Just Finished ...

I just finished the book Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It is the journal of an old man writing to his very young son ... The man, a Congregationalist Preacher married a young woman many years his junior and together they had a son.

Now his life is waning, his health is failing and he is struggling to leave his son some gleanings and wisdom, perhaps to make up for his lack of involvement in a real way in the young child's life. The book is brilliant. The reflections on faith, the church and the futility of it all are chillingly accurate. The struggles the man endures in his relationship with his son, his friends, his community and those closest to him are frighteningly familiar. I enjoyed the book, though it did disturb me ... (I never feel that's a bad thing) ... I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a really good read.

But I would offer an enchating description of the prairies from the book ... one that resonated within me when I read it:

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 this I say - Amen !!