[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: A balm in Gilead, part 1

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Posted by The Night Writer:
A balm in Gilead, part 1
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1198706398.shtml


   I'm just about finished reading one of the most profound and moving
   books I've come across in (at least) the last 10 years: [1]Gilead by
   Marilynne Robinson. In fact, the only works of fiction that have
   affected me as much as this book are Mark Helprin's A Winter's Tale
   and Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams. Listing these three books in
   one paragraph makes me realize that, though they are very different,
   they all revolve around the nature of time and place, the nature of
   man and the nature --as Lightman/Einstein would put it -- of "The Old
   One."
   Gilead is set in the mid-1950s in Gilead, Iowa and is written as a
   letter from an elderly pastor to the young son who came to him very
   late in life and who he knows he will never get to see grow up and
   become a man. The pastor, Rev. John Ames, has lived his entire life in
   Gilead, pastoring the church his father pastored before him. Ames is,
   in fact, the third generation of preachers in his line. His
   grandfather was a firebrand abolitionist in Kansas, known to preach
   with a pistol stuck in his belt and thought to have ridden with John
   Brown and, perhaps, to have killed a federal soldier who was pursuing
   the Reverend's band of insurgents. He railed against the spiritual
   complacency of the "doughface" Christians who could tolerate slavery
   and warned of God's judgment on the nation as a result. He fought in
   the Civil War and lost an eye in the conflict.
   Ames' father was the complete opposite, a dedicated pacifist who saw
   the 1918 Spanish Flu plague, in the midst of World War I, as God's
   judgment on a mad world. Nevertheless, the father took in the aged
   grandfather when he had no place to go, giving the young Ames a chance
   to observe their respective theologies and the dynamics between the
   men, even though the surest sign of a disagreement between them was
   their use of the title "Reverend" when addressing one another. Also
   factoring into this narrative are Ames' older, apostate, brother;
   Ames' lifelong best friend, Old Boughton, who is the pastor of the
   Presbyterian church in Gilead; and Old Boughton's prodigal son, John
   Ames Boughton (Jack), who was named after the narrator and who
   consumes a great deal of the old man's thoughts and fears as he lays
   out what little legacy he has to offer his seven-year-old son.
   The plot, such as it is, progresses much as an afternoon float trip
   does, meandering slowly around bends and through shady places as Ames
   unwinds the story in such a way that you don't readily realize how
   much ground has been covered, while leaving you with a vague unease
   about what rapids or waterfalls might be ahead. I am continuously
   charmed by each page and awed at the grasp that the author, a woman,
   has on the inner-workings of a man's mind. I could have read the book
   in an afternoon, but I have purposely drawn out the pleasure by
   allocating myself only a few pages a day to read and ruminate upon.
   Now, if my purpose in this post was to offer a book review, I'd hope
   that my words so far would inspire you to seek out the book yourself
   (indeed, I do). But that is not the purpose of this post, despite the
   paragraphs that have come before. Instead, the book has stirred
   something in my own inner voice, and in my mind, to record some of the
   thoughts I've had of late, some of which have come along of their own
   accord and some that have been brought forth by the book, and many
   that are a bit of both.

   ([2]Click here to see where this is going.)

