Marilynne Robinson’s newly-published Lila compels us to look afresh at the commonplace.
‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’, Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote. In those rare, clear moments when our eyes are unveiled, we might sometimes have a sense of this grandeur. We know it best when we behold a mountainscape or sunset, a new-born baby or a perfectly formed rose. The psalms are brimfull of wonder at the beauty of creation, and return to God praises for making it so.
Reserving our reverence?
It is right that we are awestruck when faced with these moments of utter majesty. But do we miss something when we reserve such reverence for those exceptional occasions? What might be gained from actively pursuing that grandeur with which God has charged his creation? Can it be sought in the mundane; in the ordinary of every day? Through writing that is both ethereal and immediate, the American writer Marilynne Robinson seeks to do just that.
