Category Archives: Robinson (Marilynne)

Though Thou Art in Thy Blood, Live

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2015

Spiritual Sunday A couple of weeks ago my library reading group discussed Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, the third novel in what one member described as a triptych. I love Robinson’s depiction of the Congregationalist minister John Ames in Gilead, and Lila gives us the backstory of the woman that Ames marries as an old man. (Home, […]

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The Deep (Not Scientific) Truth of Genesis

By Robin Bates | Published: June 16, 2013

The Book of Genesis, like poetry, captures truths inaccessible to science.

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Returning Home to Aging Parents

By Robin Bates | Published: May 21, 2013

Marilynne’s Robinson’s novel “Home” captures some of my own experience returning home.

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Acknowledging the Mysteries of Creation

By Robin Bates | Published: June 24, 2012

Novelist Marilynne Robinson takes to task both narrow-minded scientists and narrow-minded believers and holds up fiction as a powerful road to truth.

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Destructive Grieving for a Lost America

By Robin Bates | Published: June 13, 2012

Grieving for a lost America reaches deep across the political spectrum, “Beowulf” provides a healthy response.

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Depressed about Politics? Read Whitman

By Robin Bates | Published: June 12, 2012

Marilynne Robinson turns to Whitman to argue that American Democracy’s greatness lies in how it honors the individual soul.

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Obama Finds a Balm in Gilead

By Robin Bates | Published: September 7, 2010

Marilynne Robinson  I’ve been meaning to write for a while on Marilynne Robinson’s mesmerizing 2006 novel Gilead. I learned recently that it is one of Barack Obama’s favorite novels, which gives me an opportunity to explore how a work of literature impacts someone that we all have a stake in. This isn’t meant to be […]

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