I want to explain to you what this feels like, sitting in this window seat just shy of two hundred years old as rain like hail pours down onto grass and pavement and trees and splashes me through the old windowsill that I have carelessly and carefully left open.
I am wrapped in a blanket, cold and damp and warm. And happy. For the first time in a month I am.
Happy.
Here.
There is hard thunder rattling through trees far older than even this building I’m nestled in.
There is glee in me. As I sit. As I stare. As I watch and listen as heavy rain falls harder, shouting, then whisper quiet.
Indecisive.
I keep getting surprised by this rain. Blindsided. Unaware until it runs down my cheeks and my shoulders and off my nose how heavy-laden it is.
It is beautiful; breathtaking. Breath-transforming as its fat raindrops take light from my lamp and explode in bright, glitttering color on the asphalt below.
I love this rain and its weighty footfalls.
I am lighter, somehow.
And today I aced my Greek quiz.
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I’ve debated with myself about whether or not I’d reveal exactly which seminary I’ll be attending this coming fall. There is a certain comfort in remaining entirely anonymous. (As it turns out, I actually revealed myself as a Princeton seminarian several posts ago. Shame on me. I should pay more attention to myself.)
But half of my excitement (at least at the moment, 2:46am on Friday, June 12, an hour when, if I am awake, I am almost certainly over-thinking and emotional or ridiculously excited about something) comes from the fact that in 79 days I’ll be moving from this craptastic city in Southern California to what I can only describe as Camelot to me – Princeton, New Jersey.
It’s really the little things that are making me choke back squeals.
There are FARMS in Princeton. Real life farms. That I can visit. That grow FOOD. That I can EAT.
And I’m gonna get a BIKE. That’s YELLOW. With a BASKET. Maybe on the back of my seat, as having it between my handlebars might be a smidge too Susie Creamcheese.
And there’s a river. With trees. THAT CHANGE COLOR. Really, it’s the fact that they change color that gets to me. Pretty much the only time we see gold leaves in California is when a) we have a sudden, unexpected chills that completely freak out the local flora or b) when someone accidentally crashes their car into a tree and it dies.
As a result of this severe lack of trees whose leaves change color, over half the pictures I took while I visited the East coast for the first time since I was wee are of leaves.
I do not jest.
I cannot sleep tonight because I am too excited by the thought of yellow bikes, trees with changing leaves, farms with food I can buy and eat and old buildings made of brick and the ghosts of theologians I grew up practically worshipping. I am utterly flabbergasted with the realization that in 79 days, this will be my LIFE.
This book was suggested to me by a former writing professor when I asked him for something “delicious and heartbreaking” (a fitting, if slightly visceral, description for most of my favorite books). As always, he did not lead me astray. Off the beaten path, but not astray.
Set somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, this novel is the “begats” of a seven-year-old boy, written by his 72-year-old father, a minister, whose “old seed will soon be buried in the earth”. Though the “begats” of the Bible are the plainest part of the text, they hide the promise of a far more interesting story. What did the lives of the men who led up to David (to Joseph, to Jesus) look like? What were the big moments, better yet, the small moments in their lives? How did they carry on in the interim time from great man to great man?
Written by Marilynne Robinson (author of the nonfiction theology book The Death of Adam) Gilead reads more as a love letter to this minister’s young son than as a dusty biographical account of his life. There are many tales to be told in his small, Midwestern town and we are privy to them all.
What makes this novel particularly captivating is in the way it brings a touch of human frailty to the life of ministry. Often in danger of mystifying ministry myself (unfortunate alliteration, for which I’m truly sorry) I’m finding it easier to believe that my feet can fit into those shoes and dance that lifelong dance as well.
This is fiction, of course, and the main character is not real. I suspect, however, that while he is not, perhaps he is, at least a bit, in the men and women who have taken on this role.
This is a novel meant to be savored, read and reread until dog-eared and worn.
Recommended with enthusiasm.
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