Madeleine L'Engle, RIP

Madeleine L'Engle has died. I read "A Wrinkle In Time" as a child, and loved it. Some time ago, I read her "Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith and Art," and found it thought-provoking. Here is a lovely passage I'll post now; later this weekend, I'll post others. I want to put this up so L'Engle fans can share their thoughts about the passing of this gifted Anglican artist:

A friend of mine at a denominational college reported sadly that one of his students came to complain to him about a visiting professor. This professor was having the students read some twentieth century fiction, and the student was upset both at the language of this fiction, and the amount of what she considered to be immoral sex.

My friend, knowing the visiting professor to be a person of both intelligence and integrity, urged the student to go and talk with him about these concerns.

"Oh, I couldn't do that," the student said. "He isn't a Christian."

"He" is a Roman Catholic.

If we fall into Satan's trap of assuming that other people are not Christians because they do not belong to our own particular brand of Christianity, no wonder we become incapable of understanding the works of art produced by so-called non-Christians, whether they be atheists, Jews, Buddhists, or anything else outside a frame of reference we have made into a closed rather than an open door.

If I cannot see evidence of incarnation in a painting of a bridge in the rain by Hokusai, a book by Chaim Potok or Isaac Bashevis Singer, in music by Bloch or Bernstein, then I will miss its significance in an Annunciation by Franciabigio, the final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, the words of a sermon by John Donne.

One of the most profoundly moving moments at [a spiritual conference] came for me when Jesse, a student from Zimbabwe, told me, "I am a good Seventh Day Adventist, but you have shown me God." Jesse will continue to be a good Seventh Day Adventist as he returns to Africa to his family; I will struggle with my own way of belief; neither of us felt the need or desire to change the other's Christian frame of reference. For that moment, at least, all our doors and windows were wide open; we were not carefully shutting out God's purifying light, in order to feel safe and secure; we were bathed in the same light that burned and yet did not consume the bush. We walked barefoot on holy ground.

I learned of L'Engle's death from The Plank, which remembers her fondly with this quote about science and religion:

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

UPDATE: Turns out John Podhoretz spent part of his childhood sharing an apartment building with Madeleine L'Engle. Read his warm tribute to her graciousness. Can you imagine growing up with a beloved childhood author as your neighbor? For me, that'd be like, what, having Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Dave Berg and Al Jaffee next door!