I\u2019ve said she is theological without being dogmatic, but I think the key to her project involves making space for theology more than defending specific claims. It\u2019s the realm of metaphysics she cares about, the idea that our experience suggests something grander about us and about our apprehensions than our scientific models can account for. For her, the Christian narrative gives that transcendent realm its coordinates, but it\u2019s our experience as human beings\u2014Christians or non-Christians\u2014that tells us that we matter and that the universe has beauty. She wants to recover a place for that mattering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gift of Marilynne Robinson\u2019s long shelf of late work, then, is its refusal of cynicism, its declaration of wonder and awe, and its affirmation that our little minds haven\u2019t exhausted the meaning of the universe\u2014and won\u2019t. Long before Robinson picked up her pen, Simone Weil told us that we\u2019d already \u201clost the whole poetry of the cosmos.\u201d Robinson hasn\u2019t given up on that poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of my favorite notes of gratitude and hope comes in her novel Gilead<\/em> (2004). \u201cIn eternity this world will be Troy, I believe,\u201d her minister-hero declares, \u201cand all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.\u201d It\u2019s a startling image. It reverses the sense that our lives are trivial details in an unimaginable vastness. In Robinson\u2019s vision, the universe\u2014and the God who wills the universe into existence at the beginning of the book of Genesis\u2014has a deep interest in us, such that even our follies are part of some epic song. It\u2019s elevating. Maybe it\u2019s fanciful, or maybe it\u2019s true and sublime. \u201cIt depends upon the universe,\u201d as Saul Bellow\u2019s Herzog decides, \u201cwhat it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> There are a handful of writers that, when I read them, I marvel at both their writing and wisdom.
I just completed Marilynne Robinson\u2019s *Reading Genesis*, and I can assure you of her place on that short list.
She has clearly walked closely with the Lord these many years. pic.twitter.com\/UCJQdSG7mJ<\/a><\/p>— Steve Bezner (@Bezner) May 4, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>