Readers' Review: "Home" by Marilynne Robinson
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-20/readers-review-home-marilynne-robinson
In his poem, “The Death of the Hired Man,” Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.” In a novel titled “Home,” Marilynne Robinson shows it’s not always that simple. The book is a companion to her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Gilead,” which is written in the form of a letter from an elderly minister to his young son. The same characters appear in the same place and time in “Home.” But the perspective shifts across town to another aging minister and his family’s troubles.
Guests
Susan Page
Washington bureau chief for USA Today.
E. Ethelbert Miller
poet; director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University, Board Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.
The Right Reverand Jane Holmes Dixon
retired Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Pro-tempore.
Comments
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I would like to hear more from the Reverand about choice from the book of Job. I had a STRONG faith for most of my life, but since last summer it has been deeply shaken. I have had a debilitating chronic illness for the last 17 years--I was struck down at 23. Most medical experts expected me to die, but I survivied and I have carved out a life for myself. I never lost faith. I never became bitter, I remained in joy. Then last summer, my dog who was a HUGE part of my joy and the most significant being in my life was murdered by a Buck in our backyard. We, Georgia-Ruth and I were playing ball and he attacked with no provocation. I have been lost since. I feel nothing for God except anger and betrayal. I am bewildered by Jesus. Not only did I lose my Georgie, but I have lost God and my sense of security. Would these books help?
Great show.
I was raised by parents who both chose atheism from religious families. I am respectful of those who believe, even though I see religion as a 'crutch'. I was struck by the woman caller who was struggling with discrimination by an opposing faith. In the end, the aspect of religion that appeals to me least is the fact that they are all divisive and intolerant.
Eric from Rocky Mount Va
A few years ago our daughter's public high school allowed an evangelical Christian group to hold "student-led" weekly free pizza lunches/prayer sessions inside the school, during the school day. Raised in a Christian tradition which did not emphasize evangelism, she was emotionally strong enough to brush off the few disparaging/half joking comments she did receive ("You're going to Hell" and the like) for opting out of most of the sessions. But, I often wonder how the small number of students of non-Christian religions felt. I'm sure that pizza looked awfully good, and they probably felt left out. And, conversely, how would the Christian pizza/prayer lunch students have felt if Jewish students or Muslim students had requested a similar arrangement? Or...Wiccan students? There are actually some Wiccans in our region, and I believe some of the local Unitarians may embrace aspects of paganism.
It's my understanding that versions of this religious-group sponsored pizza/prayer lunch occurs in public schools throughout my state.
I do not believe that such practices serve to promote religious freedom, tolerance, or goodwill. Our public institutions should strive harder to be religious-neutral places where all Americans feel welcome.
It was too bad that the last comment from the Calvinist went unanswered as he lamented forced "redistribution" of wealth as not moral; in that I am in agreement. But no comment or challenge to that about the forced redistribution of wealth created by well organized, well financed lobbyists for innumerable, mostly private, corporate interests which result in numerous tax breaks that redistribute wealth UP, rather than down; not as an issue of morality but of justice and fairness.
Robinson has written extensively about Calvin in her collection of essays The Death of Adam.
Sorry I am not in the same time zone to comment live. The conversation regarding predestination leads me to think that the restoration of both the DeSoto and the garden argue against predestination. Even the possibility of renewing the house after to old Rev. Boughton dies. So the question seems to be doesn't resurrection trump predestination.
In some ways I was saddenned that for a while the callers on today's program were about to sabotage the discussion and muck up a great chance to explore the depths of Robinson's great novels with a sidetrack discussion on atheism and the public square.
Still the panel when given oxygen rose to the occasion and with the previous discussion of Gilead, Diane Rehm has done a great service to our United States and her wider audience.
I got Marilynne Robinson's autograph in Birmingham about five years ago. AT my request she signed my copy of Gilead: "Keep wrestling with Puritans and Prigs", a title of one of her essays in Death of Adam.
Would be great if the DRSHOW could have Robinson on for the hour sometime soon to discuss her collection of essays, the Death of Adam to talk about Calvinism exclusively.
And on a separate show have a panel with Darren Dochuk and Dan Williams whose recent books on Religion in America From Bible Belt to Sunbelt and God's Own Party got strong kudos from Mark Noll in June 6 New Republic.
I have linked this episode to a Baptist discussion where the Calvinism is thick. Will be interesting to see how the Dogma vs experience quotient plays there.
I was taken aback listening to the DR show this morning. I was surprised at the general presumption of the legitimacy of religious faith in this discussion. In response to one caller, the ex-minister on the show, using a quote from someone, said she doesn’t condemn or disapprove of atheism because it is really asking the big questions about purpose and morality that is important, rather than the specific answer, since we of course can’t have all the answers. But religious faith exists today at that point where people stop asking those big questions and adopt a certain story as an explanation. Advances in science have routinely provided explanations for things that used to be explained by religion or superstition. We no longer believe that storms are cause by angry gods. Today, faith is not used to explain the weather. Since science and empirical evidence do not explain everything about life, people who do not believe in a God today must accept the uncertainty and unanswered questions. People who turn to faith in a religious explanation do so because they are more comfortable with such a story than with the uncertainty. So when someone stops believing in God, I don’t think of them as “fallen” but as breaking free and moving forward. When someone adopts a religious believe, I think of them as falling back into obsolete superstitious notions that served purposes in ancient societies, and that is hardly a rational thing to do today. Faith is something one adopts out of emotional or psychological weakness, to feel better. Why then, do discussions like this give religious faith such respect and presumed legitimacy, like a third rail? It makes me think of the guarded discussions of politics during the McCarthy era.
I was taken aback listening to the DR show this morning. I was surprised at the general presumption of the legitimacy of religious faith in this discussion. In response to one caller, the ex-minister on the show, using a quote from someone, said she doesn’t condemn or disapprove of atheism because it is really asking the big questions about purpose and morality that is important, rather than the specific answer, since we of course can’t have all the answers. But religious faith exists today at that point where people stop asking those big questions and adopt a certain story as an explanation. Advances in science have routinely provided explanations for things that used to be explained by religion or superstition. We no longer believe that storms are cause by angry gods. Today, faith is not used to explain the weather. Since science and empirical evidence do not explain everything about life, people who do not believe in a God today must accept the uncertainty and unanswered questions. People who turn to faith in a religious explanation do so because they are more comfortable with such a story than with the uncertainty. So when someone stops believing in God, I don’t think of them as “fallen” but as breaking free and moving forward. When someone adopts a religious believe, I think of them as falling back into obsolete superstitious notions that served purposes in ancient societies, but that is hardly a rational thing to do today. Faith is something one adopts out of emotional or psychological weakness, to feel better. Why then, do discussions like this give religious faith such respect and presumed legitimacy--like a third rail? It makes me think of the guarded discussions of politics during the McCarthy era.
Kowhai, I don't know if you'll see this, as you wrote some time ago. First, I'm so sorry about your loss of your beloved Georgia. She was very blessed in her time here to have you as her human partner.
Perhaps it will help to think of what Mary lost, dear. If we believe that the goal of life is to grow ever closer to God and not merely "happiness" as we situationally know it, then all manner of loss and change of direction become meaningful, necessary. This does not diminish our grief. On the contrary, to the degree that we deeply love we will be deeply devastated by loss. But if we let ourselves feel the depths of that pain something transformative happens. It's as if the spaces formerly dedicated to earthly attachments effortlessly become available to God. It's a Grace.
Here's are two pithy quotes from Simone Weil that come to mind after reading your poignant story. She's tough, but you sound ready for her.
"God wears himself out through the infinite thickness of time and space in order to reach the soul and to captivate it. If it allows a pure and utter consent (though brief as a lightening flash) to be torn from it, then God conquers that soul. And when it has become entirely his he abandons it. He leaves it completely alone and it has in its turn, but gropingly, to cross infinite thickness of time and space in search of him whom it loves. It is thus that the soul, starting from the opposite end, makes the same journey that God made toward it. And that is the cross."
"The purpose of affliction to provide the occasion for judging that God's creation is good. Because, so long as the play of circumstances around us leaves our being almost intact, or only half impaired, we more or less believe that the world is created and controlled by ourselves. It is affliction that reveals, suddenly and to our very great surprise, that we are totally mistaken."
I am disappointed in the discussion of this great writer, and novel.
I am surprised you allowed audience who have not read the novel, of any by Robinson, to waste out time on 'general' comments about Christianity, etc..
Until the last minute you do not discuss the novel as literature, and then, say it is great. You do not convince the audience of its greatness
as you go into the more obscure scenes and general observations of the
book. Why not suggest this author/book deals with the biggest issues of our living, both as a nation and as humans, in deep historical, philosophical, and emotionally riveting art; quite above and beyond most
fiction in English?
Again, show could have been so much more....
This writer (RScott not Miss Robinson) makes a "religious" argument - a declaration of a fundamental viewpoint that does not contain a rooting logically-provable foundational statement. It is:
"When someone adopts a religious believe (sic), I think of them as falling back into obsolete superstitious notions that served purposes in ancient societies, and that is hardly a rational thing to do today. Faith is something one adopts out of emotional or psychological weakness, to feel better."
Here is another "religious" argument:
“He (a genderless or better a fully gendered entity who invented and created gender in humans and "saw that it was good") created all of creation (I can't say "universe" with the advent of the "multiverse" in modern cosmology) including earth, wind, sky and the human persons who live here. He created free will not to tempt us but so that we can be not slaves but sons (and daughters) of God.”
Why is this second statement unproved and irrational and RScott's statement rational? Could it be that RScott’s fundamental viewpoint – their fundamentalism – is a marker for their emotional weakness? If you hold one view over the other why are you right and the other view wrong?
My “religion” – my Christian Church – requires me to respect the viewpoints and the actions of the other, the alien and the wayfarer. She specifically requires me to feed and clothe them too. When I fail I am encouraged and again even specifically required to intentionally repent of my error, seek God’s forgiveness in a ritualistic way and then to avoid this sin. The ritual is not an irrational superstition but a liturgy reflecting our human need for ceremony with the purpose of emotionally cementing convictions. (If you doubt this human need attend a university tenure investiture.) To the extent that people don’t reform and avoid the subsequent error is not a flaw of Christianity but of Christians. RScott is entitled to feel that Christianity in the West has failed but I objectively review the record and evaluate that glass as 90% full. I evaluate RScott’s viewpoint – an academic rationalism – and its fruits and am unimpressed.