I'm reading the amazing book Gilead right now. It takes my breath away. Such beautiful, deep, thick, rich prose, like the finest of dark French chocolate. One paragraph I read stuck me in the heart:
You are standing up on the seat of your swing and sailing higher than you really ought to, with that bold, planted stance of a sailor on a billowy sea. The ropes are long and you are light and the ropes bow like cobwebs, laggardly, indolent. Your shirt is red--it is your favorite shirt--and you fly into the sun-light and pause there brilliantly for a second and then fall back into the shadows again. You appear to be altogether happy.
Childhood. Life seemed simple then, when all you had to worry about was swinging higher in and out of shade. Of laughing at tangled kittens, or crying at scraped knees. It seems my entire adulthood is spent in trying to recapture childhood. But it sometimes remains for me an elusive spy, darting farther and farther away the longer I chase it.
As the narrator in this piece, I catch glimpses of childhood when I watch my own children. Thank God for my children who beckon me back to their world. Thank God for a husband who knows when to laugh. Thank God that I'm in the process of becoming more and more wide-eyed. Not only do I want to appear "altogether happy," but I want to live "altogether happy."
Oh dear Jesus, make me a child whose toes kiss the sun when I swing in and out of the shadows. Touch my heart, make it young again. Pull away the yoke of adult responsibility just long enough for me to rejoice in a sunny day. Amen.
8 Comments:
Ah, Gilead. I finished it a few days ago and was going to tell you to read it. I knew you'd like it. Beautiful book.
So glad you're enjoying Gilead. One of the most beautiful books I've ever read. (Besides Watching the Tree Limbs.)
One more writer: I will always take your good recommendations. The Kite Runner. Wow.
Rachelle. Wow. Thanks. That's a high compliment.
Thanks, Mary.
Beautiful words and beautiful thoughts.
Mary, I have read that some writers found Gilead to be utterly boring. I couldn't get enough of it. One of the things I adored was the way the preacher/father studied his young son in such detail. I don't think anyone studied me in my childhood (they've expressed their relief to me that I did not seem to require attention), and I wonder when I read paragraphs like the one you quote above whether a young child in real life is aware of his parent's enamoration (ooh, good word, Katy).
That must be a wonderful feeling, one I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing vicariously through Gilead.
This post makes me want to go running straight to the nearest bookstore. Thanks for the recommendations.
I haven't read Gilead yet, but I just read my first Susan Howatch book, recommended in the link you posted by Chuck Colson. It was the Wonder Worker. Wonderful look at characters who aren't always what they first seem.
Kelly, Thanks.
Katy, wow. Good point. The book re-inspires me to awe my children.
C.H., you won't be disappointed.
Jennifer, Now I have another book to add to my pile!
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