Madeleine L'Engle Herself

by Madeleine L'engle

  Yet with each book I write I am weighted with a deep longing for anonymity, a feeling that books should not be signed, reviews should not be read. But I sign the books; I read the reviews….

  We cannot seem to escape paradox; I do not think I want to.

  A WIDER DEFINITION OF CREATIVITY

  What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint or clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts or having some kind of important career. Several women have written to me to complain about A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They feel that I should not have allowed Meg Murry to give up a career by marrying Calvin, having children, and quietly helping her husband with his work behind the scenes. But if women are to be free to choose to pursue a career as well as marriage, they must also be free to choose the making of a home and the nurture of a family as their vocation; that was Meg’s choice, and a free one, and it was as creative a choice as if she had gone on to get a Ph.D. in quantum mechanics.

  ANSWERING LETTERS

  If you begin to have a certain amount of success, people do want to talk to you. I get about a hundred letters a week, and I answer them. I do that by pretty much giving Saturdays to the letters, about two-thirds or three-quarters of which I dictate into a cassette. And one of my very close friends who is totally over-qualified—which is what I need—transcribes them for me.

  WRITING AS SOCIAL COMMENTARY

  Whether I want to or not, my writing will speak out in favor of or against social issues. If I refuse to touch social issues, I’m being apathetic; I’m joining the side that I don’t agree with. During the sixties when a lot of people were getting on buses to go to Washington, to go south to work for racial equality, for all of those things that I so deeply believed in, I asked myself what I should do. And the answer was, “Look, honey, going on a bus is nice. You’ll get your picture in the paper. But you are supposed to sit at your typewriter and write books. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” And that’s what I did.

  PUBLISHING HOMES

  It wasn’t until I got to my regular (secular publisher is not the word, but I can’t think of the right word) publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, that I found publishers who were willing to allow me to write what I wanted to write.

  I also publish with Harold and Luci Shaw the books I write which would be classified as “religious”—books which are overtly theological. I think it is best to publish with editors who understand where I’m going, and Luci Shaw is a wonderful editor for me in this area. Also, I don’t want to be labeled. I don’t want to be labeled a children’s writer. I don’t want to be labeled a religious writer. I don’t want to be labeled a Christian writer. I want to be “a writer.” We tend to insist on labeling people as one or another kind of writer. By having my theological books published by the Shaws, I’m less apt to be labeled as a Christian writer or a religious writer.

  A WRITER’S VACATION

  My idea of a vacation is being able to write where the phone doesn’t ring and the doorbell doesn’t ring and I don’t have a million other things I need to do. Our favorite vacation was to get on a freighter where your time was your own because nothing was done for the passengers. One time I had with me the end of A Ring of Endless Light; I knew I needed to do some revising so I went to the engineer and said, “Are you using your typewriter? Because I want to borrow it.” I sat on the floor with his typewriter on a stool and I did all my revisions.

  LABELS LIMIT

  The world wants to shove us into what it considers the appropriate pigeonhole. I do not like to be labeled as a “Christian children’s writer,” because I fear that this will shove me even further into the pigeonhole which began to be prepared for me when A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery Medal. If I am so labeled, then the implication is that I am to be read only by children, and Christian children at that. Though the chief reason that Wrinkle was rejected for over two years and by thirty-odd publishers was because it is a difficult book for many adults, the decision was made to market it as a children’s book; it won a medal for children’s books. Therefore, I am a children’s writer, and that is all I’m allowed to be.

  MAKING THE CENSORS’ LIST

  I thought I might get a lot of flack from the Christian literalists about [The Glorious Impossible], but mostly the ire of those who suspect my Christianity has been focused on A Wrinkle in Time. A friend sent me an article from the Washington Post listing the ten most censored books in the United States. A Wrinkle in Time was one of them, and I felt very honored, because it was listed along with books by writers who have been my mentors: Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Teilhard de Chardin. But I was also deeply saddened. Are the censors (they are Christian censors) allying themselves with terrorists? If I believe that I am qualified to decide what the entire population of the United States, particularly Christians, ought not to be reading, am I not making an idol of my own judgment?

  THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE GIFT

  In the years that have followed the winning of the Newbery Medal, I have been allowed the great joy of being able to follow what—for me—is a total commitment, a total vocation.

  I believe that every human child at birth is born with a vocation, with a special gift. I think the myths of the fairy tales with the fairy godmother giving the child the gift are an expression of this. But it isn’t given to all of us to know as early as it was to me what my gift was. And I’m terribly grateful that the negative aspects of my childhood were what made me aware of what my gift was.

  It’s an enormous responsibility to have a gift. It’s often a responsibility I don’t want. But I don’t know how to turn it down. I’m somehow not allowed to.

