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       # 2025-10-24 - And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle
       
   IMG Cover image (1949)
       
       Initially i thought this was a romance, but after reading it i would
       classify it as a coming of age novel. It is set just after WWII and
       it reminds me a little of Heidi and The Secret Garden. I found it
       easy to identify with the protagonist, who is nicknamed Flip by her
       father. Several elements of the story were variations of themes in
       the author's memoir A Circle of Quiet.
       
   DIR A Circle of Quiet by Madeline L'Engle
       
   DIR The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
       
       Flip is an introvert who found herself in an all girls boarding
       school. She does not like this institutional setting and felt
       tension between name and number, and between student and teaching.
       To hold doctrine more important than the person who it is taught
       to is to be dogmatic. Flip valued herself as an individual. She
       liked that she cared about and noticed what her peers did not. This
       awareness helped her artistic talent, but more importantly, it
       helped her to experience her life as fun, magical, and worth living.
       This worthiness had a ripple effect, calling in the better natures of
       those around her.
       
       In one scene, Perceval took over the religious service in the
       chapel and brought it to life for Flip and her class mates.
       
       > But one evening Madame Perceval took the service, reading in her
       > sensitive contralto voice, and Flip found herself for the first
       > time listening to the beauty of the words: "Make a joyful noise
       > unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and
       > sing praise. Sing unto the Lord with the harp, and the voice of a
       > psalm ... let the hills be joyful together." And Flip could feel all
       > about her in the night the mountains reaching gladly towards the
       > sky; and the sound of the wind on the white peaks must be their song
       > of praise. The others, too, as always when Madame Perceval was in
       > charge, were quieter, not more subdued but suddenly more real; when
       > Flip looked at them they seemed more like fellow creatures and less
       > like alien beings to fear and hate.
       
       This reminds me of the passage in the Narada Bhakti Sutra where it
       says that scriptures and places of pilgrimage are not holy in
       themselves, but are made holy because of people who are holy.  This
       is the opposite of being dogmatic and in contrast the student is more
       important than the teaching.
       
       Another yoga story illustrates this truth that the student is more
       important than the teacher.  In the Mahabharata, Ekalavya seeks to
       learn archery from Dronacharya, but is refused because of his low
       class.  So he trains himself using a clay statue of Dronacharya as a
       guide.  Later, Ekalavya displays archery skill superior to
       Dronacharya's best student.  He accomplished this thanks to his inner
       teacher.
       
  TEXT Ekalavya
       
       A dogma, like a clay statue, is a dead and static thing.  A person,
       like reality itself, is alive and dynamic.
       
       author: L'Engle, Madeleine, 1918-2007
  TEXT detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/And_Both_Were_Young
       LOC:    PZ7.L5398 An
   DIR source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/7/2/4/0/72403/
       tags:   ebook,fiction,holocaust
       title:  And Both Were Young
       
       # Tags
       
   DIR ebook
   DIR fiction
   DIR holocaust