Gilead (2005 Pulitzer Prize)

by Marilynne Robinson

  Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it

  needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it. And that was such a quiet day, rain on the roof, rain against the windows, and everyone grateful, since it seems we never do

  have quite enough rain. At times like that I might not care particularly whether people are listening to whatever I have to say, because I know what their thoughts are. Then if some stranger comes in, that very same peace can seem like somnolence and like dull habit, because that is how you're afraid it

  seems to her.

  If Rebecca had lived, she'd be fifty-one, older than your mother is now by ten years. For a long time I used to think how it would be if she walked in that door, what I would not be ashamed, at least, to say in her hearing. Because I always imagined her coming back from a place where everything is known, and hearing my hopes and my speculations the way someone would who has seen the truth face-to-face and would know the full measure of my incomprehension. That was a sort of trick I played on myself, to keep from taking doctrines and controversies too much to heart. I read so many books in those days, and I was always disputing in my mind with one or another of them, but I think I usually knew better than to take too much of that sort of thing into the pulpit. I believe,

  though, that it was because I wrote those sermons as if Rebecca might sometime walk in the door that I was somewhat prepared when your mother walked in, younger than Rebecca would have been in fact, of course, but not very different from the way I saw her in my mind. It wasn't so much her appear20

  ance as it was the way she seemed as if she didn't belong there, and at the same time as if she were the only one of us all who really did belong there.

  I say this because there was a seriousness about her that

  seemed almost like a kind of anger. As though she might say,

  "I came here from whatever unspeakable distance and from whatever unimaginable otherness just to oblige your prayers.

  Now say something with a little meaning in it." My sermon

  was like ashes on my tongue. And it wasn't that I hadn't

  worked on it, either. I worked on all my sermons. I remember I baptized two infants that day. I could feel how intensely she watched. Both the creatures wept when I touched the water to their heads the first time, and I looked up, and there was just

  the look of stern amazement in her face that I knew would be there even before I looked up, and I felt like saying quite sincerely, "If you know a better way to do this, I'd appreciate your

  telling me." Then just six months later I baptized her. And I felt like asking her, "What have I done? What does it mean?"

  That was a question that came to me often, not because I felt less than certain I had done something that did mean something, but because no matter how much I thought and read

  and prayed, I felt outside the mystery of it. The tears ran down her face, dear woman. I'll never forget that. Unless I forget everything, as so many of the old people do. It appears I at least won't live long enough to forget much I haven't forgotten already, which is a good deal, I know. I have thought about baptism over the years. Boughton and I have discussed it often. Now, this might seem a trivial thing to mention, considering the gravity of the subject, but I truly don't feel it is. We were very pious children from pious households in a fairly pious town, and this affected our behavior considerably. Once, we 21

  baptized a litter of cats. They were dusty little barn cats just steady on their legs, the kind of waifish creatures that live

  their anonymous lives keeping the mice down and have no interest in humans at all, except to avoid them. But the animals

  all seem to start out sociable, so we were always pleased to find new kittens prowling out of whatever cranny their mother had tried to hide them in, as ready to play as we were. It occurred to one of the girls to swaddle them up in a doll's dress—there was only one dress, which was just as well since the cats could hardly tolerate a moment in it and would have to have been unswaddled as soon as they were christened in any case. I myself moistened their brows, repeating the full Trinitarian formula.

  Their grim old crooked-tailed mother found us baptizing

  away by the creek and began carrying her babies off by the napes of their necks, one and then another. We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal. So finally I asked my father

  in the most offhand way imaginable what exactly would happen to a cat if one were to, say, baptize it. He replied that the Sacraments must always be treated and regarded with the greatest respect. That wasn't really an answer to my question. We did respect the Sacraments, but we thought the whole world of those cats. I got his meaning, though, and I did no more baptizing until I was ordained.

  Two or three of that litter were taken home by the girls and

  made into fairly respectable house cats. Louisa took a yellow

  one. She still had it when we were married. The others lived

  out their feral lives, indistinguishable from their kind, whether pagan or Christian no one could ever tell. She called her cat Sparkle, for the white patch on its forehead. It disappeared finally. I suspect it got caught stealing rabbits, a sin to which it

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  was much given, Christian cat that we knew it to be, stiffjointed as it was by that time. One of the boys said she should

  have named it Sprinkle. He was a Baptist, a firm believer in total immersion, which those cats should have been grateful I

  was not. He told us no effect at all could be achieved by our methods, and we could not prove him wrong. Our Soapy must be a distant relative.

