Marilynne Robinson: Quotations

Some quotations from Marilynne Robinson:

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

Gilead

His father said, “Kindness takes more strength than I have low. didn’t realize how much effort I used to put into it.”

[Jack]: “Religion was one part of it. My not having any. I wished very much at the time that I could have been, you know, a hypocrite. But I just didn’t have it in me. My one scruple. And it has cost me dearly.”

Prayer, you know, you open up your thoughts, and then you can get a clear look at them…. Prayer is a discipline in truthfulness, in honesty.

For her, church was an airy white room with tall windows looking out on God’s good world, with God’s good sunlight pouring in through those windows and falling across the pulpit where her father stood, straight and strong, parsing the broken heart of humankind and praising the loving heart of Christ. That was church.

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