Gilead's this-worldly Christianity

Reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is a slow business. Much like Frederick Buechner's Godric, the style and the pace of writing (quasi-memoir, almost "confessional") force the reader to control his or her reading speed (that is, if the reader wants to get anything at all out of the novel). There are no chapter divisions; it is framed as a letter by an aged Congregationalist minister to his son, who is not yet ten years old, having been born in the winter of his father's life.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel evinces a breadth of Christian influence. Robinson herself was raised a Presbyterian, but is now a Congregationalist. One recurrent theme is the minister's admission that he will miss this life when he is in Heaven (and, at seventy-four, he is very aware of his impending departure). He hardly downplays cavalierly the joys of eternity, but neither does he deny that he is likely to remember, and perhaps "miss," if that is possible in the next life, the "fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us.

In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try."

It's an interesting remark. It may be something out of the vein of liberal this-worldly Christianity (although I'm far too ignorant about twentieth-century religious mainline history), but it does make good food for thought. (But I do hope that I won't miss this life too much once it's over.)