“In writing this, I notice the care it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word ‘just.’ I almost wish I could have written that the sun just shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed – when it’s used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a think existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me at the moment. There is something real signified by that word ‘just’ that proper language won’t acknowledge. It’s a little like the German ge-. I regret that I must deprive myself of it. It takes half the point out of telling the story.” – excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead“

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I’ve decided that I use the word “beautiful” much too often.

I’ve described many things as “beautiful”: photographs, people, designs, technology, art. However, after reading Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead“, I realized that I needed to curb my use of the word because what other word could aptly describe this book and do it justice? Not that my use of the word “beautiful” in the past was ever inappropriate but it’s a word I have over-used and by doing I think I’ve diluted it’s meaning and impact.

“Gilead” is a carefully architected piece of literature. It’s not the most fascinating book I’ve read nor is it hurried. Cautious and intricate in emotion, it’s comprised of letters from a dying minister to his young son. Hoping to fill the fatherless void that will be left by his imminent demise, the father details for his son their life story, their family history, his hopes for him, instruction, his own struggles and fears. He’s open, honest and humble.

Here are a few excerpts:

“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. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. That is very unsettling over the long term. ‘Let your works so shine before men,’ etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.”

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“I do enjoy remembering that morning. I was sixty-seven, to be exact, which did not seem old to me. I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.”

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Beautiful.

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