Green Dolphin Street

I just posted on my friend Sarah's new blog that I had reviewed Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street here, and then realized that I actually hadn't, only thought I had (not very uncommon for me these days). Anyway, in my current Elizabeth Goudge binge, I read this book for the first time. I think I started it years ago, but it didn't grab me, and I put it aside. Now I can't imagine why or how it didn't. I truly loved this book and would recommend it without hesitation. Like most of Goudge's books about marriage and family life that I have read, it is about real the demands of true, gritty, Christ-like love in unexpected ways and places, and in a self-sacrificing way that is definitely not hip or cool today, even among most Christians. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

Here are just a few of my favorite quotes:

"…what the world sees of any human creature is not the real life; that life is lived in secret, a reality that moves behind the façade of appearance, like wind behind a painted curtain; only an occasional ripple of the surface, a smile, a sudden light or shadow passing on a face, surprising by its unexpectedness, gives news of something quite other than what it is."

"There's much that goes into the makin' of a man or woman into somethin' better than a brute beast, but there's three things in chief, an' they're the places where life sets us down, and the folks life knocks us up against, an' – not the things ye get, but the things ye don't get."

And a most insightful quote on the ongoing battle with habitual and indwelling sin:

"By this time next week, such was her selfishness and pride, she might find herself once more a changeling, strayed again from home, with the door to unlock all over again. Yet once you had been home, surely, it was easier to get home again, and each fresh fight to get back to the water brook would bring one nearer its source, and that final coming home would be the satisfaction of every longing and the healing of every pain."