Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Author:Marilynne Robinson [Robinson, Marilynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Religion, Pulitzer
ISBN: 9781844081486
Google: c7FhQgAACAAJ
Amazon: 1844081486
Barnesnoble: 1844081486
Goodreads: 991271
Publisher: Virago
Published: 2004-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

13 1

Another morning, thank the Lord. A good night’s sleep, and no real discomfort to speak of. A woman in my flock called just after breakfast and asked me to come to her house. She is elderly, recently a widow, all by herself, and she has just moved from

her farm to a cottage in town. You can never know what troubles or fears such people have, and I went. It turned out that

the problem was her kitchen sink. She told me, considerably amazed that a reversal so drastic could occur in a lawful universe, that hot water came from the cold faucet and cold water

from the hot faucet. I suggested she might just decide to take C

for hot and / / f o r cold, but she said she liked things to work the way they were supposed to. So I went home and got my screwdriver and came back and switched the handles. She said she

guessed that would do until she could get a real plumber. Oh, the clerical life! I think this lady has suspected me of a certain doctrinal sloughing off, and now she will be sure of it. The story made your mother laugh, though, so my labors are repaid. Last night I finished The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine. It gave me a sort of turn there for a while. The old man sees the girl with someone her own age and remarks how well suited they are, and then he starts getting old and shabby and broke, and she’s still very beautiful, of course. But it all turns out fine. She loves him only and forever. I doubt the book would have kept my interest if that particular matter had not arisen. And then I did want to know what there was in it your mother liked so

much. God bless her, she’s a dear woman. I read most of it yesterday evening, and then I couldn’t sleep, wondering about it,

so I crept off to my study and read till almost dawn. And then 132

I went up to the church to watch the dawn come, because that peace does restore me better than sleep can do. It is as though there were a hoard of quiet in that room, as if any silence that ever entered that room stayed in it. I remember once as a child dreaming that my mother came into my bedroom and sat

down in a chair in the corner and folded her hands in her lap and stayed there, very calm and still. It made me feel wonderfully safe, wonderfully happy. When I woke up, there she was,

sitting in that chair. She smiled at me and said, “I was just enjoying the quiet.” I have that same feeling in the church, that I

am dreaming what is true.

It strikes me that your mother could not have said a more heartening word to me by any other means than she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too.

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