by Sarah Arthur
Chris Smith of The Englewood Review of Books says his doctorate studies at Indiana University were influenced by Madeleine’s mingling of theology and geometry. “The geometry we learned in high school is Euclidean geometry, which says that everything happens in a flat plane,” he explained. “But Madeleine talks about if you take out the assumption of a flat plane and start looking at a curved surface, like the surface of a sphere for instance, then a lot of the axioms and assumptions we learned in a geometry class start to fall apart. But there’s different ones that take their place, and you’re able to develop a whole different geometry, a whole different way of talking about space.” He was especially fascinated by its aesthetical implications, that there’s beauty in a curved, rather than angular, surface—which, he said, also has theological implications, because “there’s a connection between what’s good and what’s beautiful and what’s true.” That insight sparked his specialized course of study.
Not everyone has found Madeleine’s interest in science compatible with Christian belief, however, and some even found it dangerous. One of her detractors wrote of tesseracts, for instance, “What she is introducing her readers to, in all reality, is known in the occult world as astral projection or astral travel.”36 In a satirical column “Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond,” published in the online journal McSweeney’s in 2011, Natalie Grant wrote to Madeleine (who died in 2007, remember): “I know you got some Christian backlash because you wove so much science into your work. The loonies are still giving some authors a hard time, but no one handles it as gracefully as you did. To be honest, your view of God as someone who approves of time-travel and telepathy rocks my socks.”37 Natalie writes this tongue-in-cheek, of course, conflating science with science fiction, but she highlights the unhappy battle in which Madeleine was continuously embroiled with her ever-suspicious conservative critics.
Candy Bryant, a bookstore manager in Ludington, Michigan, said she thought she’d lost a customer’s confidence about buying Wrinkle to read with her granddaughter because Candy waxed too enthusiastic about its mixture of science and fantasy. The woman’s face fell; the customer mumbled that perhaps the Chronicles of Narnia would be a better fit. “I realized how in this political world people strive to put things in boxes, mark them ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe,’” Candy reflected. “Something I said might have marked Wrinkle as unsafe for her. But I didn’t want to make the book feel too safe for her. Good fiction, like life, is by merit unsafe.” Candy was thankful the woman returned when the book order came in, read Wrinkle with her granddaughter, and raved about it.
But just the mere fact that Candy would pause, that her trigger response to a hesitant customer was fear that any mention of science might turn the woman off, shows just how fraught this topic is in our public discourse.
Perhaps that’s why one of my favorite moments in my interview with Luci Shaw was her description of attending a conference with Madeleine in Cambridge, England, where Luci found herself seated at dinner between Madeleine on one side and theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne on the other. Polkinghorne is not merely a scientist who happens to be a Christian, but he’s also an Anglican priest, a fact that must have thrilled Madeleine enormously. He’s famous for that same “fearless integration” of faith and science as Madeleine herself—but he’s just so twinkly and jovial and British about it that you can’t be offended if you try. According to Polkinghorne (whom I can’t bring myself to call “John”):
Most of the great pioneer-figures of science were people of faith. And they liked to say that God had written two books: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. You should read both of those books, because God had written them. And if you read them aright, you would find that they did not contradict each other, because of course they had the same author. . . . [For instance] there are clear signs written in the book of nature, for all who wish to read, that the earth has had a long history . . . [it’s a book] written by God, God who is the God of truth, and does not mislead those who read what he has written in the created order of the world.38
He’s equally articulate about the book of Scripture, saying, of Genesis 1, “We are not reading some scientific text kindly provided by God to save us the trouble of actually doing science, we are reading something more profound, more interesting, more important than that; we are reading a theological text.” Leave it to a theoretical physicist to clearly explain why literary genres matter.
So, there was Luci, the poet, seated between the scientist and the storyteller. I tried visualizing that tableaux.
“Oh, wow, Luci . . . ,” I said, at a loss for words.
“The conversations were not just chitchat; they were expressing such amazing truths and discoveries!” Luci exclaimed.
“You mean you didn’t sit there talking about the weather?”
She was laughing now. “Or the traffic!”
“I’d expect nothing less from that triad.”
What an iconic image of the relationship between faith, fiction, and science—mediated by poetry, no less! (Am I the only one picturing Andrei Rublev’s fifteenth-century icon of the three angels visiting Abraham in Genesis 18? No?) And what a vision, what a challenge for my generation: to ignore those social media algorithms that label and isolate, and to instead intentionally foster conversations, over dinner, with unlikely guests. That’s the sort of conference we should all want to attend—and if we can’t find one, we should convene it.
• • • •
Only on Madeleine L’Engle’s website would there be a blog post from her granddaughters about the annual Perseids meteor shower. “For her, stars were ‘an icon of creation,’” writes Charlotte, “meaning that they helped her trust in God’s love and the significance of an interconnected universe.”39 In Madeleine’s faith, stars literally were “a light so lovely,” pointing to a truth, a Presence, greater than themselves. Again: not an idol that one worships but an icon, a window through which we can see the God who created all things.