  Section IV

  FAITH FOUNDATIONS

  Writing from Truth

  We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.

  ALL OF LIFE IS STORY

  All of life is story, story unravelling and revealing meaning. Despite our inability to control circumstances, we are given the gift of being free to respond to them in our own way, creatively or destructively. As far as we know, even the higher animals (with the exception, perhaps, of the dolphin) do not have this consciousness, not necessarily self-consciousness, but consciousness of having a part in the story.

  And the story involves what seems to the closed mind to be impossible—another reason for disbelieving it. But, as Christians, we may choose to live by most glorious impossibles. Or not to live, which is why in the churches, by and large, the impossibles, the Annunciation and the Transfiguration and walkings on water and raisings from the dead, are ignored or glossed over.

  TO BE CREATIVE IS TO DIE TO SELF

  The great artists, dying to self in their work, collaborate with their work, know it and are known by it as Adam knew Eve, and so share in the mighty act of Creation.

  That is our Calling, the Calling of all of us, but perhaps it is simplest for the artist (at work, at prayer) to understand, for nothing is created without this terrible entering into death. It takes great faith, faith in the work if not conscious faith in God, for dying is fearful. But without this death, nothing is born. And if we die willingly, no matter how frightened we may be, we will be found, and born anew into life, and life more abundant.

  THE ART OF PRAYER

  As I understand the gift of the spirit in art, so I understand prayer, and there is very little difference for me between praying and writing. At their best, both become completely unselfconscious activities; the self-conscious, fragmented person is totally thrown away and integrated in work, and for the moments of such work, be it prayer or writing, I know wholeness, and sunside and nightside are no longer divided.

  THE INDEPE
NDENCE OF THE GIFT-GIVER

  We may not like [the idea that God can reveal himself in the works of non-religious people], but we call the work of such artists un-Christian or non-Christian at our own peril. Christ has always worked in ways which have seemed peculiar to many men, even his closest followers. Frequently the disciples failed to understand him. So we need not feel that we have to understand how he works through artists who do not consciously recognize him. Neither should our lack of understanding cause us to assume that he cannot be present in their work.

  A sad fact which nevertheless needs to be faced is that a deeply committed Christian who wants to write stories or paint pictures or compose music to the glory of God simply may not have been given the talent, the gift, which a non-Christian, or even an atheist, may have in abundance. God is no respecter of persons, and this is something we are reluctant to face.

  GOOD ART

  Too much concern about Christian art can be destructive both to art and to Christianity. I cannot consciously try to write a Christian story. My own life and my own faith will determine whether or not my stories are Christian. Too much Christian art relies so heavily on being Christian that the artist forgets that it also must be good art.

  When we write a story, we must write to the absolute best of our ability. That is the job, first and foremost. If we are truly Christian, that will be evident, no matter what the topic. If we are not truly Christian, that will also be evident, no matter how pious the tale.

  COSMOS IN CHAOS

  Leonard Bernstein tells me more than the dictionary when he says that for him music is cosmos in chaos. That has the ring of truth in my ears, and sparks my creative imagination. And it is true not only of music; all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos. At least all Christian art (by which I mean all true art…) is cosmos in chaos. There’s some modern art, in all disciplines, which is not; some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in music, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.

  CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER

  To serve a work of art is almost identical with adoring the Master of the Universe in contemplative prayer. In contemplative prayer the saint (who knows himself to be a sinner, for none of us is whole, healed, and holy twenty-four hours a day) turns inwards in what is called “the prayer of the heart,” not to find self, but to lose self in order to be found.

  LET GO AND LISTEN

  For me, to work on a book is the same thing as to pray. Both involve that unpopular word discipline. If an artist works only when he feels like it, he’s not apt to build up a body of work. Inspiration comes far more often during work as things get rolling than before you sit at the typewriter. This is because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen. To listen to the work and to go where it tells you to go. And this involves faith. Letting go of your own control and having faith in something you do not control.

  To pray is also to listen. To move through my own chattering to God, to get beyond those words to that place where I can be silent and then listen to what God may have to say.

  THE POWER OF STORY

  But it’s the stories that have always drawn me. When I was a child (as now) there were stories I found difficult, such as that of the workers in the vineyard, where those who had worked only an hour were paid as much as those who had worked all day in the heat of the sun. It wasn’t fair! Like most children, I wanted things to be fair, even though life had already taught me that unfairness abounds. I think many of us still feel like the child stamping and crying out, “It’s not fair!” Those who have worked all day long should certainly be paid more than those who came in at the last minute! But Jesus is constantly trying to make us understand that God’s ways are not our ways, and that God’s love is far less selective and far greater than ours. “Is thine eye evil because I am good?” God asks in Matthew’s Gospel after he has finished paying all the workers the same wage. When God blesses those we deem unworthy, does our jealousy make our eye become evil? Are we, like the elder brother, like Jonah, upset at God’s forgiveness? Daily I need a deep and penitent awareness of how much greater God’s love is than my own.

