Welcome!
Pour yourself a cup of tea and help yourself to a lap blanket. It’s the end of August, but we were surprised two days ago by a much-needed torrential downpour that soaked us in moments and ushered in a marine layer that’s a sight for sore eyes. As I write the fog is hanging in the tops of the fir trees and there’s a steady drizzle washing the smoke from the air. The ducks are having a blast.
My name is Lucy, and I live in a quiet corner of the Pacific Northwest with my family. We have a couple of cats, a trio of goats, an ever-shifting flock of ducks and chickens, and an orchard we fight over with the deer. Aside from that, I spend most of my time reading and writing. I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember; in the words of Annie Dillard, I read “as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.” And I’ve been writing for almost as long—writing, as Flannery O’Connor says, “to discover what I’m doing,” because “I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say.”
I enjoy sharing my enjoyment of reading and writing, and I’ve done that in different ways over the years—teaching my kids to read and teaching other people’s kids high-school English, editing a print-only journal and editing other people’s writing before publication, and publishing various writing of my own. I’m starting this Substack to facilitate another venue for sharing, this time a book discussion group for my most recent project, Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, which is the first full-length single-volume biography of that remarkable and complex woman.
This is a long book, so I’m going to start with a one-time conversation for people who have already finished the book and would like to chat about it with others. I’ll send out a post at the end of September with some thoughts on the book and some questions for us to discuss together in the comments. Then, for those who want to look at the book in more detail, over the next six months I’ll send a post once a month with a reading schedule, information about the current section, and, again, questions to start a conversation. After that we’ll see what happens. I hope you’ll consider joining us!
As a young Wheaton College student, I was fanatic about finding the "right way" to serve the Lord. So of course, I read everything Elisabeth wrote, probably a million times.
I was inspired by her dedication to the Lord and devoured her books. She's excellent on grief, hardship, and the loss of dreams. But looking back, I think her teachings on human love were harmful. Her willful blindness where it came to character issues and romance probably played a role in my first marriage.
Her _Path of Loneliness_ was a blessing after my divorce. Those first lines are some of her most memorable writing.
Now 30 years later, as happily remarried senior citizen (who did not follow her advice the second time, I'm thrilled to say), I find myself critical of her "magical thinking" and fatalism. Her book _Quest for Love_ reopened the discussion about arranged marriages without any caveats. I'm sure that suited certain voices in the homeschool world, but the arranged marriages in my ancestry were disasters leading to violence and mental illness.
We've made EE into a god. I now view her more as a neurotic woman who was driven to win God's approval, and never seemed truly at peace about that.
Having said that, though, I still have her books on my shelf. There are some gems between those covers.
I am just reading this post -- I will definitely be reading along with the others the next 6 months. I love Elisabeth Elliot and have had your book saved on my TBR list since I heard it was coming out! :) Thanks for sharing this with us!