Marilyn Robinson's Lila will be my favorite!

I seem to think about people I see, like a mom and son at Greenfield Village and instantly want to tell the mom to control her two year old, to get down and connect with him, to do any of a number of things, but as I think about it, my kids are running out of control near a puppet show. Why do I presume to know what other people should do?

Even sitting in a coffee shop, a guy says, every woman should shave her head at least once, and I want to raise my head and say, Not me. I have all these bumps on my head that would make me look diseased. This morning I complimented a middle aged woman's adorable short hair and she pulled me in and said, "It's just browning back after chemo treatments." Right next to me two women are talking about creation and the word evolutionary, ticks and diseases and birth control and IUD's so she is choosing abstinence. I want to jump in and argue something.

There's a proverb about taking the plank out of your own eye before seeing the speck in someone else's, that always hits me.  I'm so ready to point fingers and yet can't come up with my own solutions to things like, what to make for dinner, how to help my sons know they are loved, how to carve out time to play and draw and sit with them. 

I have a character, a female preacher with no seminary training or church to speak of, who is just like this. She seems to know everything about everyone else and nothing about herself. I wonder if I could write a blog from her perspective as a backdoor way of gaining clarity to my own dilemma?  Somehow the degree of separation and ability to go down rabbit trails without risking owning them, feels safe. I think this must be what Marilyn Robinson does as she hops from book to book, giving voice to different characters within the town of Gilead. I know without reading one word, that I will love her, Lila, more then any of the others!