'You Canadians have a funny definition of few," quipped Madeleine L'Engle as she addressed more than 100 students gathered last June in Epiphany Chapel at Vancouver's School of Theology. She had agreed to an enrollment of 24 for-credit and a few auditing students for her writing workshop titled "Story as Prayer."
The numbers affirmed the esteem in which L'Engle is held by her readers. For many, the workshop was an opportunity actually to meet their unmet mentor. Some had been reading her books since childhood, intrigued by the popular science fantasy "Time Trilogy" that begins with A Wrinkle in Time, her most famous book. Others had absorbed her books later in life, especially her autobiographies and theological writings.
L'Engle, who has written more than 40 books, dislikes being labeled as writing specifically for children or Christians. She crosses genres by writing fiction, non-fiction, autobiography, science fiction/fantasy, theology, poetry, and drama. She writes for readers of all ages and persuasions.
Whatever the literary genre, L'Engle upholds that a writer's responsibility is to radiate hope, to bring healing, to say yes to life. Her works wrestle with the unanswerable questions of life and death, God and darkness. In Walking on Water, a superb book about how faith and art influence one another, L'Engle argues that there is a "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."
Her stories accomplish this primarily through her characters, real or fictional. Readers develop relationships with them, discussing them with other L'Engle fans as if they were chatting about friends. As L'Engle proposes in Walking on Water, "We all want to be able to identify with the major characters in a book-to live, suffer, dream, and grow through vicarious experience." Readers can heal their own painful childhood moments just as the female teen-age protagonists who are believable, ordinary girls struggle with their growing up years.
Two main series dominate L'Engle's fictional works. The Murrays are the "Time Trilogy" family. (When A Wrinkle in Time protagonist Meg marries Calvin, their children continue their adventures. This is the science fantasy world of tesseracting between galaxies and times.) The Austins are a "normal" family set in this time and place.
Characters from these series and other novels defy the bounds of chronos and leap through kairos to appear in a novel other than the series in which they originated. Zachary Gray pursues Vicky Austin across the country; readers gasp to discover him in Greece with Meg's daughter, Poly. Other appearances are more welcomed such as with Suzy Austin Davidson, now indeed a doctor and a mother of four, becoming friends with the famous pianist, Katherine Forrester, in A Severed Wasp.
L'Engle explains in The Rock That is Higher that "the characters of my stories are family for me, and that is why so many of them appear in more than one book. I don't want to leave them at the end of a book. I want to find out what happens to them."
Fans of the Austin series will delight in their return in the recently published Troubling a Star, which continues where Ring of Endless Light left readers. The family has returned to Thornhill after Grandfather's death. Vicky is given a wonderful birthday gift: the opportunity to join Adam Eddington, who is working in Antarctica. Sound fabulous? Actually in this story of murder and intrigue, Vicky wonders if she'll ever have another birthday.
BY SHARING HER OWN life stories, readers form bonds with the author and the people who are part of her life. Much of her growing up years and family history are detailed in The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, the second book of the "Crosswicks Journal." An only and much-longed-for child, Madeleine might never have existed had her mother not found a second doctor, a Catholic, who disputed the original diagnosis that neither mother nor baby would make it through the pregnancy.
L'Engle writes in her books about the "butterfly effect," a theory which espouses that when a butterfly is hurt it affects the galaxies thousands of light years away. One small act can affect the universe. If her mother had decided to have the therapeutic abortion, the echthroi (a L'Engle word meaning those dark forces on the "other side" of God's plans) would have rejoiced because L'Engle's writings have had a profoundly positive and healing effect on her readers.
L'Engle was born in New York City. Her father was a foreign correspondent who fought in World War I, where mustard gas damaged his lungs. Because of his ailment, the family moved overseas when Madeleine was 12. A Small Rain, her first published novel, echoes some of her boarding school experiences there. During her last year of high school, now back in the United States, her father died. The theme of death, which runs through many of her books, encourages readers who walk through their own painful experience. Her mother lived to be 90 and the moving struggle of caring for an aging parent is recounted in The Summer of the Great-Grandmother .
Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage is a must-read for those interested in L'Engle's marriage to actor Hugh Franklin. Soap opera fans may recognize him by another name-Dr. Charles Tyler of All My Children. The story is about their early careers; their meeting, courtship, and marriage; the difficult birth of their two children; their journey when Hugh is diagnosed with cancer; and his death.
"Crosswicks," the old New England farmhouse they bought soon after their marriage, is named after a village where her father had spent his childhood. Hugh and Madeleine lived there year-round for nine years when Hugh "retired" from theater and Madeleine wrote. Together they raised their family and ran a store. Hugh's illness and death are sensitively and poignantly written about. Many readers can relate to L'Engle's grappling and are grateful for her honesty and vulnerability. Readers encounter holy ground in this novel.
L'ENGLE CONSTANTLY turns our feet toward home with her stories. She believes that God is the primary Creator. She starts her work by stilling herself and coming into God's presence by reading scripture. "The art of writing is worship," she stated implicitly during the workshop: As with prayer one must listen and surrender, dying to self so that the piece of work can be born. The result can surprise not only the reader but often the writer as well. L'Engle herself has been caught off guard by unexpected twists in her stories but remains true to the events that evolve, trusting the final work is God's.
Yet despite her beliefs, L'Engle is often accused of being New Age-or worse. She is saddened that Christians are willing to relinquish symbols such as rainbows and angels because other groups claim them as theirs. Her books are Christian, despite her reluctance to embrace the exclusive label, including a trilogy on Genesis, two books of poetry filled with biblical imagery and themes, two beautiful art books based on scripture, a novel about King David and his modern-day parallel, and a play about Jonah. Many Waters is a continuation of the "Time Trilogy" and is a brilliant look at the time just before the fold. Her writing workshops are also a retreat as participants not only delve into the stories of the Bible to produce midrashes and God-stories, but sing and pray together as well.
A Wrinkle in Time is vastly misunderstood by some fundamentalists. A well-researched book (ask any physicist) about some children who travel to another time and learn some valuable lessons about love ended up being labeled as "dangerous." Angels were thought to be witches; the Naked Brain, Satan.
The Chronicles of Narnia were controversial for C.S. Lewis; is it no wonder that L'Engle is often referred to as a "female C.S. Lewis"? She knows that she is in good company. In The Rock That is Higher, L'Engle admits that "many of the writers to whom I turn are committed Christians, because it takes a firm grounding in the love of God for a writer to go into the darkest depths of the human heart."
L'Engle does search, and some Christians may be uncomfortable with her seeking. Even her publisher, Luci Shaw, while reading And It Was Good, proclaimed that L'Engle could not say some of what was written. By the time Shaw finished, she insisted that she could, indeed must, state all that had been written. Perhaps Grandfather explains it best to Suzy in Meet the Austins : "The search for knowledge and truth can be the most exciting thing there is as long as it takes you toward God instead of away from [God]."
L'ENGLE CAME to believe that writing was more than a career for her, that she needed to make it her vocation. Ironically enough A Wrinkle in Time was the book that came after this decision. It was not an easy book to publish. Adults found it too difficult to understand; children adored it.
In 1962, after 10 years of rejection slips, a publisher finally took the risk. One year later, it won the Newbery Prize. Her perseverance and fidelity to her calling is a beacon of hope for all struggling artists.
Only one book, A Dance in the Desert, has ever flowed out of her easily. It is the joyous story of a celebration in the desert as the Holy Family escapes into Egypt. This short story, which captivates both children and adults, is accompanied by gorgeous pictures.
At 75, L'Engle is still actively pursuing her vocation. What is clear in her writings is her love for life, family, and God. The Rock That Is Higher examines a recent brush with death-the result of a near-fatal car accident. Fans who have read many of L'Engle's books know that she has suffered greatly and lived fully.
Madeleine L'Engle continues to share these experiences intimately. Her devoted readers can look forward to new books being released soon, including The Table of Friendship, co-authored with longtime friend and editor Luci Shaw. What more appropriate book title could there be for an audience who has been blessed with joining an author at such a table through her works?
SUZANNE ST. YVES, a former Sojourners' intern, lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She attended the writing workshop by Madeleine L'Engle last June.
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