the reverend john ames
there is a connection between loving life and sensing the mystery of life. this is true for loving one's own life, and also for loving the life of others.' in moments when we feel a deep love for life, we also sense the mysteriousness of our lives, and the strangeness of life itself. but by 'mystery' i do not simply mean that we are puzzled by what life is, or that we are at a loss to explain its cause. rather, what i have in mind is a puzzlement that is filled with wonder and with appreciation.
it seems to me that marilynne robinson's novel 'gilead' is an extended meditation on the wonderful mystery of life, and on what it means to love life, even as one prepares to leave it. the book's narrator, the reverend john ames, returns again and again to the mystery and sacredness of living things, especially other people. this sacredness is inseparable from the particularity of things.
wonder and mystery and sacredness and particularity are bound together:
"there is a reality in blessing, which i take baptism to be, primarily. it doesn't enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. i have felt it pass through me, so to speak. the sensation is of really knowing a creature, i mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time."
"any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it."
"when people come to speak to me, whatever they say, i am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the 'i' whose predicate can be 'love' or 'fear' or 'want', and whose object can be 'someone' or 'nothing' and it won't really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around 'i' like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else.'
there is also a connection between our sense of mystery at something -our awareness of its sacredness- and our attending to it. in 'gilead', this attention pervades reverend ames' descriptions of the 'ordinary' things in his life and the life of his town. his descriptions and observations are rarely given in elevated language, but they are full of such care and tenderness that they often gave me shivers of delight when reading.
perhaps it is impossible to sense of the mystery of something and not wish to see it, to observe it, to experience the existence of the thing. and there is something holy in this kind of attending, and i think this is why ames is a kind of saint. perhaps what is holy in this sort of attending is the self-forgetfulness it involves (again, i am thinking of simone weil here). but perhaps what is holy is precisely the delight in things that is behind this way of attending to things. it is a love of existence itself, a love of the existence of this particular thing. as ames says in his letter to his son:
"your mother could not love you more or take great pride in you. she has watched every moment of your life, almost, and she loves you as god does, to the marrow your bones. so that is the honoring of the child. you see how godlike to love the being of someone. your existence is a delight to us."
it seems to me that marilynne robinson's novel 'gilead' is an extended meditation on the wonderful mystery of life, and on what it means to love life, even as one prepares to leave it. the book's narrator, the reverend john ames, returns again and again to the mystery and sacredness of living things, especially other people. this sacredness is inseparable from the particularity of things.
wonder and mystery and sacredness and particularity are bound together:
"there is a reality in blessing, which i take baptism to be, primarily. it doesn't enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. i have felt it pass through me, so to speak. the sensation is of really knowing a creature, i mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time."
"any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it."
"when people come to speak to me, whatever they say, i am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the 'i' whose predicate can be 'love' or 'fear' or 'want', and whose object can be 'someone' or 'nothing' and it won't really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around 'i' like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else.'
there is also a connection between our sense of mystery at something -our awareness of its sacredness- and our attending to it. in 'gilead', this attention pervades reverend ames' descriptions of the 'ordinary' things in his life and the life of his town. his descriptions and observations are rarely given in elevated language, but they are full of such care and tenderness that they often gave me shivers of delight when reading.
perhaps it is impossible to sense of the mystery of something and not wish to see it, to observe it, to experience the existence of the thing. and there is something holy in this kind of attending, and i think this is why ames is a kind of saint. perhaps what is holy in this sort of attending is the self-forgetfulness it involves (again, i am thinking of simone weil here). but perhaps what is holy is precisely the delight in things that is behind this way of attending to things. it is a love of existence itself, a love of the existence of this particular thing. as ames says in his letter to his son:
"your mother could not love you more or take great pride in you. she has watched every moment of your life, almost, and she loves you as god does, to the marrow your bones. so that is the honoring of the child. you see how godlike to love the being of someone. your existence is a delight to us."
posted by micah at 12:16 PM
2 Comments:
gregory of nyssa draws on the metaphor of a candle, too, but he wants it to describe the incarnation:
We see the flame of the lamp laying hold of the material which feeds it. Now reason distinguishes between the flame on the material, and the material which kindles the flame, though we cannot actually divorce the one from the other and point out the flame as something separate from the material. The two together form a single whole. So it is with the incarnation... Just, then, as we see the flame hugging the material and yet not encased in it, what prevents us from conceiving of a similar union and connection of the divine nature with the human? Can we not preserve a right idea of God even when we hold to this connection, by believing that the divine is free from all circumscription despite the fact that he is in man?
it seems both writers see the metaphor of a candle as a way of getting at personhood and presence and circumscription and materiality. the quotation from gilead becomes, i think, more beautiful taken together with gregory's description of the incarnation as a lamp. the flame of our presence then becomes a representation of the divine fire, and the attention we give others, as discerning this sacred image, akin to prayer.
We read this book for my Ethics class. I think it's because the professor wanted us to learn to view the world in the way John Ames does--I guess in terms of loving life enough to really notice things about it. Noticing seems to be so key about life, y'know?
The book as a whole isn't one of my favorites; though I agree that there were some places where the writing was so beautiful that I think I actually stopped breathing.
From my experience in talking to people about it, it appeals to almost every thoughtful man I have met--but not as much to women. And I've been wondering why that is.
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