5 Reasons to Love Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge

1. Gift of Timeless Wisdom.  The beauty of Elizabeth Goudge’s fictional story “Pilgrim’s Inn” lies in the wisdom she gradually unfolds as the Eliot family struggles with an all too uncertain future.  Tomorrow’s happiness is promised to no one.  Although they believe they have the answers, the ultimate path they search for to find joy is slowly revealed over time.  It seems that the more they live the problem, the more they come to understand the hidden significance of their circumstance.

For Nadine, George and David, a vital message must first be received to be understood.  Thankfully, Goudge creates a central character to gently guide the others along their difficult path to find joy. The family does not realize the gift they have in their mother Lucilla Eliot.  It is her wisdom that keeps them together in a darkened post war world.

Knowing her children as well as a mother does, she helps them through their most trying moments to find grace in their own time.  And each in their own way.  She is a woman of great faith able to instill much needed hope that all shall be well.  Its the home – the Herb of Grace where healing can be found for them all.

2. Experience Spirituality with Words that Leave You Wanting More. The twists and turns the Eliot family encounters are not unlike the troubles experienced in our modern world.  They are ordinary people trying to make the very best of what they have.  Their marriages are imperfect, have children (adorable twins) who constantly find new ways to exasperate even the dogs and are each struggling to silence haunting regrets of the past.  They are not outlandish people – and that is what makes them special.

The Eliots are an everyday family struggling to bring joy into their circumstances.  Through it all, Goudge finds the most beautiful ways to express the great spirituality of her faith.

Hardship is no stranger to this gifted writer.  Living in the 1900s, she endured much suffering, grieved the loss of her mother early in life and experienced health issues that were difficult to overcome.  But it was her faith that filled her ink jar and set her pen on fire.  And so, through her writing, she found a beautiful way to use fictional story as a means to pass her faith in God on to her readers.  Goudge opens our eyes to the truth that so much more awaits us beyond this present world.

She writes, “We are pilgrims, not settlers; this earth is our inn, not our home”.

3. Teaches Us How to Grow Older – with Grace. Grandmother Lucilla Eliot is my personal favorite character.  You’ll love her too.  She is a woman with no quarrel about being old, choosing instead to embrace all that her “grand motherhood” brings.  For Lucilla, life is not only about figuring how to get her aging body up out of the chair.  It means rising each day to focus on the gift of life itself and the beauty surrounding her world among all the “wrinkles.”  Lucilla is never concerned about how she appears to others.  She takes the joy she has from within and uses it to help her children find its bliss in the midst of their struggles.

Goudge beautifully weaves the relationship between the young and the old with these words “The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left together.  Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky, but morning, midday and afternoon do not.  Poor things.”

4. Escape into a Beautiful Herb of Grace. Their newly found home “Herb of Grace” is a place you will not soon forget.  The surroundings spark the joy found in fairy-tales and far away places we find only in our dreams.  As the Eliot family makes this haven of grace their home, so will you through imagination and wonder.

5. Encounter Christ as Your Refuge and Fortress. The problems facing the Eliot family are by no means small.  Nadine is trying to sort out how to stay in a loveless marriage.  Although motherhood is a great love, caring for her five children has worn her to the bone.  George her husband adores her, and never stops looking past the obstacle that separates them.  Sally loves a man more than she is capable of admitting.  Back from the war, David is trying to make a new life for himself, but still struggling with the one he left behind.  Finances are very tight and food must be rationed.  Not all of Nadine’s children are healthy.  New comers arrive bringing their own past haunts with them.

Take the journey to Pilgrim’s Inn.  You’ll never forget the Herb of Grace or Lucilla who shows you the way to joy.

Thank you Elizabeth Goudge – for the beautiful stories of faith you left behind