Rest Now, Madeleine.

Dear Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday. She was 88. I read her classic tale (the one the publishers warned would probably fail), A Wrinkle in Time as a tween, and felt alive. So then I read A Wind in the Door, and Many Waters. Like C.S. Lewis, she had a way of dignifying children by writing phenomenal stories that called out our imagination. I would like to read every last one of the 60 books she published in her wild lifetime.

Reading this gorgeous NY Times article made me love her even more.

The Washington Post unearthed this fantastic anecdote:

She once told National Public Radio that she was in a phase of searching for a better understanding of theology when "I just came across a phrase of Einstein's, which completely excited me. He said, 'Anyone who is not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burned-out candle.'

"And I thought, 'Oh! There's my theologian.' "

(Image quote from Douglas Martin, NY Times, 9/8/07)

To Play Like a Child Again

I am in a season of anticipation: trying to rest, learning to listen, and waiting on God. Right now I'm feeling like a mass of dots aching to be connected by a smarter crayon.

But today it was nice to take an hour long road trip with my Mama to the Trader Joe's in Old Town Alexandria. I had to show her how small and lovely grocery stores can be.

Last night I tried to talk to God about connecting the dots of my desires. And I felt like he calmed me down by nudging me to "just read a book for fun before bed." Maybe because with all of my overdue projects for Fuller, I've been taking myself way too seriously lately. (He's a good Daddy, he is.)

I grabbed a worn copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Circle of Quiet, the first of her Crosswicks Journal series. I'd bought it at the public library sale for 50 cents a few months ago because I knew Lisa B. thinks that book 4 in L'Engle's Journal is gorgeous stuff, and I pretty much trust anything Lisa says. Plus, there's that sweet memory of reading Miss Madeleine's A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door as a kid.

If you didn't read Madeleine's A Wrinkle in Time you owe it to yourself to slip back into childhood and read the thing. Last night I was reminded just how carefully she puts words together. I smiled myself to sleep as I read:

"The concentration of a small child at play is analagous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing...His self-consciousness is gone; his consciousness is wholly focused outside himself...

...When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child this is: art: prayer: love." -A Circle of Quiet, chapter 1