The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
Page 23
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever,
and unto ages of ages, Amen.”
And the holy children were round about him,
the Holy Innocents and the Holy Three.
They walked through the darkness of the fiery furnace
and the dragon could see their brightness,
yea, he saw four walkers loose
walking in the midst of the fire and having no hurt
and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God.
And he saw the Son of God move through hell
and he heard the Holy Children sing:
“Meet is it that we should magnify thee,
the life-giver
who has stretched out thy hands upon the cross
and hast shattered the dominion of the enemy.
Blessed art thou, O Lord God, forevermore.
O Jesus, God and Saviour,
who didst take upon thee Adam’s sin
and didst taste of death
(the cup was bitter),
thou hast come again to Adam
O compassionate One
for thou only art good
and lovest mankind,
Blessed art thou, O Lord God, forevermore.”
So hell was shriven
while the holy children, singing,
transformed the flames to dew,
and the gates of Heaven opened.
Then, by the empty tomb,
the old man slept.
If the dark prophets who infuriated the people of the Establishment in their own day have anything to say to me today, it is through their constant emphasizing that God is so free of his own creation that he can transform us in our pain into a community of people who are able to be free of the very establishments which are formed in his name. For these establishments inevitably begin to institutionalize God’s love and then he teaches us (put my tears in your bottle) what love really is—not our love, not what we want God’s love to be, but God’s love.
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A Biography of Madeleine L’Engle
Madeleine L’Engle was the award-winning author of more than sixty books encompassing children’s and adult fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs, and books on prayer. Her best-known work is the classic children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, which won the Newbery Medal for distinguished children’s literature and has sold fourteen million copies worldwide. The Washington Post called the science fantasy tale of an adolescent girl and her telepathic brother’s journey through space and time “one of the most enigmatic works of fiction ever created.”
L’Engle was born on November 29, 1918, in New York City, where both of her parents were artists—her mother a pianist and her father a novelist, journalist, and music and drama critic for the New York Sun. Although she wrote her first story at the age of five and devoted her time to her journals, short stories, and poetry, L’Engle struggled in school and often felt disliked by her teachers and peers. She recalled one of her elementary school teachers calling her stupid and another accusing her of plagiarism when she won a writing contest.
At twelve, L’Engle and her family moved to France for her father’s health (he had been a soldier during World War I and suffered lung damage), and she was sent to boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Two of her novels, A Winter’s Love and The Small Rain, drew on her experiences in Europe. She returned to the United States three years later to attend another boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina. L’Engle flourished during these years and went on to graduate from Smith College with honors in English.
After college, she moved back to New York City and started work as a stage actress while devoting her free time to writing. During this time, she published her first two novels, The Small Rain and Ilsa, and wrote many plays that were produced in regional theaters. While touring in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard as an understudy, she met actor Hugh Franklin, and they married in 1946. After the birth of their daughter Josephine the following year, they bought an old farmhouse, which they called Crosswicks, in Goshen, a small town in rural Connecticut, planning on weekends in the country. When she became pregnant with their second child, Bion, they moved to Crosswicks permanently and ran the local general store. Their family grew with an adopted daughter, Maria. After nearly a decade in Connecticut, they moved back to New York so her husband, who would go on to star in All My Children, could focus on his acting career. She was happy to return and hoped that she would find success as an author again. Indeed, A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962.
The family often returned to Crosswicks over the years and these visits inspired L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, including Two-Part Invention, which tells the story of her marriage, and A Circle of Quiet, in which she explores her role as a woman, mother, wife, and writer.
Back in Manhattan, L’Engle worked as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, a position she held for more than three decades. Her lifelong fascination with theology and philosophy, and her personal faith, largely influenced her work. A Wrinkle in Time hints at many Christian themes, yet religious conservative groups have spoken out against the book, accusing L’Engle of misrepresenting God in a dangerous world of witchcraft, myth, and fantasy. It has been one of the most banned books in the United States. Apart from her religious influences, she said that Einstein’s theory of relativity and other theories in physics also served as inspiration. The novel’s combined use of both science fiction and philosophy established it as a sophisticated work of fiction, proving L’Engle’s belief that children’s literature deserves a place in the literary canon.
However, L’Engle initially struggled to achieve success and recognition for her work, and she almost quit writing at forty. She finally broke out onto the literary scene in 1960 with Meet the Austins, the first in her popular young adult series about the Austin family, which includes Newbery Honor Book A Ring of Endless Light. Even A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by twenty-six publishers before being accepted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Although it was an instant commercial and critical sensation and has never gone out of print, the book’s strong female protagonist and intellectual themes were unusual in children’s fiction at the time.
L’Engle’s long literary career expanded far beyond the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. Among her many books are adult novels dealing with relationships, faith, and identity, including Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea, and A Severed Wasp; several books of poetry; and more overtly religious works like her Genesis Trilogy of biblical reflections. She won countless accolades, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the National Religious Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal. L’Engle lived out her final years in Litchfield, Connecticut, and passed away at the age of eighty-eight on September 6, 2007.
A portrait of L’Engle in her first years of life.*
L’Engle ice-skating in Brittany, France, circa 1926.*
L’Engle with her dog, Sputzi, circa 1934.*
From July to September 1943, the Repertory Players at Straight Wharf Theatre produced two of L’Engle’s plays, The Christmas Tree and Phelia. She acted in both plays, among others.
L’Engle with her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, in 1946.*
L’Engle and her husband renovated and ran a general store in the late 1940s.
L’Engle always illustrated her family’s Christmas cards, including this one from 1952.
L’Engle with her granddaughters Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Cathedral Library, circa 1975.
L’Engle in the library of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1977.
L’Engle at a Manhattanville College commencement ceremony, where she received an honorary degree in 1989.*
L’Engle with her granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis
the night before the young woman’s wedding on August 30, 1996.
L’Engle speaking at a church in 1997.
L’Engle at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1997.*
*Photograph courtesy of the Madeleine L’Engle Papers (SC-3), Special Collections, Buswell Library, Wheaton, Illinois.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This work is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of her experiences over a period of years. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed in order to protect the identity of certain individuals. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
Copyright © 1974 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4126-3
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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