And that, for Madeleine, is key. To force the claims of Christianity to rest on indisputable proof is to treat science itself as a kind of idol, the standard by which we measure everything. Then, when science seems to contradict what we thought Scripture was saying, our faith falters. But there are spiritual truths “beyond provable facts,” as Madeleine was fond of saying, otherwise we wouldn’t need faith for them. There are spiritual realities that science will never be able to prove, one way or the other—no more than anyone can scientifically prove that I love my husband.
However, when scientific discovery is treated as an icon—as a window whereby more of God’s light and truth is illuminated—we can reenter the realm of childlike wonder and say with the psalmist,
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them? . . .
. . . Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8:3–4a, 9
Scientific pursuit, then, becomes a key spiritual discipline—a gateway, the prelude, to worship. I would go so far as to say that the study of created things can school us in wonder better than any other discipline. In what ways can we, like Madeleine, become lifelong learners? When was the last time you looked up at night, while walking the dog or taking out the recycling, and tracked the progress of a satellite? Are you sure it wasn’t the International Space Station? (Who’s all up there these days? What are they doing?) And what is the annual Perseids meteor shower, anyway?40
Meanwhile, technology in the service of science shows no signs of slowing down: artificial intelligence is being “trained,” even now, to do everything from drive our cars to diagnose our illnesses. An idol in the making, perhaps, and what is far too quickly idolized can also become demonized—or worse yet, weaponized. By that light, holding faith and science together, as
we move into the future, is a key Christian practice that we dare not dismiss or ignore. If I’m not training my children in the kind of humility and wisdom that recognizes both the dangers and the gifts of human knowledge, then I’m failing to equip them for faithful discernment. And Madeleine taught us how.
This wasn’t the only spiritual practice by which she taught us well, however—nor even for which she is best known. We now make the turn toward Madeleine’s commitment to yet another Christian practice, the vocation of the artist, and how that commitment has transformed a generation of writers and beyond.
Chapter Five
RELIGION and ART
If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.
Walking on Water
For the past few years I’ve served as a preliminary fiction judge for Christianity Today magazine’s annual book awards. Upwards of forty books—nominated by a dozen or so religious publishing houses or imprints—are delivered to my door annually in early August, and I’m given mere weeks to narrow the field. First I sort by genre (historical romance, suspense/thriller, family drama, biblical fiction, contemporary romance, Amish everything, etc.), then by writing style or literary merit, and occasionally by “I’m not sure what this is, but I’m intrigued.” Usually it takes me only a few paragraphs to discern whether a book has potential, at which point I’ll either sort it into the “No” category or read a bit further. If all goes well, I read the entire thing. In the end, I select four finalists, which are sent along to a quartet of final judges to pick the winner.
What kinds of criteria shape my decisions? Initially I struggled to define this. Was I merely favoring my personal preferences (for British detective novels, say)? Was it really fair for a grumpy English major to impose her tastes on an industry that never intended to cater to her tribe in the first place? Over time I realized I was operating by a perfectly valid set of intuitive criteria formed over many decades of being a reader, an author, a trained theologian, a fiction writer, and an editor of literary anthologies. This wasn’t a matter of mere temperament. So I wrote my criteria down. I began to plant my flag in the kinds of terrain I think Christians, of all people, should be exploring—things I was seeing far too little of in the books that came my way. Here’s what I’ve circled back to, time and time again:
•Excellent writing
•Complex characters
•Compelling plotlines and reveals
•Questions of ultimate meaning (or was this just a cute, entertaining love story?)
•Theological depth (or did the author fail to reckon with the problem of evil? of suffering?)
•A strong sense of faith communities as a vital presence in the world (or were churches only depicted as irrelevant, at best; or, at worst, dangerous?)
•And finally, global/cultural awareness (or did the author assume that his or her nationality, race, and class were normative for how the rest of the world should function?)
In other words, I grade on a L’Engle-inspired curve.
• • • •
So, what’s an author’s secret sauce? How does the magic happen? For Madeleine, what were the signs of greatness? It certainly wasn’t hitting all my criteria, in every book, every time. Children’s literature scholar John Rowe Townsend described Madeleine as “a curiously-gifted, curiously-learned, curiously-imperfect writer,”1 and obviously, we can point to moments where any one of Madeleine’s novels actually fail my bulleted list:
Excellent writing. Her opening sentence of A Wrinkle in Time, for instance, “It was a dark and stormy night,” has appalled the literati for decades (so cliché! what is she doing?). Sure, great authors can get away with breaking rules, while the rest of us are exhorted only to do so in moderation. But was this one of those moments?
