The other day, after barely overcoming a migraine, I cast around for a book to dive into and there was Island Magic by Elizabeth Goudge. Her first novel, it was better than I expected it to be.
"they taught us everything there - geometry and algebra and literature and history and -
Soeur Monique interrupted with another snort. They may have taught you but they did not educate you, she said. The function of the educator, she declaimed, is to discover in each individual child the gifts implanted in her by Almighty God and to develop and dedicate them to His service.
Then it doesn't matter if one isn't clever? she [Jacqueline] asked.
Matter? No, of course not. Why should it? God needs you as He made you and not as He didn't make you. His purposes require us all to be differently gifted. An appalling thing it would be if we were all clever, there'd be no one left with the intelligence to boil an egg or look up a train in a time table.
All this was entirely new to Jacqueline and its healing ran like a fresh stream to all the parched sore places inside her."
- from Island Magic, by Elizabeth Goudge
Maybe it was here I read about this book recently, and resolved to read it, and then forgot. Now I am resolving again. It is on my shelf... now all I need to accomplish is moving it to the night stand :-)
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