The Balm of Gilead
I recently read Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead. Robinson’s first person narrator, a character by the name of John Ames, relates the story of his family, three generations of pastor-fathers. In a lengthy letter that reads like a journal, Ames shares this history with his son. Seventy-year-old Ames’s voice reflects his age, at times wandering, at times repeating himself, but always striving to make sense of the troubling dysfunction and beautiful theology bequeathed to him by his forefathers. As I read, I was struck not only by the believability of Ames’s voice, nor the author’s elegant use of imagery and language, but most particularly by the universality of the struggle Robinson depicts between loving fathers and respectful sons…
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