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Excerpted Inspirations #179

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • May 26
  • 0 min read

[Mary Lindsay, who has recently moved into the country house left to her by a cousin of the same name, is reading Cousin Mary’s diary. The elder Mary struggled with mental illness, episodes of black depression, which alternated with states of joy.] They would never reconcile her to the abyss, nor was it right that they should for the abyss was evil, but the somber backcloth increased joy to the point where wonder and thankfulness merged into a clarity of sight that transfigured every greeting of her day. She opened her window and saw a spider’s web sparkling with light and was aware of miracle. Sitting in the conservatory with her sewing she knew suddenly that the sun was out behind the vine leaves and that she was enclosed in green-gold light as in a seashell. She dropped her sewing in her lap and was motionless for an hour while the light lay on her eyelids and her gratitude knew no bounds. Standing inside the willow tree she looked up and a thrush was there, so close that she could learn by heart the gleaming diapason of his breast, the sleek folding of the wing feathers, the piercing bright glance going through her like lightning. They were alone in the world, he and she, and presently he was alone and she was only a pair of eyes of which she was no longer aware. He did not fly away until some sound disturbed him, for the creatures were not afraid of her while she walked in light though they feared her in darkness. Once she held up her finger to a butterfly and it alighted there, and though it soon flew away again, her finger wore the sensation of airy lightness like a jewel until nightfall. She grudged herself to sleep on the moonlit nights, for she could not bear to lose a moment of the moon’s serene companionship. These and other greetings she recorded in her diary. “They are more than themselves and when the wonder grows in me I am more than myself. Whenever I am conscious of this more than ourselves I remember the old man in the garden at home, looking at the butterflies in the buddleia tree, and how the butterflies seemed to shine on his face, or something in his face shown on the butterflies, I didn’t know which. I may have imagined the light but I didn’t imagine the more than ourselves. That’s real enough, and when I am conscious of it my wonder and gratitude clap hands together and what is caught up from me is more than either. If any words come to me they are those of the old man’s second prayer, ‘Thee I adore.’” Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water (1963), pp. 247-248

 
 
 

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