the same metaphor may describe the human individual, as well. Perhaps Gilead. Perhaps civilization. Prod a little and the sparks will fly. I don’t know whether the verse put a blessing on the fireflies or the fireflies put a blessing on the verse, or if both of them together put a blessing on trouble, but I have loved them both a good deal ever since.

There has been a telephone call from Jack Boughton, that is, from John Ames Boughton, my namesake. He is still in St. Louis, and still planning to come home. Glory came to tell me about it, excited and also anxious. She said, “Papa was just so thrilled to hear his voice.” I suppose he’ll appear sooner or later. I don’t know how one boy could have caused so much disappointment without ever giving anyone any grounds for hope.

Man, I should say, since he’s well into his thirties. No, he must be forty by now. He is not the eldest or the youngest or the best or the bravest, only the most beloved. I suppose I might tell you a story about him, too, or as much of it as behooves me. Another time. I must reflect on it first. When I’ve had a little opportunity to talk with him, I might decide all that trouble is well forgotten and write nothing about it.

Old Boughton is so eager to see him. Perhaps anxious as well as eager. He has some fine children, yet it always seemed this was the one on whom he truly set his heart. The lost sheep, the lost coin. The prodigal son, not to put too fine a point on it. I have said at least once a week my whole adult life that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father’s love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a little.