Complex characters. Meg Murry of Wrinkle is one of the best-loved female protagonists in the history of children’s literature; yet at times the Murrys, Austins, and O’Keefes seem too good to be true. Writes Natalie Grant in her satirical letter to Madeleine for McSweeney’s:
Did you write [A Ring of Endless Light] just for me? I’m sure you did, because I was Vicki [sic] Austin. I, too, had the older brother, the dog, and the rampant transcendentalist tendencies. My family, too, was musical and nerdy-smart and pensive . . . we’d all sit on the porch in the evenings and talk about world issues, too! I could communicate with dolphins, too! . . . Well, except for a few minor details, you really were dead on there.2
One of Madeleine’s editors, Sandra Jordan, said she told Madeleine in early drafts of A Ring of Endless Light that Vicky Austin was “so self-righteous that she came across to the reader as unsympathetic and smug.”3 So Madeleine made changes. Even Newbery Award–winning authors must attend to their characters.
Compelling plotlines and reveals. Madeleine’s plotlines are occasionally stronger than the characters who inhabit them. A Swiftly Tilting Planet comes to mind, with its tight structure based on the lines of an Irish rune but its otherwise underdeveloped supporting characters from a dizzying range of historical contexts. Madeleine simply didn’t have the space to develop all those personas. While reading back through her YA books recently, I was also struck by how often she rewards her teen heroines with what Jeffrey Overstreet calls “trophy boyfriends”: basketball star Calvin O’Keefe to Meg, handsome researcher Adam Eddington to Vicky—heck, generally no fewer than three potential guys for Vicky, in any given book. That was certainly not a plot device in my own nerdy adolescence . . . and perhaps just the teensiest bit of wish-fulfillment fantasy on her part?
It’s when we dive into the next few bullet points of my criteria that Madeleine really begins to shine:
Issues of ultimate meaning. Indeed, it’s hard to find a YA author who beats Madeleine at addressing issues of ultimate meaning. Questions of origin (How did all of what we see in the universe come together?); questions of theological anthropology (Who are human beings? Who made us?); questions of purpose (Why are we here? Where is our story headed?)—back to Madeleine’s own “cosmic questions.” In her presentation by that title to the 1996 Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, she said, “We read stories, and we write stories because we ask the big questions to which there are no finite answers. We tell stories about people who give us our best answers, in the way that they live and work out their lives and treat other people and try to find the truth.”4 If a novel isn’t about those questions, then what is it doing?
Theological depth. Beyond issues of ultimate concern, she also expressed a theological framework consistent with the Anglican tradition: “Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes, willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be. Christ came to us as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine, to show us what it means to be made in God’s image.”5 As we’ll discuss further in chapter seven, she affirmed that sin is real and not only manifests in evil systems at war with God but cuts through every human heart. Yet God is intimately involved in redeeming human history—redeeming each human life, indeed, all of creation—through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Granted, one could make the case that at times Madeleine drifted outside of orthodox theological bounds. I myself am troubled—when reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet, for instance—by what seems like her belief in fate and, on occasion, a vague form of reincarnation: that some genetic quirks have spiritual significance (close-set eyes, bad; clear blue eyes, good) and turn up every generation or so, for better or worse. Thankfully, someone like Charles Wallace can be tasked with breaking the cycle, a holy interference that points to a grace that overrides fate. But the reader is left with the sense that our lives and stories are largely pre-scripted; we are fated to speak and act in particular ways, even those of us who are ostensibly there to change the story for the better.
When Made
leine drifts into these sorts of speculations is when I feel her writing is at its weakest: an otherwise robust theology subsumed for the sake of a plot device. And yet, such instances are rare. More common—and more compelling—is her relentless insistence on the uniqueness of Christ, on the power of the Incarnation to overturn every device of evil, and “the basic truth for me, the freeing truth, is God’s love, God’s total, unequivocal love.”6
A strong sense of the church and faith communities as a vital presence in the world. Here also, Madeleine’s novels are unique. Yes, there are times when Madeleine paints institutional religion with negative brushstrokes—the witch-hunting Puritans in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, for example; or the demonically controlled canon of an urban cathedral in The Young Unicorns (which, I’m guessing, was her way of poking fun at her good friend Canon West). But otherwise, clergy like Vicky Austin’s grandfather make regular, normal appearances. The families participate in worship; they include hymns in their singing repertoires; even angelic beings such as the centaurs on the planet Uriel in Wrinkle sing passages from Isaiah 42:10–12.
Global/cultural awareness. My final criterion is a bit trickier. On the one hand, Madeleine takes her predominantly white characters all over the globe (all over the universe, for that matter), to places such as an invented island off the coast of Spain in The Arm of the Starfish and the jungles of Venezuela in Dragons in the Waters. Her engagement with other cultures, such as the native peoples in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, on the whole expresses a deep respect for their religions, for their relationship to nature, for their ways of life. But it’s often a highly idealized view, born out of a kind of unrecognized privilege and white obliviousness that at times makes me cringe.
Taken individually, each of Madeleine’s books could be said to fail somewhere. That’s because she was, like the rest of authors throughout time, an imperfect human being whose greatness as an artist nonetheless somehow survived her quirks. No author or book is perfect. This is good news for the rest of us: freedom to be imperfect is a liberating force for any vocation. But for Madeleine, her greatness as a writer was bound up in so much more than words on a page. It was bound up in a whole life, in her influence on generations of other artists as mentor and guide. It’s to that legacy that we now turn.
