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Madeleine L'Engle. A powerful woman, large-hearted, fearless, quixotic, profoundly imaginative, unwilling to settle for mediocrity. Tall and queenly, she physically embodied her mental and spiritual attributes. I remember occasions when, in church during Advent, she would rise to full height, spread her arms wide like the Angel of the Annunciation, and declare, "Fear not!" in a tone that allowed no gainsaying. It was a challenge impossible to ignore.
She loved God and his children, but this didn't keep her from questioning and questing in pursuit of truth, which she never equated with fact. Without ever being a scientist herself, she had an uncanny understanding of some of the principles of physics, and the thrust of her life was to integrate her sense of the largeness, diversity, and unity of the universe with the spiritual principles she found in Scripture and her daily practice and rule of life.
We met in the '70s as speakers at a Wheaton College literary conference, exchanged books, affirmed each other as kindred spirits, and started a correspondence. Madeleine was eager for us at Shaw Publishers to republish a book of out-of print poems, as well as some more recent ones. Lines Scribbled on an Envelope thus became The Weather of the Heart, and it became clearer to me that this woman had a lot to say to our particular circles of Christian community.
The following year I asked her to write a book for us about her philosophy of creativity. In a couple of months she handed me an untidy bundle of typescript, saying with some disgust, "Can you do something with this? It has no shape!" After weeks of cutting the whole thing apart and re-organizing it on my dining room floor (this was before personal computers), I presented it to her. She was relieved, pleased that it worked. It became Walking on Water: Reflection on Faith and Art, a book that has been reprinted many times and continues to encourage artists of faith around the globe. And I became editor and publisher of her "non-secular" books.
After we became friends through the mutuality of manuscripts we sensed ourselves growing closer, and we began to teach together now and then. Often this would take the form of public dialogues, unplanned conversations that could lead us into territory where we had to think on our feet, knowing that if one of us went blank or dropped the ball the other would pick it up. We loved the adventure of Q & A, where candor led us to ad lib responses, voicing things we never knew we knew. We were profoundly aware that we were both servants of the word, and the Word.
One such occasion was in Oxford, at the Sheldonian Theatre, Christopher Wren's marvelous U-shaped auditorium. Two upholstered wing chairs were set up on the stage with a Victorian tea table and a pot of hot tea and scones between them. We sat back comfortably and talked about friendship, and our friendship, batting the subject back and forth like a tennis ball, teasing, getting serious, answering questions. When there's enough that is the same and enough that is different in such a relationship, there is a fruitful middle ground to be explored. Madeleine completed a number of meditative books for Shaw, including The Genesis Trilogy, The Rock that Is Higher, Penguins and Golden Calves, and Bright Evening Star, all with scriptural themes. Madeleine knew her Bible more thoroughly and perceptively than many evangelicals. Scripture was very much part of her daily life and thought.
With the success of her Newbery Award-winning novel A Wrinkle in Time and the popular fiction series that followed, as well as her more contemplative nonfiction books, Madeleine's readership grew vast and vocal. She had to deal with the struggle that many public figures face, where everyone wanted a piece of her, wanted to own part of her. She was always gracious and giving, sometimes signing books for a long line of fans until her hand actually bled, but she admitted to me, "I am really grateful to be so loved, but I don't want to be adored."
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