  I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the

  palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one

  like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in the mind. For years we would wonder

  what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still

  seems to me to be a real question. 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. I don't wish to be urging the ministry on you, but there are some advantages to it you might not know to take account of if I did not

  point them out. Not that you have to be a minister to confer blessing. You are simply much more likely to find yourself in that position. It's a thing people expect of you. I don't know why there is so little about this aspect of the calling in the literature.

  Ludwig Feuerbach says a wonderful thing about baptism. I

  have it marked. He says, "Water is the purest, clearest of liquids; in virtue of this its natural character it is the image of

  the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. In short, water has a significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the 23

  Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a beautiful, profound natural significance." Feuerbachyis a famous atheist, but he is about,as good on the joyful aspects of

  religion as anybody, and he loves the world. Of course he thinks religion could just stand out of the way and let joy exist pure and undisguised. That is his one error, and it is significant. But he is marvelous on the subject ofjoy, and.also on its religious expressions.

  Boughton takes a very dim view of him, because he unsettled the faith of many people, but I take issue as much with

  those people as with Feuerbach. It seems t o m e some people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last
hundred years or so. My brother Edward gave his book to me, The Essence of Christianity, thinking to shock me out of my uncritical piety, as I knew at the time. I had to read it in secret, or so I believed. I put it in a biscuit tin and hid it in a tree. You can imagine, reading it in those circumstances gave it a great interest for me. And I was very much in awe of Edward, who had studied at a university in Germany.

  I realize I haven't even mentioned Edward, though he has been very important to me. As he is still, God rest his soul. I feel in some ways as if I hardly knew him, and in others as if I have been talking to him my whole life. He thought he would do me a favor, taking a bit of the Middle West out of me. That was the favor Europe had done for him. But here I am, having lived to the end the life he warned me against, and pretty well content with it, too, all in all. Still, I know I am touchy on the subject of parochialism.

  Edward studied at Gottingen. He was a remarkable man.

  He was older than me by almost ten years, so I didn't really know him very well while we were children. There were two sisters and a brother between us, all carried off by diphtheria 24

  in less than two months. He knew them and I, of course, did not, so that was another great difference. Though it was rarely spoken of, I was always aware that there had been a crowded, cheerful life the three of them remembered well and I could not really imagine. In any case, Edward left home at sixteen to go to college. He finished at nineteen with a degree in ancient languages and went straight off to Europe. None of us saw him again for years. There weren't even many letters.

  Then he came home with a walking stick and a huge mustache. Herr Doktor. He must have been about twenty-seven or

  twenty-eight. He had published a slender book in German, a monograph of some kind on Feuerbach. He was smart as could be, and my father was a little in awe of him, too, as he had been since Edward was a small boy, I think. My parents told me stories about how he read everything he could put his hands on, memorized a whole book of Longfellow, copied maps of Europe and Asia and learned all the cities and

  rivers. Of course they thought they were bringing up a little Samuel—so did everyone—so they all kept him supplied with books and paints and a magnifying glass and whatever else came to mind or to hand. My mother sometimes regretted out loud that they hadn't really required him to do much in the way of chores, and she certainly didn't make the same mistake with me. But a child as wonderful as he was is not a thing you see often, and the belief was general that he would be a great preacher. So the congregation took up collections to put him in college and then to send him to Germany. And he came back an atheist. That's what he always claimed to be, at any rate. He took a position at the state college in Lawrence teaching German literature and philosophy, and stayed there till he died. He married a German girl from Indianapolis and they had six little towheaded children, all of them well into middle age by now. He was a few hundred miles away all those years 25

  and I hardly ever saw him. He did send back contributions to

  the church to repay them for helping him. A check dated January 1 came every year he lived. He was a good man.

  He and my father had words when he came back, once at

  the dinner table that first evening when my father asked him

  to say grace. Edward cleared his throat and replied, "I am

  afraid I could not do that in good conscience, sir," and the color drained out of my father's face. I knew there had been letters I was not given to read, and there had been somber words between my parents. So this was the dreaded confirmation of

  their fears. My father said, "You have lived under this roof. You know the customs of your family. You might show some respect for them." And Edward replied, and this was very wrong

  of him, "When I was a child, I thought as a child. Now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." My father left the table, my mother sat still in her chair with tears streaming down her face, and Edward passed me the potatoes. I had no idea what was expected of me, so I took some. Edward passed me the gravy. We ate our unhallowed meal solemnly for a little while, and then we left the house and I walked Edward to the hotel.