   For example, there's a part of the book that takes place some time
   after Ames' grandfather abruptly left the home in pursuit of an
   unknown quest or calling that drew him back to Kansas. The family
   never hears from him again and finally Ames' father sets out on his
   own quest to find out what happened to the old man, even though it
   requires traveling to an unknown and largely undeveloped part of the
   country (this would have been in the late 1800s). For some reason,
   though it added to the hardship, he took the young Ames with him.
   Traipsing on foot, enduring heat, cold and near starvation, they
   finally come to a small, all-but-forgotten cemetery where "Rev. Ames"
   is crudely carved into a wooden marker. The father and son, worn-out
   and bone-tired as they are, nevertheless set about clearing out and
   tidying the cemetery and the grave-site in a scene that reminded me of
   a [3]similar episode in my own life a little more than a year ago when
   my father and I and others restored a rural, overgrown family cemetery
   that hadn't had anyone buried in it for some 40 years. It was the
   next-to-last time I would see my father when he was healthy, and the
   last time that I would watch him at work. Of course, none of us knew
   that at the time or could explain, exactly, why we wanted to clean up
   this old place that would eventually be reclaimed anyway. It just
   seemed like the right thing to do, and I would gladly live those days
   over again if given the chance.
   "The right thing to do" can often be a hard thing to explain, and even
   harder thing to live up to. I've tried to develop an internal sense
   for when I'm cutting myself some slack in an area, or giving myself a
   pass on doing a difficult or merely inconvenient thing. Would that
   there wasn't so much weasel in me. In the four months that it took for
   my own father to fail and die, I struggled to find my proper place
   amidst the obligations that surrounded me; trying to be the son,
   father, husband and employee that I should be and feeling that the
   time I put into each was always insufficient for the need at hand.
   In my father's case, I called regularly and visited when I could. It
   became a running joke that whenever I came to visit he always seemed
   to end up in the Emergency Room. It [4]started a couple of years ago
   when he was scheduled to have his aortic valve replacement and I drove
   down a couple of days early to be with him before the operation -- and
   arrived in time to be there as he developed congestive heart failure
   and had to be rushed to the hospital ahead of schedule. Similarly,
   trips down there in June and September this year also ended up in Exam
   Room 5 at the hospital in Sullivan, Missouri. In early October when I
   called him he was at home and feeling pretty good, even sounding a lot
   like his old self. I suggested that maybe I could come down for a
   couple of days. "Oh God, no!" he said, "I don't want to go back to
   that place!"
   Time, of course, was already slipping away from us and he [5]died
   before the month was out. One morning, a couple of weeks ago (and
   before I started reading Gilead), I dreamed about my father right
   before I woke up. It was the first time I'd dreamed about him since he
   died, and I'd been wondering when he might turn up. I still see my
   grandfather in dreams occasionally, and he turns up usually to say
   something to me, unencumbered by paralysis or aphasia.
   As with most dreams, there was a surreal element to this one. My
   father and another man came to my door as veterans, doing fund-raising
   for something. Instead of the door of my present home, however, it was
   the door of the mobile home my father provided for me when I was in
   college, and instead of being in my college town it was in our
   hometown. Finally, though he had been in the Air Force, I never knew
   him to be involved with any veteran's programs. In the dream he looked
   like he did when he was 50 (about the age I am now); I didn't
   recognize the man with him.
   My father and I recognized each other, however, and we also both knew
   that he was dead, yet here he was. There was a pause and then I took
   him in my arms, almost fiercely, and I held him as we both cried. The
   second guy just stood there, not bothered in the least. My wife is the
   one who gets the prophetic dreams, and I'm pretty good, I think, in
   piecing together workable interpretations. I didn't know what this
   dream meant, though it has stayed with me. Several days after the
   dream my family and I attended a Christmas concert at one of the local
   mega-churches. Sitting in the dark, amidst the loud music and thumping
   bass, I remembered the dream and wept as bitterly as at any time since
   he died, and still didn't know what the dream meant.
   There is a balm in Gilead, however, and as I read of an old man's
   hopes and fears for his son, of how another father and son had
   struggled to come to terms even while on the common and holy grounds
   they shared, and of how acts of omission, commission and contrition
   weave themselves perpetually in and around us, I realized that I had
   not been able to hold my father in all the time he was sick.
   Even in the visit in June before he was diagnosed, he was in so much
   pain that it hurt to stand up, let alone be hugged. As he diminished
   it was even more impossible to do so. I almost envied my brother, who
   had had to carry him to the car for the final trip to the hospital. As
   I wrote in November, there was little left unsaid between my father
   and I, but there was so much I wished I could have communicated
   through my arms and chest, and perhaps have received in return. And
   now, in my dream, he had been returned to me, perhaps with an angelic
   escort, for that all-but-silent time and last, soothing embrace.
   These thoughts, and others that have been brought to the fore from
   reading Gilead, have helped me see and appreciate the other balms I
   have in my life. They have also put me in a mood to record these for
   my own benefit and, perhaps, the benefit of others. Over the next few
   days I will try to draw these out of the book and my life. Right now,
   though, I am very, very tired.
   ([6]hide)

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/Gilead-Novel-Marilynne-Robinson/dp/031242440X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198703031&sr=1-1
   2. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/thenightwriterblog/posts/1198706398.html
   3. http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1164404736.shtml
   4. http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1113960933.shtml
   5. http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1194844355.shtml
   6. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/thenightwriterblog/posts/1198706398.html