au revoir, Madeleine L'Engle

I have wept a few tears today for someone I never met. Ever since I was a child, I have returned to Madeleine L'Engle's books over and over again.

A Wrinkle in Time was my first. I read Circle of Quiet for the third time this summer in France.

I learned from Ms L'Engle how to hold faith together with imagination, obedience and respect together with a healthy degree of rebellion, and that life is to  be lived right now, not as a down-payment for the hereafter.

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.
“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “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.”

Rest in Peace, Madeleine. Thank you, thank you for all you have given to your readers. Obits in the NY Times. and Episocopal Life

Comments

[paul]

It saddened me too - wonderful writer, wonderful soul...a great loss

(click on my link to Bananie and read what she posted about this giant of a lady)

[Dana Ames]

I shed a few tears too. Her life and work were significant; I wish American Christians appreciated her more.

"A Circle of Quiet" was the latest of her books I've read- it helped me so much in thinking about the meaning of Art.

Dana

[Karin]

I hadn't heard of her until I was queuing for the ladies' loos at Greenbelt this year, where I saw this quote by her, which struck me as rather good:
'Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.'