Sean the Baptist

I have been meaning to mention Marilynne Robinson's astonishing novel for a while now.  I finished reading it in December with that sense of loss that the completion of some books provokes in me (the last was, like Gilead, a Pulitzer prize winning novel, Michael Cunningham's The Hours.)

Of course, Gilead connected with me because the central figure is a dissenting minister.  John Ames belongs to a bygone age, but his sense of calling, vocation and duty are timeless and his vision of what ministry can be, both poignant and compelling.  Here is Ames, reflecting on his sleepless nights:

'In the old days I could walk down every single street, past every house, in about an hour. I'd try to remember the people who lived in each one, and whatever I knew about them, which was often quite a lot. . . . And I'd pray for them. And I'd imagine peace they didn't expect and couldn't account for descending on their illness or their quarreling or their dreams. Then I'd go into the church and pray some more and wait for daylight. I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come.' (p.81)

But more than this, it is Ames' perception of the beauty in the world; a beauty that is not merely the breaking in of divine light from heaven, but which is utterly inherent in the world in all its worldliness.  Here is just one, exquisitely beautiful, quotation: 

'I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again.  I know all this is mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that.  There is a human beauty in it.  And I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition or 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.' (p.65)

The other thing Ames does when he can't sleep is read Barth, and it shows:

'When this old sanctuary is full of silence and prayer, every book Karl Barth ever will write would not be a feather in the scales against it from the point of view of profundity, and I would not believe in Barth's own authenticity if I did not believe he would know and recognize the truth of that, and honor it, too.' (p.197)

I am not sure if I can think of a more authentic Christian voice in recent literature than that of the Revd John Ames.