Goodbye Madeleine

"It was a dark and stormy night..."
So begins Madeleine L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time. That's a brave way to begin a book. It's a repetition of the opening line of 19th-century novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. And it's also the way Snoopy begins the novel he is perpetually writing in the Peanuts comics. So perhaps Ms. L'Engle was being trite? Not a chance. I've read this classic twice, and both times I was awed by the depth of what is considered to be a piece of children's literature. It has been one of the most banned books in the United States, accused by religious conservatives of offering an inaccurate portrayal of God and nurturing in the young an unholy belief in myth and fantasy. But Ms. L'Engle was all about story. She was all about telling the story of good and evil - and how good wins in the end - and how we can be redeemed. She just happened to use a form that made some people uncomfortable, but she was writing a story to tell THE story, and so she took the criticism with all her usual grace and charm. The book, published in 1963, won the John Newberry Award. It has sold over 6 million copies.

Madeleine L'Engle died on Thursday, September 6 in Litchfield, Connecticut at the age of 88. I love her writing, her wit, her deep theological reflections written in simple terms and intertwined with the grit of real life lived in real time.
The last book I read of L'Engle's was "Penguins and Golden Calves." Despite protests and warnings from friends and family, she traveled to Antartica and through the beauty of the place was moved to write about how ordinary things - even penguins - can become "windows to God", that lead us to a richer faith. In her book, she writes:
"I look at the stars and I do not understand. But I know. I know, not with my mind, but with my heart. The Maker of the stars made me, made each one of us. We are loved, and what is expected of us is that we return that love with love."

I say goodbye to Ms. L'Engle with the hope that her writing has helped me - if only a little - to be honest and real in my own writing, and in my life. It is the knowledge of how deeply loved I am that should cause me to breathe deeply and peacefully. I don't understand it, but I know it....I feel it. And so I thank you Madeleine L'Engle. Thank you for thinking deeply about your faith, and being unafraid to write about it.