  And on that walk he said to me, "John, you might as well

  know now what you're sure to learn sometime. This is a backwateryou must be aware of that already. Leaving here is like

  waking from a trance." I suppose the neighbors saw us leaving the house just at dinnertime that first day, Edward with one arm bent behind his back, stooped a little to suggest that he had some use for a walking stick, appearing somehow to be plunged in thought of an especially rigorous and distinguished kind, possibly conducted in a foreign language. (Only listen to me!) If they saw him, they'd have known instantly what they had long suspected. They'd have known also that there was rage and weeping in my mother's kitchen and that my father was in the attic or the woodshed, in some hidden, quiet place, 26

  down on his knees, wondering to the Lord what it was that was being asked of him. And there I was with Edward, trailing along after him, another grief to my parents, or so they must

  have thought.

  Besides those books I mentioned, Edward also gave me the little painting of a marketplace that hangs by the stairs. I must

  be sure to tell your mother it belongs to me and not to the parsonage. I doubt it's worth anything to speak of, but she might

  want it.

  I'm going to set aside that Feuerbach with the books I will

  ask your mother to be sure to save for you. I hope you will read it sometime. There is nothing alarming in it, to my mind. I

  read it the first time under the covers, and down by the creek, because my mother had forbidden me to have any further contact with Edward, and I knew that would include my reading

  an atheistical book he had given me. She said, "If you ever spoke to your father that way, it would kill him." In fact, my thought was always to defend my father. I believe I have done that.

  There are some notes of mine in the margins of the book which I hope you may find useful.

  That mention of Feuerbach and joy reminded me of something

  I saw early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking

  up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along

  half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet.

  On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they

  laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her 27

  hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

  In writing this, I notice the care it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word "just." I almost wish I could have written that the sun just

  shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed—when it's used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to

  call attention to a thing existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me at the moment. There is something real signified by that word "just"

  that proper language won't acknowledge. It's a little like the German ge-. I regret that I must deprive myself of it. It takes half the point out of telling the story.

  I am also inclined to
overuse the word "old," which actually has less to do with age, as it seems to me, than it does with familiarity. It sets a thing apart as something regarded with a modest, habitual affection. Sometimes it suggests haplessness or vulnerability. I say "old Boughton," I say "this shabby old town," and I mean that they are very near my heart.

  I don't write the way I speak. I'm afraid you would think I didn't know any better. I don't write the way I do for the pulpit, either, insofar as I can help it. That would be ridiculous, in

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  the circumstances. I do try to write the way I think. But of

  course that all changes as soon as I put it into words. And the more it does seem to be my thinking, the more pulpitish it sounds, which I guess is inevitable. I will resist that inflection, nevertheless.

  I walked over to Boughton's to see what he was up to. I found him in a terrible state of mind. Tomorrow would have been his fifty-fourth anniversary. He said, "The truth is, I'm just very tired of sitting here alone. That's the truth." Glory is there doing everything she can think of to make him comfortable, but

  he has his bad days. He said, "When we were young, marriage meant something. Family meant something. Things weren't at all the way they are today!" Glory rolled her eyes at that and said, "We haven't heard from Jack for a little while and it is making us a bit anxious."

  He said, "Glory, why do you always do that? Why do you say us when I'm the one you're talking about?"

  She said, "Papa, as far as I'm concerned, Jack can't get here a minute too soon."

  He said, "Well, it's natural to worry and I'm not going to apologize for it."

  She said, "I suppose it's natural to take your worrying out on me, too, but I can't pretend I like it."

  And so on. So I came back home.

  Boughton was always a good-hearted man, but his discomforts weary him, and now and then he says things he really shouldn't. He isn't himself.

  I'm sorry you are alone. You are a serious child, with not much occasion to giggle, or to connive. You are shy of other children. I see you standing up on your swing, watching some boys about 29

  your age out in the road. One of the bigger ones is trying out a beat-up old bicycle. I suppose you know who they are. You don't speak to them. If they seem to notice you, you'll probably come inside. You are shy like your mother. I see how hard this life is for her that I've brought her into, and I believe you sense it, too. She makes a very unlikely preacher's wife. She says so herself. But she never flinches from any of it. Mary Magdalene probably made an occasional casserole, whatever the ancient equivalent may have been. A mess of pottage, I suppose.