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I did come to truly love her. Raised in the most conservative of circles—British, male-dominated, genteel, and fundamentalist—I was always the questioner, the challenger, the seeker within the group. As a woman, I was out of order if I raised my voice or asked questions, which were to be submitted in private to my husband. I was speaking and writing to Christian groups around the country—activities which signified, to those in my own circle, that I was a "trouble-maker." The radical in me met the feisty, open-hearted, broad-minded Episcopalian in Madeleine, and the mix was warming and enriching for us both. When my husband and I joined the Episcopal Church, Madeleine welcomed us with warm enthusiasm. We converged in the middle and from then on, I believe, influenced each other's understanding of our mysterious life with God.

There was not always agreement. Madeleine was uncomfortable with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. For her, the idea that Jesus had to be punished by his Father for human beings to be forgiven signified what she called a "forensic" understanding of theology. "How could a loving God ever kill his Beloved Son?" she would ask. In the continuum of God's Love and Righteousness she came down squarely on the Love end of things. She also prayed that eventually "every knee will bow" to God, not just in submission but in adoration, that "no-one will finally be excluded from the party." She hoped that "no human being's rebellion could outlive the love of God," brought to this hope by her reading of George MacDonald's theology. We discussed this endlessly, for my part referencing C. S. Lewis' depiction of MacDonald in The Great Divorce. I guess I came to think: "Well, if universalism is a heresy, it's one I wish were true!"

Inevitably she came under attack from conservatives for her views. The Trojan Horse, a book presented at the Christian Bookseller's Convention back in the '70s, claimed that she was the thin edge of heterodoxy piercing the armor of orthodoxy. She responded with such a sweet spirit, disclaiming the traditionalist stereotype of her as a "New Ager" and refusing to respond in kind, that her opponents had nowhere to go. Her detractors, she felt, were drawing a circle that was exclusionary, while Jesus' circle drew her in. I never stopped feeling that we were in that circle together. The love of Christ bonded us.

Her birthday was November 29. Once when the date was approaching I asked Madeleine, "What would you like for your birthday?" To which she shot back immediately, "Go on a trip with me." We drove together through the Canadian Rockies, in awe at their vastness and beauty. In other years we traveled with our mutual friend Barbara Braver in England and Ireland, to Lindisfarne, and to Iona, the Holy Island off the Scottish coast where St. Columba and his followers found sanctuary in exile. On the narrow country lanes, hedges almost brushing the car on either side, Madeleine, sitting next to me as I steered along the "left" of the road, would often urge me, "More left-ish, Luci. More left-ish." "But Madeleine, I'm as far left as I can go! And as far right, too." This pretty much summed up our being drawn together to the centrality of our belief in God and of the Way of Christ, his strait and narrow, if you will.

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