Tonight I have finished Gilead; I am not sure that I can properly reflect on this book yet, but I can say it has blessed me to read it.  The picture of fatherhood through the lens of my culture–i.e. the world I inhabit that often times feels shallow and thoughtless–is faded and bleak as if it had been forgotten in the parlor of an old house, the sun beating down on it unrelentingly.  With frequency bordering on the absurd, our culture repeats the stories of detached fathers, inept fathers, absent fathers, or insert-your-own-disheartening-adjective-here fathers.  These stereotypes are so ingrained in the zeitgeist, marketers have latched onto them in advertisements–see the H & R Block TaxCut commercial in which the wife encourages the husband to “talk to the box” to get customer support, chiding him for picking the wrong tax preparation software (my quick interweb search did not turn up a clip.)  

Gilead gives me hope; hope that being a father is much more about relying on God’s Grace than redeeming and restoring the faded painting in the parlor.  Painting a vivid and honest picture of fatherhood, Marilynne Robinson tells the story of a father writing to his son.  The honesty of struggle, thoughtfulness, honor, and trepidation spills onto the pages of Gilead; Robinson reveals the image of fatherhood in the light of total depravity and un-understandable Grace.  It is in that tension that we all must live; without it our picture hangs in the ceaseless sun, faded by the brokenness of a world without hope, without grace, without forgiveness. 

God has given me two children to love.  Although I am still frightened by the world they will inherit, I am not frightened of being a father.  God’s Grace covers me and it is my prayer that my children will allow it to cover them.