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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.
After my last chemo treatment on Thursday I have suffered no vomiting or trips to the ER to get tanked up on IV fluids, yeah! I am still tired and I move a little slow, but I feel much better than last time. Thank goodness for my chemo nurse Jane telling me to take all of my anti-nausea medicines until I feel better, not just one at a time.
My wife picked up Into Thin Air after several years of prodding–I read it two times more before she finally gave in and started. Although I hike and occasionally scramble to high places, I have no illusion that I climb mountains or I am a climber; but I do know the feeling of irrational decision making. Krakauer explains the drive to climb tall mountains as an irrational act, in spite of all reason people feel driven to do it. Usually this drive has no connection to what other people think, despite the reckoning of most people; it springs from inside a person, a challenge that can only be satisfied by trying.
Many of my favorite memories stem from my ability to make irrational decisions: playing the heater game in 90 degree weather, hiking the Grand Canyon from rim to rim, asking Sara to marry me, taking time off from school to live with my dad for six months, sleeping on a football field in Ogden, Utah. This list could stretch much longer, but that is not the point. As an educator, I strive to make rational and logical decisions and I even look at decisions that do not follow some discernible logic as inferior decision making. This is wholey untrue, irrational does not equal crazy or stupid; there is a part of being a human being that goes beyond our ability to form a system to explain it. This is the land of the irrational where grace lives and the mystic speaks truth. By no means am I saying that our souls are a simple dichotomy where you either push the rational or irrational button, but that we are terribly complex and yielding to a human explanation–this is what rationality is, to the best of our ability, how things work–does a great disservice to ourselves. To live in the mystery allows us to grow and to feel God’s grace.
I am sure that I am not done pondering this; till next time…
When I was a young human I read Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance by Donald Miller–this book has since been reworked and re-released as Through Painted Deserts. In this book, he recounts his roadtrip from Texas to Oregon with his close friend in a Volkswagen van; this book is the inspiration for my rim to rim hike of the Grand Canyon with my close friend Devin Tschirley.
Several years later I picked up his book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. In this book one chapter really jumped out at me; it was the chapter on grace. He recounts a time when he saw a woman in a grocery store using food stamps…
It was obvious as she unfolded the currency that she, I, and the checkout girl were quite uncomfortable with the interaction. I wished there was something I could do. I wished I could pay for her groceries myself, but to do so would have been to cause a greater scene…
…I realized that it was not the woman who should be pitied, it was me. Somehow I had come to believe that because a person is in need, they are candidates for sympathy, not just charity. It was not that I wanted to buy her groceries, the government was already doing that. I wanted to buy her dignity. And yet, by judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away.
Not only do I lose sight of what grace really is, sometimes I forget that I need grace just as much as anyone else. Miller goes on to say…
I love to give charity, but I don’t want to be charity. This is why I have so much trouble with grace…
…It isn’t that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity.
This is humbling; not only to Miller, but also for me. I want to be worthy in God’s eyes, yet the only way is if I receive God’s full grace.
It is no coincidence that a kid in my class asked me to write a college letter of recommendation for her. As she told me her story, she told me about being a Big Sister for a little girl. I was blessed by her willingness to love this little girl. This story reminded me about what God says we should value. This is at the heart of what Jesus said as he started his Sermon on the Mount:
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
4 Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted
5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.Matthew 5:3-8
When we are in a situation where we need grace–we need someone to stand in and fight for us, that is when we understand the true blessing of God.
14 The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.
Exodus 14:14
I pray that I can be still; that I can take God’s charity–his grace.
