What Are We Doing Here?

What Are We Doing Here? by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't think there is any type of book I progress through more slowly than a compilation of essays and lectures. This one took me almost an entire year. That being said, I think books like this always contain the most important and pertinent things I have ever read. These topics are raw, relevant, and real—which might explain why they're so much more difficult for me to get through than a good bout of fiction.

"I talked once with a cabdriver who had spent years in prison. He said he had no idea that the world was something he could be interested in. And then he read a book.

In the history of the West, for all its achievements, there is also a persisting impatience with the energy and originality of the mind. It can make us very poor servants of purposes that are not our own."

Whilst reading this book, I felt myself relating to this cabdriver from one of this book's earlier essays and repenting of the ways that I have been guilty of being a "poor servant to purposes that are not my own."

I found the essays in What Are We Doing Here? to be collectively edifying, enlightening, and terrifying. I love Marilynne Robinson for her unnerving ability to eloquently articulate thoughts that I can only vaguely construct within the confines of my limited mind... ("We can feel a deficiency in what we know or do, we can hear inadequacy in our most painfully considered phrases. And gracious and chimerical beauty will bless us with the certainty that there is more to be hoped for, more to be tried.")

It was wonderful to read some of the most objective and contextually considerate opinions on Puritanism that I've ever read. And while there wasn't a single piece that I disliked, I was especially moved by "Considering the Theological Virtues" and "Slander." In fact, "Slander" was the most relevant and poignant sermon I've seen discussing the state of Christianity in the modern political climate. I wish it could somehow be required reading for any Christian-identifying American, but unfortunately, we can't even all get on board with a read-through of what we consider to be God's Inspired Word. 😩

Anyway, I had already known I loved Ms. Robinson's fiction writing from when I read Gilead, but I think her academic writing is even more wonderful. I'm definitely adding her other essay compilations to the to-read list.

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