quote · Legacy record
This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don't add up. They don't even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes it is hard to believe they are all parts of one thing. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead, it is is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy.
This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don't add up. They don't even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes it is hard to believe they are all parts of one thing. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead, it is is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy.
Approximate author period: c. 1943 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Marilynne Robinson
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1943 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1943; activity date not established; Wikidata Q253926, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q253926 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 287250; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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