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 has 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?
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave--that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm....What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again.
John Ames in Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
A happy Thanksgiving to our readers here at W4.
Comments (6)
A blessed Thanksgiving to all, and a special thank you to those of you who post here for helping keep us informed and thinking.
Posted by Beth Impson | November 21, 2012 9:42 PM
Thank you, Beth. We couldn't do it (I know I couldn't) if it weren't for good readers.
Posted by Lydia | November 22, 2012 2:03 PM
Lydia,
Great quotes! Needless to say, I'm thankful for the opportunity to blog here and for the wonderful (and at times challenging) feedback we get from readers.
I'm finally finishing Saint Augustine's Confessions (it seems like I've been slogging through his final philosophical chapters about Genesis forever). Anyway, one thing he does do well in the book is express gratitude to God:
Posted by Jeffrey S. | November 23, 2012 9:57 PM
Thanks, Jeffrey. That's Augustine. He gets on these rolls.
Away back in graduate school, I had to have two foreign languages. So I did a crash course in Latin, which I'd never taken before, in summer school (!) and then approached a prof. in the Classics department and asked if I could take one of his upper-level courses, which is what I needed to complete the requirement. Needless to say, the summer school crash course did not really satisfy the prerequisites, but he pulled a book off the shelf, let me stumble through a few sentences, and let me in. It was a course in Christian Latin texts, including the Confessions. The prof. was an atheist but a real scholar. It was great to watch his face when we would get to these passages where Augustine just got on a roll, praying to God. He'd growl something like, "And then we get another of these passages with all these paradoxes and such. Moving along..."
Posted by Lydia | November 23, 2012 10:13 PM
Re-reading that comment, it might look like I'm dismissing St. Augustine's "rolls." To the contrary, I meant to praise them.
Posted by Lydia | November 24, 2012 11:31 AM
Happy and blessed Thanksgiving to all. I was away visiting family, with no Internet for 5 days. Can't decide whether that lack of access was great or horrible. ;-)
I am afraid I read St. Augustine when I was too young - before 30. I can read him now, when I work at it, but it always seems like some other works are more suited to whatever I am doing at the moment.
Posted by Tony | November 26, 2012 7:57 PM