Why I Love Elizabeth Goudge

The book is "The Heart of the Family". It is the third book in her trilogy about the Eliot family.

The characters in this excerpt are Hiliary, a 72 year old Anglican priest and Lucilla, his 91 year old mother.

"In the war I disliked the aftereffects of wounds and gas intensely," said Hiliary. "When you are burned, and can't get your breath, and are afraid you are going blind, it is impossible to pray. And then one day, with great difficulty, I suddenly put into practice and knew as truth what of course I had always known theoretically, that if pain is offered to God as prayer then pain and prayer are synonymous. A sort of substitution takes place that is like the old story of Beauty and the Beast. The utterly abominable Thing that prevents your prayer becomes your prayer. And you know what prayer is, Mother. It's all of a piece, the prayer of a mystic or of a child, adoration or intercession, it's all the same thing; whether you feel it or not it is union with God in the deep places where the fountains are. Once you have managed the wrenching effort of substitution the abominable Thing, while remaining utterly detestable for yourself, becomes the channel of grace for others and so the dearest treasure that you have. And if it happens to be a secret treasure, something that you need not speak about to another, then that's all the better. Somehow the secrecy of it increases its value."


"You put it better than I could do," said Lucilla gently. "I did feel after that way of prayer in the war, but I did not try hard enough, and when the war was over I fell away. But I recognize what you say as a truth that I know."


"Of course," said Hilary, "I do not think that anyone who has experienced disaster is not in some way aware of one of the fundamental paradoxes of our existence. Only we don't live in a perpetual state of disaster, and it doesn't occur to us to apply the paradox to the worries and frustrations and irritations among which we do perpetually live. We lack the humility."


"Well, really," said Lucilla, "if I couldn't put up with my everyday worries and aches and pains without having to regard them as prayer I should feel myself a poor sort of coward."


As I said," remarked Hiliary dryly, "we lack the humility. One feels ridiculous, as you don't feel ridiculous when it is some disaster. But it's not just the way you look at it, it's a deliberate and costly action of the will. It can be a real wrenching of the soul. Yet the more you practice it with joy as with disaster and Things, lifted up with that same hard effort even the earthly joys are points of contact and have the freshness of eternity in them."