Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Summers Robinsonis an American novelist and essayist best known for her novels Housekeepingand Gilead...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 November 1943
CountryUnited States of America
collective definition mind openness reveals whatever
I think a Christian definition of the mind should be: an openness to whatever the individual and collective mind reveals to us.
love-is what-matters grace
Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
pain thinking humanity
We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.
people childhood imagine
More generally, people who lived in a period when maternal, infant and childhood mortality were still high would have been tougher than most of us can imagine.
eye men thinking
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.
prayer grateful dark
I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.
father our-father absolutes
. . . there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving.
suits great-men form
Faith takes a great many forms, suited to a variety of sensibilities, and mine happens to suit me very well.
christian kindness believe
The only obligation I recognize is to say what I believe to be true [ ] and to say it with kindness. I believe that is how a Christian conversation should proceed.
eye shining world
The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?
love-is needs doe
God does not need our worship. We worship to enlarge our sense of holy, so that we can feel and know the presense of the Lord, who is with us always. He said, Love is what it amounts to, a loftier love, and pleasure in a loving presence.
dream memories mind
The mind has a complex life that can seem quite autonomous - dreams, obsessions, unwilled memory are all instances of this.
struggle thinking enough
And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.
loneliness reflection appreciate
People don't acknowledge loneliness in themselves, and don't appreciate its benefits, the reflection and attentiveness that come with it, the deepened acquaintance with oneself.