Summer City
and I ate, and drank some wine
and someone talked about the other men, the one
I’d jeered about, and then another guy called Lazarus,
and I didn’t understand. I only knew
there was a difference in the room
www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...
“It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.”
~A Wind in the Door
Of course. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it in our own way.”
~A Circle of Quiet
“I thought, there’s a whole alternate narrative here, where Mr. Jenkins is having some kind of breakdown and he’s seeing all this shit, and these kids are spirit-guiding him through these terrifying nightmarescapes.”
web.archive.org/web/20150318...
I am too eager for spring. Around Crosswicks the sere fields need their blanket of snow to prepare the ground for growing. In my heart I am too eager for Easter. But, like the winter fields, my heart needs the snows of Lent.
~The Irrational Season
Language changes most graciously through poets and storytellers, and most clumsily when it is being manipulated by reformers and committees.
~A Stone for a Pillow
“The spoken word is one of the triumphs of man,” he proclaimed, “and I intend to continue using it, particularly with people I don’t trust.”
Keep speaking out against lies. Speak truth to power.
Jamie Herndon for Book Riot
bookriot.com/a-wrinkle-in...
I pray for courage to mourn so that I may be strengthened.
~The Irrational Season
When I am writing, on the other side of silence, as it were, and I am interrupted, there is an incredible shock as I am shoved through the sound barrier, the light barrier, out of the read world and into what seems, at least for the first few moments, a less real world.
~Walking on Water
“L'Engle's commitment to her craft and her genre-bending literary talent left an indelible imprint on American literature, allowing generations of young women to see themselves represented in literature and inspiring them to pursue their own creative passions.’”
www.smith.edu/news-events/...
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.
~Walking on Water
Writers…are quick to see injustice, and rouse the people to do something about it.
The Irrational Season
From the archives: “The great tragedy of A Wrinkle in Time proves not to be the splintered family or even the Black Thing, but the difficulty of children and adults speaking to one another.”
Derek Palacio for the Paris Review
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05...
If I felt that I had to conquer all the ills of the world I’d likely sit back and do nothing at all. But if my job is to feed one stranger, then the money I give to world relief will be dug down deeper from my pocket...
~The Irrational Season
The writer at the desk is indeed writing in isolation, but (for me, at least) this isolation must be surrounded by community, be it the community of family, village, church, city.
~Walking on Water
"If we human beings were truly aware that all creation is a unity, as two lovers are aware of unity, wouldn’t we treat each other better? .... We are one planet, a single organism."
Madeleine L'Engle, Two Part Invention
“We’re still facing incredible odds. There are still forces that would like to erase individuality, that value cruelty over anything else. Today, we need stories that remind people that friendship and bravery is more powerful than fear.”
www.wfaa.com/article/ente...
I would allow the children to ask any kind of cosmic or practical question they want to; but I would answer only the question they ask, not precede them with responses to further questions, as adults are so often tempted to do.
~Walking on Water
So it is with writing. There are several pots on those back burners. An idea for a scene goes into one, a character into another, a description of a tree in the fog into another. When it comes time to write, I bring forward the pot which has the most in it.
Walking on Water
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished.
A Ring of Endless Light
"What you think is not the point. What you do is what's going to count."
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door
Sometimes it is years after a book is published that I discover what some of it meant.
Walking on Water
From the archives:
“It was a match made of opportunity—as for alchemy, time would tell what no one then could have predicted: that a “mystical connection,” in Rahman’s words, would bind them for life..."
www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/0...
Christ, look upon us in this city,
and keep our sympathy and pity fresh,
and our faces heavenward,
lest we grow hard.
— modern Anglican prayer
And then there is time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be.
Walking on Water
A story where myth, fantasy, fairy tale, or science fiction explore and ask questions moves beyond pragmatic dailiness to wonder. Rather than taking the child away from the real world, such stories are preparation for living in the real world with courage and expectancy.
Madeleine L’Engle Herself
Have you read all five?
“You see!” the Medium cried, smiling happily. “It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!”
~A Wrinkle in Time
Story makes us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.
