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.
With over ten literary awards for her nonfiction and three novels, Lila is Robinson’s recently-released fourth novel; a reflection on the book of Ezekiel. 2008’s Home is a rumination on the story of the prodigal son. Both are far from being predictable allegory. During an interview about Lila at the Southbank Centre in London this November, Robinson revealed ‘I am haunted in my imagination by biblical paradigms. […] I write what’s on my mind.’ Perhaps because of the preoccupation with biblical narrative, what’s on her mind is profoundly human, and her writing echoes all around with grace.
Gracious behaviour
The novel addresses the themes of abandonment, loneliness, suffering, forgiveness and rescue that saturate the life of the heroine, Lila. These themes are explored in the context of communities, as Lila learns what it is to live life alongside others. During the interview, Robinson suggested that ‘gracious behaviour among human beings is the most beautiful thing that happens in the universe. We have a moving freedom to love one another, to notice in each other what is magnificent, and to be noticed. It’s about figuring out where you are and what’s happening around you, and finding a way to be gracious in the midst of it.’ This universal human experience is beautifully manifested in Lila.
In the opening pages, Lila describes her experience of being rejected, unloved and cast out with a striking lack of self-pity. Transience governs her life as she grows up, until one day a rainstorm pushes her into a church, and into the life of John Ames, a preacher almost twice her age. Gilead (2004) is written from Ames’s perspective, so Lila stands on the same terrain, but assesses it with very different eyes. ‘Lila isn’t self-aware in the way that most people are’, states Robinson. Unused to being loved and conscious of how her wildness makes her unlovely, Lila is wary that Ames might suddenly cut ties with her. But, as Robinson explains, ‘if you love someone, you see them as God sees them – in a state of grace’.
What it means to be loved
Slowly, steadily, Lila learns what it means to be loved, and to be seen in a state of grace. Just as God tells his people Israel in Ezekiel 16.10, ‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress’, Lila is baptised by Ames into a new life, into a covenant with him, and he clothes her. Fear is a strong undercurrent to Lila’s new-found hope, an uncomfortable reality of the human condition which awakens us to the notion that ‘there is nothing holding the world together but the grace of God’, the author says.
With writing so richly embedded with biblical stories and imagery, does the author worry about younger audiences not being familiar with the Scripture to which her novels so vividly allude? ‘It’s about making their inherited culture readable to them. If they’re not interested in reading the Bible, that’s our fault’. Perhaps this is a challenge to Christians everywhere – are we engaging each other and the world around us with complex, carefully told stories deeply permeated in biblical paradigms? ‘Our memories retain the splendid things of the world. In my writing I’m searching for metaphors that will reinvest the richness that we know is there, but which our senses are dulled to’, Robinson concludes.
God has indeed infused his creation with grandeur, and it runs brightly through even the most ordinary things of each day. Marilynne Robinson’s writing declares the numinous of our daily existence, and draws our eyes towards the God who bestows splendour on that which he creates and sustains.
