When my father found his father at Mount Pleasant after the war ended, he was shocked at first to see how he had been wounded. In fact, he was speechless. So my grandfather's first words to his son were, "I am confident that I will find great blessing in it." And that is what he said about everything that happened to him for the rest of his life, all of which tended to be drastic. I remember at least two sprained writsts and a cracked rib. He told me once that being blessed meant being bloodied, and that is true etymologically, in English. . . .

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead