The Rock That Is Higher

by Madeleine L'engle

  During the fifties there was hysterical terror over communism, with Senator Joseph McCarthy pointing a quivering finger at those he accused of being communists, out to overthrow the United States. I am sure that there were indeed communists out to overthrow the United States, but those weren’t the ones he was accusing. Instead, he pointed at artists. Actors were out of work for years, hungry, unemployable, because somebody had decided they were communists. Perhaps a few of them were; we had just finished a war in which Russia was our ally; communism seemed to offer a message of hope for the oppressed, to be a real antidote to Nazism and fascism. But I doubt if the actors who were attracted by the philosophy of communism were out to overthrow the United States. In one of my journals written during that period I’ve pasted in two articles from the New York Times about a major Hollywood studio scrapping its plans to produce a movie of Hiawatha. HIAWATHA MAY AID REDS, the headline reads. HERO IS IN FAVOR OF PEACE. I am equally horrified by the present-day equivalent, which seems to me to be equally hysterical and unrealistic.

  In the fifties if you cared about peace you were a communist; in the nineties if you care about peace you are a New Ager. For people who have to have an enemy, the new enemy is the New Age (whatever that is; I’m still not sure). The books I’ve read which are against the New Age tell me more about the people who are against it than about the New Age itself. From what little I have found out about it, it strikes me as being a twentieth-century form of Gnosticism, with a touch of Mary Baker Eddy, and I am not particularly interested. I was sent one book by a New Age guru and tried to read it; I didn’t find anything terrifying in it; I simply found it so dull that I couldn’t finish it.

  I got a little more idea of what New Ageism might be in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s editorial to her fourteenth Fantasy Magazine. In it she says, “I get furious when some sloppy New Age type asks me (casting her eyes to heaven) why I ‘chose to manifest diabetes.’ By me that’s just another way of ‘blaming the victim.’ ”

  If that’s New Ageism, I’m against it, too. I did not manifest the carelessness that made a truck driver run through a red light. But it is not enough to terrify me into seeing the New Age as some kind of terrible evil.

  Why am I so concerned about this? Because the hysterical need for a common enemy is an enemy of story. If the only way we can believe that our faith is valid is by accusing another faith of being false, then our faith is shaky indeed. Communism was a religion, a powerful religion while it lasted, but proving that it was a false religion (which it was and is) did little to affirm the love and joy of faith.

  After I had given a lecture at an evangelical conference, a woman came up to me, saying, “I heard you were a New Ager, but now that I’ve heard you speak I can’t think what they meant.”

  I laughed and said, “Neither can I. Although I am an Episcopalian.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to buy one of your books now.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And I really hope you will enjoy it.”

  There was enough talk about me and the New Age that I asked one group of several hundred people, “Can any one of you tell me what the New Age is, and why my books are supposed to be New Age books?”

  No one could.

  That was interesting.

  Someone suggested, “Unicorns are a New Age symbol.”

  I replied, “Unicorns are a Christ symbol, and they are also scriptural.”

  Astonishment. Unicorns in the Bible? Heaven forbid!

  But they are. “Just read the Psalms,” I suggested. “You’ll find unicorns there pretty quickly. But they’re also in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Numbers, and Job for starters.”

  “Oh.”

  “What about rainbows?” someone else asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Aren’t they a New Age symbol?”

  “The rainbow is the sign in the Bible of God’s covenant with his people,” I said. “Why are you letting fear take away symbolism which has been part of our Christian imagery for thousands of years?”

  “Isn’t it Satanic?”

  “What?”

  “The New Age.”

  “I don’t know. I do know that there is Satan worship in the world and that it is dangerous and that it terrifies me.” But I have a suspicion that looking for Satan worship in the New Age movement is like looking for those who would overthrow the United States among actors. It’s accusing the wrong people and ignoring the truly dangerous ones. And they are dangerous indeed.

  Why am I being accused of being a New Ager? It’s beyond me, unless meditation, imagination, poetry, joy in the Creator and Creation are considered to be New Age.

  Well, I thought, I’d better look up a book on the New Age and find out what it’s all about.

  One of my godchildren got a book from her assistant pastor about the New Age and gave it to me. The problem is that it wasn’t really about the New Age. It was about Anti–New Agers. It was a scary book. My friend said, “Madeleine, someone remarked that you were very honest in your presentations and that you ought to know who your enemies are. I don’t think your enemies are the New Agers, I think they’re the Anti–New Agers.” The book she gave me didn’t scare me about the New Age because it didn’t tell me much about it. It scared me about those who hysterically oppose the New Age, because it’s as irrational as refusing to make a movie about Hiawatha because Hiawatha upheld peace.

  The writer of this pamphlet says, in explaining the ethics of the New Age Movement, “Most people in the New Age movement are ANTI-WAR/ANTI-NUCLEAR pacifists.” (The capitalization is his.) And I wondered: Can one be a Christian and not be anti-war, and anti–nuclear warfare? Why is peace, once again, a sign of the enemy instead of a sign of the Good News?

  In a book and music catalog there was a listing of New Age records, which included Pachelbel’s Canon! Pachelbel, one of the composers who influenced Johann Sebastian Bach, would be astounded!

  Many of the symbols which are now purported to be New Age, or, even worse, signs of devil worship, are Christian symbols. Indeed, they may be misused and distorted by groups which are not Christian (a black mass is a blasphemous distortion of the Christian Eucharist), but that does not mean we need to toss them out and hand them over to the enemy! Give up the rainbow as a glorious sign of God’s covenant with his people? Never! Give up the crescent moon and the stars and call them symbols of Satan rather than visible signs of the glory of God’s creation? Never! The enemy can’t have them unless we weakly and thoughtlessly relinquish our very own heritage.

  This does not mean putting on blinders and pretending that the enemy is not there. He is, horribly, powerfully there. Indeed, there is devil worship in this country, and it is evil and terrifying. But we only help it to spread when we label serious thinkers, such as Teilhard de Chardin, devil worshipers. (Yes, gentle Teilhard was listed as a devil worshiper in one Anti–New Age book.) Just as Senator Joseph McCarthy looked under the wrong beds, ignoring the communists who were indeed seeking the overthrow of democracy, so I believe that the Anti–New Age people are also looking under the wrong beds and ignoring the real horror of Satanic rituals. I talked to a young man who was struggling to recover from the horror he had endured as a child, being made a participant in such rituals, which were a dark and vicious travesty of Christian holy rites. Shuddering, pale with remembered fear, he told of the slaughter of babies. The anti-god requires blood, human blood.

  What upsets me most, I think, is that the anti-communists were against communism, rather than for democracy. And the Anti–New Agers are against the New Age rather than for Christ. Isn’t this being against rather than for the frame of mind which produces terrorism? Isn’t it, in itself, a kind of terrorism? The terrorists who blew up a plane full of people felt holy in their action; a religion that not only condones but commands murder of “unbelievers” is a fearful thing. As I read the Gospels, one o
f the strongest messages is for; for love, for warmth of heart, for that love which dissolves hate and coldness of heart. When our religion brings hate to our hearts, it becomes terrorism, not religion.

  When I am asked if I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, it is usually an accusation, not a true question. It is an accusation which strikes me as impertinent, because it usually comes in the context of a Christian conference at which I am a speaker. And I know from the tone of voice of my accuser that my answer of Yes is not going to be accepted. We have to be very careful that when we invoke the name of Jesus, it is always a call to love and not a weapon of anger and judgmentalness. When I say “Thank you, Jesus,” I must be very careful that I know what I am saying.

  It must give great pain to Christ that so much damage has been done in his name, ever since the beginning. And yet, somehow or other, the Church continues, stronger than those whose zeal would destroy it. It comforts me to read the Acts of the Apostles, because the early followers of Christ were so like us, quarreling with each other, reinterpreting and misinterpreting the words of Jesus, and yet, ultimately, serving Love rather than themselves and their own opinions.

  As for the New Age—didn’t it begin in a stable in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, when Christ came to make all things new?

  So I must hold to the Good News and not let myself be trapped in the same trap as the Anti–New Agers! I asked a large group at the Midwest conference: “If your faith is secure, what are you afraid of?”

  If my faith is secure, what am I afraid of?

  The answer is, of course, that my faith is not as secure as it ought to be. Finite Madeleine is often far from certain of the infinite God who (nevertheless) rules my life. I know to my rue that I am not as good a Christian as I ought to be. Too often reason gets in my way. How can I understand the unreasonableness of the Incarnation, an act of love beyond my fragile mind to comprehend?

  If that Rock that is higher than I is solid under my feet, why am I perplexed and hurt when I am accused of being a New Ager?

  Am I afraid that maybe I am, without knowing it, all that I am accused of?

  Yes, I care about our planet and I am pained at what we are doing to destroy it. Yes, I care passionately about peace. Saving the whales matters to me. I read a recent “Christian best seller,” a novel, in which the reader is given a clue that one minister is a bad guy, a New Ager, “Because he cares about the family of man and saving the whales.”

  We are also warned that meditation is now a “bad” word, a New Age word! In Genesis, chapter 24, Isaac went out to the field one evening to meditate. Wasn’t Jesus meditating when he left his friends and went away to a desert place to be alone with the Father?

  I suspect that the fear and condemnation of meditation comes because it is difficult for us to let ourselves go, to put our entire lives with absolute faith in a God we cannot in any way control. We live in a society which is sold on control, and tries to sell it to us. But the only way we can brush against the hem of the Lord, or hope to be able to work with our Abba/Amma in the telling of our story, is to have the courage, the faith, to abandon our control and to give it entirely to the Creator.

  I am sad that this novel (which I read with deep sadness in my heart) is a best seller among Christians, because it is, to me, pornographic, in that it treats people as objects, not subjects. It draws people together through fear and hate, not love. But if I am upset about it, is it because I feel myself accused? Not so much accused of being a New Ager, as accused of my own lacks of love, my own angers, my own looking at people who disagree with me as objects, not subjects.

  Jesus was accused of all kinds of behavior that went against the law, but mostly he turned anger away softly rather than falling into the same trap as his accusers.

  Do I want to be like Jesus, or like the Pharisees and Sadducees? Or the Anti–New Agers? (And I remind myself, not all the Pharisees were legalistic and narrow-minded. They were serious scholars and willing to be open to what Jesus was saying even if, like Nicodemus, they came to him at night.)

  If my faith is secure, then I should not be surprised when I am criticized or misunderstood. And I must not expect of myself super-human virtue. Virtue is not the sign of a Christian! Joy is. When my feelings are hurt, I am not joyful.

  I heard from my son-in-law, Alan, of one young man who was an atheist because of his father, who was a devout and virtuous Christian. Alan asked, “Was your father full of joy and light?”

  “No, he was a miserable bugger.”

  That is why, to this young man, misery and Christianity were synonymous.

  When I turn to the Good News and accept it joyfully, that does not free me from human emotions. “Are you angry?” my doctor and friend asked me after my accident. And I wasn’t. Not then. I didn’t have time or energy for anger. All my attention was focused on healing.

  I’m still healing. I still wear out easily; I still need a nap in the afternoon. But I found out that I am angry. I’m angry not so much at the irrationality of the accident or the carelessness of the truck driver as at the fact that the insurance companies expect me to pay for it. Me! The man who hit me was minimally insured, and his insurance didn’t cover a tenth of the hospital bills, much less all the other costs, doctors, medication, lost time, lost income.

  I found out how angry I was when I walked into my apartment late one afternoon, ready to lie down for my nap, and picked up the ringing telephone. I was exhausted; my side ached; I should have ignored the phone and just let it ring. But I lay across the bed and reached for it. Someone was calling from San Diego to ask me why I hadn’t paid my ambulance bill.

  “I haven’t received the ambulance bill.”

  “We sent you three.”

  “I have not received one.”

  The woman at the other end of the line checked the address, which was correct. “I still have not received a bill,” I said. “Now that we’re paying more for stamps, delivering mail is no longer part of the job description of the postal worker. In any case, it is the man who ran through the red light and hit me who should be paying for this bill.”

  “We must be paid. It’s the law. We’ll put a lien on your house.”

  “Fine. Go ahead. I’ll go to jail where I can write books in peace and quiet.” I certainly don’t want to make money from the accident. No amount of money could compensate me. But I don’t feel I should have to pay for it.

  But that’s life. Postal workers are no longer in the business of delivering mail. Insurance companies are no longer in the business of paying for the insured. The only way I can get the money from the insurance company, I am told, is to sue them, in which case my premiums will be raised so that there will be little point in carrying insurance. Why have I been paying for it all my life when, the moment I need it, I am badgered with phone calls from San Diego demanding payment for bills I have never received? Yes, I am angry. I am furious!

  I said, “If it came before a jury, I’d win, because they’d be on my side.” I was told that yes, they’d be on my side, but they could not go against the law. The law is that the bills must be paid, and if I’m the one who has to pay them, that’s tough, but that’s life.

  Nobody ever promised fairness. That this is grossly unfair should not surprise me. And it’s okay for me to be angry as long as I move through the anger and let it go. This blatant inequity is peripheral to the Good News, which is central. Part of that Good News to me is that God laughs gently at my anger, and does not become angry at me in turn. Instead, God reminds me of my tendency to disproportion, and prods me towards that marvelous peace at the center of things. When I look inward, I am grateful to find that the peace is still there. The anger will go; I know that it is inordinate, and that one reason I over-reacted to that telephone call was that I was over-tired. It is not possible to come partly back into the world; you’re either taken out of it, or shov
ed all the way back in it, and all the way in was my choice, so I must accept the price of fatigue and the pain of a still healing body. Despite it, the peace of the Good News will not disappear, and that is what matters.

  In his life on earth, Jesus was not treated fairly, was he? And he is still often treated unfairly. Should we be surprised when it happens to us?

  One of the things the secular world tries to teach us is that we should never be angry, that all anger is destructive. As we look at the world around us we see that much anger is indeed destructive, especially in our overcrowded cities. I still shudder at the story, factually true, of a fifteen-year-old boy sitting on a bench outside Columbia University, talking and laughing with a friend. He was an attractive young man, acolyte at Corpus Christi Church, honor student, with lots of friends. A stranger came up to him and demanded, “Why are you laughing?” The boy looked up, surprised. “I’m just laughing…” At which the other took out a gun and shot him. Dead.

  That’s destructive anger. There are many examples of it. Pick up any paper from any good-sized town or city, and there will be examples.

  * * *

  —

  Probably the first, instinctive reaction to something going wrong is outrage. One morning when my husband woke up with a hot, inflamed foot and we called the doctor who immediately diagnosed blood poisoning, I was furious—furious at the diagnosis, furious at my husband for being so inconsiderate as to have blood poisoning, particularly at a time when I myself was over-tired and needed taking care of, rather than the other way around. Part of my anger was to mask my fear that something might be seriously wrong with someone I love. Part of the anger was because once more I had been forcibly reminded of the precariousness of all life—that we can never take an ordinary day for granted. We can’t help falling for the seductive promises of the world that we have a right to security. And when that nonexistent security is threatened we respond with anger.