Gilead - Marilynne Robinson [105]
That is a thing I would love to see.
As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father's house—even when his father did, a fact which surely puts my credentials beyond all challenge. I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. And that's all right. There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?
It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.
I think I'll put an end to all this writing. I've read it over, more or less, and I've found some things of interest in it, mainly the way I have been drawn back into this world in the course of it. The expectation of death I began with reads like a kind of youthfulness, it seems to me now. The novelty of it interested me a good deal, clearly.
This morning I saw Jack Boughton walking up toward the bus stop, looking too thin for his clothes, carrying a suitcase that seemed to weigh almost nothing. Looking a good deal past his youth. Looking like someone you wouldn't much want your daughter to marry. Looking somehow elegant and brave.
I called to him and he stopped and waited for me, and I walked with him up to the bus stop. I brought along The Essence of Christianity, which I had set on the table by the door, hoping I might have a chance to give it to him. He turned it over in his hands, laughing a little at how beat up it is. He said, "I remember this from—forever!" Maybe he was thinking it looked like the kind of thing he used to pocket in the old days. That thought crossed my mind, and it made me feel as though the book did actually belong to him. I believe he was pleased with it. I dog-eared page 20—"Only that which is apart from my own being is capable of being doubted by me. How then can I doubt of God, who is my being? To doubt of God is to doubt of myself." And so on. I memorized that and a good bit more, so I could talk to Edward about it, but I didn't want to ruin the good time we'd had that one day playing catch, and the occasion really never arose again.
There were two further points I felt I should have made in our earlier conversations, one of them being that doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief, and the other being that the Greek word sozo, which is usually translated "saved," can also mean healed, restored, that sort of thing. So the conventional translation narrows the meaning of the word in a way that can create false expectations. I thought he should be aware that grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways. Well, I was also making conversation. I knew he must have heard more or less the same things from his father any number of times. My first thought was that nobody ought to be as lonely as he looked to me walking along by himself. And I believe he was glad of the company. He nodded from time to time, and his expression was very polite.
As we walked he glanced around at the things you never really look at when you live in a town-—the fretting on a gable, the path worn across an empty lot, a hammock slung between a cottonwood and a clothesline pole. We passed the church. He said, "I'll never see this place again," and there was a kind of sad wonder in his voice that I recognized. It gave me a turn. So I said, "You take care of yourself. They could need you sometime." After a minute he nodded, conceding the possibility.
Then he stopped and looked at me and said, "You know, I 'm doing the worst possible thing again. Leaving now. Glory will never forgive me. She says, 'This is it. This is your masterpiece.'