Remembering Madeleine
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.
I was deeply grieved about something, and I kept telling [my friend] how woefully I had failed someone I loved, failed totally, otherwise that person couldn’t have done the wrong that was so destructive. Finally he looked at me and said calmly, “Who are you to think you are better than our Lord? After all, he was singularly unsuccessful with a great many people.” That remark, made to me many years ago, has stood me in good stead, time and again. I have to try, but I do not have to succeed. Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love.
In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will
confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.
I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, but I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and … and … and…
From Aristotle I learned that a story must have a beginning, a middle and an end…. Let me return to Aristotle’s “that which is probable and impossible is better than that which is possible and improbable.” I’ve been chewing on that one since college, and it’s all tied in with Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief.” If the artist can make it probable, we can accept the impossible—impossible in man’s terms, that is. Aristotle, not knowing the New Testament, could not add, “With man it is impossible; with God nothing is impossible.”
In literal terms the Annunciation can only confound us. But the whole story of Jesus is confounding to the literal-minded. It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible.
It is one of the greatest triumphs of Lucifer that he has managed to make Christians (Christians!) believe that a story is a lie, that a myth should be outgrown with puberty, that to act in a play is inconsistent with true religion.
I had yet to learn the faithfulness of doubt. This is often assumed by the judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a prerequisite for a living faith.
Francis Bacon writes in De Augmentis, “If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt. But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently, we may end in certainty.”
[About a family member who was a burn victim:] Story was painkiller, quite literally. When her brain was focused on story, then it was not on the pain center. Story was a more effective painkiller than any chemical medication.
As William Temple remarked, “It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly interested in religion.”
If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning; there is no need to fear. But if it is not true, if it is man imposing strictures on God (as did the men of the Christian establishment in Galileo’s day), then I want to be open to God, not to what man says about God.
A help to me in working things out has been to keep an honest—as honest as the human being can be—unpublishable journal.
Fiction, in a less direct way, will teach me, teach me things I would never learn had I not opened myself to them in story
The words of John of the Cross: “One act of thanksgiving made when things go wrong is worth a thousand when things go well.”
All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. No matter what. That, I think is the affirmation behind all art which can be called Christian. That is what brings cosmos out of chaos.
The journey homewards. Coming home. That’s what it’s all about. The journey to the coming of the kingdom. That’s probably the chief difference between the Christian and the secular artist—the purpose of the work, be it story or music or painting, is to further the coming of the kingdom, to make us aware of our status as children of God, and to turn our feet toward home.
I love; therefore I am vulnerable.
Sometimes the very impetus of overcoming obstacles results in a surge of creativity
For the Easterner the goal is nirvana, which means “where there is no wind,” and for us the wind of the Spirit is vital, even when it blows harshly.
Visit Ms. L'Engle's web site at http://www.madeleinelengle.com/for a full bibliography, recent biography, audio interviews, and a photo gallery.