Little Moments of Wonder

If there is one thing amazing about Marilynne Robinson, it is her knack of being able to capture little moments of wonder in her book. I don’t know if they do anything at all to further the story, though I have a feeling that they don’t, but she just seems to be able to bring everything to a standstill with her prose, so that you just want to stop and admire the picture that she is painting so well with her words. Maybe that’s why this book won a Pulitzer prize. Seriously, I don’t know why some of those short passages are there in the book at all. I wonder why a pastor, writing his last words to his very young son knowing that he will not be able to see his little boy grow up, would include these extremely personal moments of wonder. Maybe it will help the boy to see the world through his eyes. Maybe it will help the son of Reverend Ames to see intimately into his soul when he no longer is around. Maybe, they’re like just sitting there in the story just because they’re beautiful, like these:

I really can’t tell what’s beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They’re not church-going, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They’re always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don’t know why they don’t catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you’re done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is more easily spent.

The mention of Feuerbach and joy reminded me of something I saw early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables and doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

As I was walking up to the church this morning, I passed that row of big oaks by the war memorial – if you remember them – and I thought of another morning, fall a year or two ago, when they were dropping their acorns thick as hail almost. There was all sorts of thrashing in the leaves and there were acorns hitting the pavement so hard they’d fly past my head. All this in the dark, of course. I remember a slice of moon, no more than that. It was a very clear night, or morning, very still, and then there was such energy in the things transpiring among the trees, like a storm, like travail. I stood there a little out of range, and I thought, It is all still new to me. I have lived my life on the prairie and a line of oak trees can still astonish me.

Marilynne Robinson invites us to slow down and to be quiet. This is her gift to us. She reminds us to remember what we have forgotten for a long time - to be able to pay attention to this interesting planet. Yes, it really does deserve all the attention we can give it. I have forgotten… I have forgotten the little moments of wonder…

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 this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. 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. ~ Marilynne Robinson, Gilead