David Bailey is the man behind the Pastrol Counceling Center “Restoration” at the First Presbyterian Church, 900 Second Avenue in Opelika and provides a monthly column for the Opelika Daily News.
I recently finished reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. One particular passage stood out to me as the anchor of the book’s power. I’ll quote it here, even though taken out of context it’s probably not as evocative. The premise is that an old pastor (who fathered a child late in life) is dying, and he wants his son to know how much he loves/loved him. Presumably, the son would read the letters when he’s grown older and his father is long gone. Here’s the passage:
“I’d have never believed I’d see a wife of mine doting on a child of mine. It still amazes me every time I think of it. I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If I only had words to tell you.”
There are indeed many days when I wonder what I’ve done in my life. In essence, I question my significance. And then when I question my significance, my tendency as a human is to resort to performance. Isn’t that what we all tend to do? We want to prove we matter–that our life means something–by earning more money, by looking a certain way, by getting all A’s, by living up to God’s standards, by being a better pastor/teacher/banker/mother. But the reality is we can never DO enough to feel significant. We’re imperfect people living in a frustrating world of “thorns and thistles.” The whole point of life, of faith, of spirituality is that in our feelings of insignificance we would run to someone bigger, someone with the potential of giving us an identity and a purpose.
The old pastor understood this truth. He understood that one day his son would doubt his significance. And he wanted to say to his son, once and for all, no questions asked, “I think you’re special and you’ve meant the world to me.” He does this more explicitly toward the end of the novel:
“I can tell you this, that if I’d married some rosy dame and she had given me ten children and they had each given me ten grandchildren, I’d leave them all, on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk a thousand miles just for the sight of your face, your mother’s face. And if I never found you, my comfort would be in that hope, my lonely and singular hope, which could not exist in the whole of Creation except in my heart and in the heart of the Lord. That is just a way of saying I could never thank God sufficiently for the splendor He has hidden from the world–your mother excepted, of course–and revealed to me in your sweetly ordinary face.”
Elsewhere in the novel, the old pastor remarks that Augustine (a church father and theologian) believed that God loves each of us as an only child. While that’s difficult for me to comprehend, if not impossible, there are moments when I’m touched by the kind of love described in the above passage. I ask you, reader, does anyone love you that much? Is there anyone out there who thinks you’re that special? It’s a big risk to hope for that intimate a love, for that great a significance. After all, you’ve been disappointed and treated as insignificant (at least at times) by your own parents, by your friends, by life’s harsh realities. Maybe even God has seemed distant and uncaring. But even if you can’t allow yourself to believe, don’t you wish there were a father who would walk a thousand miles on the coldest night of the year just to catch a glimpse of your face? Somewhere deep in your calloused and self-protected heart isn’t there a longing for a shepherd who would leave the 99 and pursue you, the lost, lonely and frightened little lamb? You tell me.
*All quotes are from the Picador paperback version of Gilead, copyright 2004, Marilynne Robinson. Go get a copy and read for yourself.
