Dr. Pevensie always seemed puzzled by the adulation she received. "I don't deserve praise," she said, in a 1999 interview. "I've done nothing that other people haven't also done, and I've done none of that alone. Don't think that I'm any better than you. Open your heart and God will lend you strength to do the right thing, just as he has helped me."
Dr. Pevensie's faith and calling, the common story goes, came from her grief after the loss of her parents, siblings, and cousin in a terrible railway accident in 1949. This idea persisted even after the posthumous publication of her private journals, which speak of a shared vision she and her siblings experienced during her childhood evacuation from London, and of her struggle to reconcile that vision -- that personal experience of God -- with her desire for an ordinary life. The later tragedy was simply a reminder.
"I identified the bodies in the morgue this afternoon," Susan Pevensie wrote the day after her bereavement. "I have been fighting for so long, without admitting to myself what I was doing. I told Edmund I could not fight the world. He was too kind to tell me that by surrendering that battle, I was fighting myself, fighting my family, and fighting Him. I left myself utterly alone, for the world did not care to see me, only my flag of surrender, and false friends are no exchange for love. But if I fight the world, I open myself again to Him; then I am never alone."
Here there is an inkblot in the original manuscript.
"They are all in His country now, beyond the ends of the world," the writing continues, "and I am glad for them, but if only I had trusted Him to lend me strength, instead of measuring my own heart and finding it wanting, and forgetting that my own heart is never all that I have to lean on-- if I had listened to Edmund, and Lucy, and Peter--"
Another inkblot.
"But if one of us had to remain, best for it to be me. I am the one who waits at home while other go forth to battle. This will be a longer wait, but I am sure I will find tasks to occupy the years, and at least now I have no need to fear anyone's fate but my own."
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[Fic] "Remembrance," part 1 -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2010-03-01 06:10 am (UTC)-----
She will not be canonized; the Church of England does not claim that power. But the Archbishop of Canterbury announced yesterday morning that Dr. Susan Pevensie will be remembered in the calendar of Common Worship as a beloved example of what one person can do to advance God's work on earth. Dr. Pevensie's charitable children's medical organization, Lucy's Cordial, operates in partnership with Médecins sans Frontières and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1972 for its work to mitigate the suffering of children in Vietnam and the surrounding regions. Her advocacy for women's rights won her international acclaim in the 1980s and 1990s. Queen Elizabeth II admitted her to the Order of the British Empire as a Dame Commander in 1987, though Dr. Pevensie preferred not to use the title.
Dr. Pevensie always seemed puzzled by the adulation she received. "I don't deserve praise," she said, in a 1999 interview. "I've done nothing that other people haven't also done, and I've done none of that alone. Don't think that I'm any better than you. Open your heart and God will lend you strength to do the right thing, just as he has helped me."
Dr. Pevensie's faith and calling, the common story goes, came from her grief after the loss of her parents, siblings, and cousin in a terrible railway accident in 1949. This idea persisted even after the posthumous publication of her private journals, which speak of a shared vision she and her siblings experienced during her childhood evacuation from London, and of her struggle to reconcile that vision -- that personal experience of God -- with her desire for an ordinary life. The later tragedy was simply a reminder.
"I identified the bodies in the morgue this afternoon," Susan Pevensie wrote the day after her bereavement. "I have been fighting for so long, without admitting to myself what I was doing. I told Edmund I could not fight the world. He was too kind to tell me that by surrendering that battle, I was fighting myself, fighting my family, and fighting Him. I left myself utterly alone, for the world did not care to see me, only my flag of surrender, and false friends are no exchange for love. But if I fight the world, I open myself again to Him; then I am never alone."
Here there is an inkblot in the original manuscript.
"They are all in His country now, beyond the ends of the world," the writing continues, "and I am glad for them, but if only I had trusted Him to lend me strength, instead of measuring my own heart and finding it wanting, and forgetting that my own heart is never all that I have to lean on-- if I had listened to Edmund, and Lucy, and Peter--"
Another inkblot.
"But if one of us had to remain, best for it to be me. I am the one who waits at home while other go forth to battle. This will be a longer wait, but I am sure I will find tasks to occupy the years, and at least now I have no need to fear anyone's fate but my own."
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