  NOTHING BUT THE WHOLE BIBLE

  The stories in the Bible have nourished me all my life, as has the poetry, the long lists of laws, the history, and even the begats. (In my little play The Journey with Jonah, I named the three little rats on the sinking ship Huz, Buz, and Hazo, out of the begats!) During my morning and evening reading of Scripture I do not skip. If it’s there, it’s there for a reason, and I read it all, every bit of it. If we read Leviticus with an open heart we will see that the message is not to burden people with an overwhelming number of laws, but to call us to be God’s holy people. The laws are there to help us, not to hinder.

  READ THE BIBLE AS STORY

  I’m particularly grateful that I was allowed to read my Bible as I read my other books, to read it as story, that story which is a revelation of truth. People are sometimes kept from reading the Bible itself by what they are taught about it, and I’m grateful that I was able to read the Book with the same wonder and joy with which I read The Ice Princess, or The Tempest, or about E. Nesbitt’s Psammead, that disagreeable and enchanting creature who would have been no surprise to Abraham or Sarah. In Isaiah I read about those dragons who “honour him because he gives waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, and drink to his people.” So it was no surprise to me to read about a mediaeval dragon who was a great pet in the palace; he helped heat water, and on cold winter nights he got into every bed in the palace, by turn, breathing out just enough warmth to take off the chill and make the sheets toasty to get into.

  STATEMENT OF FAITH

  When I wrote A Wrinkle in Time, I was at a point in my life where my faith in God and the loving purposes of Creation was very insecure, and I wanted desperately to have my faith strengthened. If I could not believe in a God who truly cared about every atom and subatom of his creation, then life seemed hardly worth living. I asked questions, cosmic questions, and the German theologians answered them all—and they were questions which should not have been answered in such a finite, laboratory-proof manner. I read their rigid answers, and I thought, sadly, If I have to believe all this limiting of God, then I cannot be a Christian. And I wanted to be one….

  It was the scientists, with their questions, their awed rapture at the glory of the created universe, who helped to convert me. In a sense, A Wrinkle in Time was my rebuttal to the German theologians. It was also my affirmation of a universe in which I could take note of all the evil and unfairness and horror, and yet believe in a loving Creator.

  THE GREAT MYTHS LAST

  The Bible has always challenged my imagination. But there have been many other stories that have opened doors and windows for me. The Greek and Roman myths I read when I was a child deal with basic truths that help illuminate my own problems. The myth of Sisyphus, for instance: there are many days when I feel like Sisyphus pushing that heavy rock up the mountainside, panting, sweating, as I heave it up, up, get it almost to the top, only to have it slip out of my grasp and roll all the way back down the mountain so that I have to start over again. Such myths have lasted because they are true to our human condition.

  And because when I read I read with my Christian bias, whether I want to or not, the myth of Sisyphus offers me another truth. Sisyphus had to push that rock up the mountain over and over again. Jesus had to carry the cross only once. When it was done, it was done.

  BIBLICAL TRUTH

  The Bible is not objective. Its stories are passionate, searching for truth (rather than fact), and searching most deeply in story. The story of David is one of the most complex and fascinating in the Bible, with its many prefigurings of Jesus. In working on Certain Women I discovered many more contradictions than I had remembered—two different ways of bringing David himself into
the story, two different versions of Saul’s death, for instance. But what the biblical narrator is trying to do is tell us the truth about King David, and the truth is more important than facts.

  BIBLE STORIES INFORM OUR STORIES

  Often when I teach a writers’ workshop I have the students write stories from Scripture, and I have received some wonderful work from these assignments. I am startled by the number of students, deeply committed Christian young people, who do not know the Bible well and who discover it with joy for the first time. I am awed by those who are not sure that it is permissible to write stories inspired by the Bible but discover that doing so deepens their love and understanding of Scripture. I am delighted by the richness of imagination as it is freed to listen to what God may have to say to us through the great truths found in the pages of Scripture.

  FREEDOM TO GROW

  Because I am a struggling human being, trying to make sense out of the meaninglessness of much of life in this century and daily searching for revelatory truth in Scripture, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever want to write novels of pessimism or porno, no matter how realistic my work. But I don’t want to be shut in, labeled, the key turned, so that I am not able to grow and develop, as a Christian, as a writer. I want that freedom which is a large part of the Christian promise, and I don’t want any kind of label to diminish that freedom. It is sad and ironic to have to admit that it does.