Be really lazy today. Whenever you have to do something, follow it up with the question, “Why?” If you can’t come up with a good answer, don’t do it. If it is a necessity for your job or survival, find the most efficient way to get it off your schedule.
— Scott Young “The laziest solution possible“
This morning a splendid dawn passed over our house on its way, to Kansas. This morning Kansas rolled out of its sleep into a sunlight grandly announced, proclaimed throughout heaven — one more of the very finite number of days that this old prairie has been called Kansas, or Iowa. But it has all been one day, that first day. Light is constant, we just turn over in it. So every day is in fact the self-same evening and morning.
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzling apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our moral insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true.
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope.
…
I believe I saw in young Boughton’s face, as we walked along, a sense of irony at having invested hope in this sad old place, and also the cost to him of relinquishing it. And I knew what hope it was. It was just that kind the place was meant to encourage, that a harmless life could be lived here unmolested.
…
He [my father] told me that it had not been his intention to leave me stranded here. In fact, it was his hope that I would seek out a larger life than this. He and Edward both felt strongly what excellent use I could make of a broader experience. He told me that looking back on Gilead from any distance made it seem a relic, an archaism. … He was expounding the wonders of the larger world, and I was resolving in my heart never to risk the experience of them. He said, “I have become aware that we here lived within the limits of notions that were very old and even very local.”
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12 (NIV)
There was an uneasy silence, so I remarked that he might find Karl Barth a help, just for the sake of conversation. He said, “Is that what you do when some tormented soul arrives on your doorstep at midnight? Recommend Karl Barth?”
…
Your mother said, “A person can change. Everything can change.” Still never looking at him.
He said, “Thanks. That’s all I wanted to know.”
…
Finally he said, “When I was small I thought the Lord was someone who lived in the attic and paid for the groceries. That was the last form of religious conviction I have been capable of.” Then he said, “I don’t mean to be rude.”
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
Then he asked, “Do you ever wonder why American Christianity always seems to wait for the real thinking to be done elsewhere?”
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.
So my advice is this — don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
God will rule, whether you obey or not. Consent to be obedient, or he will punish you without asking your consent.
— Richard Baxter A Christian Directory
Love is holy because it is like grace — the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
— Gilead: A Novel Marilynne Robinson
The Metal Detector 