Copyright © 1983 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2017 by Penguin Random House LLC
Foreword copyright © 2017 by Rachel Held Evans
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Convergent Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
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CONVERGENT BOOKS is a registered trademark and its C colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in different form by Harold Shaw Publishers, in 1983.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9780451497123
Ebook ISBN 9780451497130
Cover design by Jessie Sayward Bright
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword by Rachel Held Evans
1. Beginnings
2. Calling God Abba, Daddy
3. Protecting God
4. The Light in the Darkness
5. Intersecting Circles
6. The First Death
7. The God Who Is Free
8. Paradoxes in Prayer
9. Love’s Hardest Lesson
10. Impossibilities That Happen
11. A Fountain in the Desert
12. The God Who Cannot Fail
Reader’s Guide by Lindsay Lackey
The best authors can be counted on like good friends.
There are those to whom you return when you need a clever quote for sealing up an argument or concluding a toast, those to whom you return in search of words as familiar and comforting as a hot cup of coffee in your favorite mug, those to whom you return for inspiration, or analysis, or a freshly relevant word.
And then there are those authors to whom you return when everything is on the line—faith, hope, a reason to look squarely at the world for what it is and yet trudge on.
For me, and for millions, Madeleine L’Engle is that author, the one for those moments when only the truest words will do.
Like so many, I first encountered L’Engle’s work as a child when I read A Wrinkle in Time, and as another young reader so aptly put it, “didn’t understand it, but knew what it was about.” Later, when that simple faith evolved into one riddled with questions and doubts, I found a kindred spirit in L’Engle’s memoirs, essays, and poems, which meander so seamlessly through philosophy, science, literature, and Scripture, and like her fiction, never patronize, never paper over the darkness with trite platitudes or five-point solutions, but instead challenge the reader to “rejoice in paradox” and “embrace the not-knowing.” When my own dreams of becoming a published author were realized, I imbibed every word of Walking on Water, L’Engle’s classic on creativity, and have returned to its worn pages at least a dozen times in the course of my career, if only to be reminded to “be obedient to the command of the work, knowing that this involves long hours of research, of throwing out a month’s work, of going back to the beginning, or, sometimes, scrapping the whole thing.” (“Be Obedient to the Work” is scrawled in green marker on a notecard taped above my writing desk, right next to it a sticky note reminding me “the next sentence is not in the refrigerator.”)
L’Engle, it seems, has a word for every season, be it one of faith, doubt, childhood, parenthood, planting onions, burying pets, writer’s block, jury duty, death, birth, or rebirth.
And so it is with the Genesis Trilogy.
One might wonder what a twenty-year-old series on a thousands-year-old sacred text has to say about a modern world divided by conflict and connected by technology, and the short answer is, everything. In times of tumult and uncertainty, we return to the stories that have shaped our identity, that tell us who we are. As L’Engle insists throughout the series, the story of Creation, the story of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Joseph, is her story, too—our story. For in these ordinary, embattled characters, complete with ordinary faults and fears, we encounter a God who is stubbornly present—“marvelously, terribly there”—and who invites us all into the ongoing work of creation, even in the midst of our own failures and doubts.
“Every single one of us, without exception, is called to co-create with God,” she writes in And It Was Good. “No one is too unimportant to have a share in the making or unmaking of the final showing-forth.”
L’Engle demonstrates this showing-forth by inviting us into her own life—aboard a wind-assailed ocean freighter, into a jury deliberation room, amid the bleary aftermath of her husband’s death—and by expertly, as only she can, connecting these events to everything from quantum mechanics, to atonement theology, to gender theory, to Shakespeare, to ancient stories about pharaohs and angels and strange dreams.
For me, a reread of the Genesis Trilogy could not have come at a better time, for my favorite author had once again caught me in a new, critical season of life: the year I became a mother.
I gave birth in a year so otherwise terrible, so ravaged by political and social upheaval and upended by blatant disregard for the truth, the planet, and the vulnerable among us, that I found myself very near despair, the words from the Advent poem pulsing with new intensity:
This is no time for a child to be born…
No time at all.
And yet, once again, St. Madeleine (as my friends and I like to call her) grabbed me by the shoulders and shook the cynicism right out of me, not by turning me away from reality, but by helping me face it—every galaxy and quark, every senseless war and blighted tree, every Bible story that doesn’t quite resolve, every robin’s dance and stormy sea. What a relief it was to learn that this woman I admired so deeply struggled, too, with anxiety about the state of the world, and amid the dirty diapers and sleep deprivation of early motherhood, wondered herself what the future held for her children, yet in spite of it all resolved:
Love still takes the risk of birth.
“Caught up as most of us are in the complexities of daily living,” she writes, “we forget that we are surrounded by the creative power of Love. Every once in a while we need to step aside from the troubles and pleasures of our lives, and take a fresh look, a time to feel, and listen to our Source.”
I came to the Genesis Trilogy as I came to A Wrinkle in Time—like a child. Frightened. Fledgling. Longing for a good story. L’Engle’s words lovingly, patiently took me back to the Source. I didn’t have to understand every page to know exactly what this Story was about.
In A Stone for a Pillow, L’Engle tells of a young admirer and fellow writer, who, upon learning a medical condition would prevent her from ever giving birth, called the author from the hospital and tearfully asked, “ ‘Madeleine—all the things you’ve written, do you believe them?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You really do?’
‘If I didn’t believe them, I couldn’t survive.’ ”
The young writer, who might as well be any of us who long from time to time to call up St. Madeleine and ask the very same thing, pressed once more: “ ‘I just need to be sure you believe what you say in your books.’
‘I do.’ God help me, I do. Even when I don’t, I do.”
The best authors are those who remind you of what you already know, what you already deeply believe. In this regard, reading Madeleine L’Engle is a bit like going to church, for she reminds me of the truths I declare every Sunday morning in the little Episcopal congregation to which I belong.
I believe there is a good and almighty God who is the creative force behind all things seen and unseen; that this God is One, yet exists as three persons; that God loved the world
enough to become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, who lived, taught, fed, healed, and suffered among us as both fully God and fully man. I believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born to a virgin; that Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross and buried in the ground; that after three days dead, Jesus came back to life; that he ascended into heaven and reigns with God and will return to bring justice and restoration to our world. I believe that God continues to move in the world through the Holy Spirit, the church, and God’s people. I believe that forgiveness is possible; that resurrection is possible; that eternal life is possible.
I believe all of these things, at least most of the time.
And, thanks St. Madeleine, even when I don’t, I do.
—Rachel Held Evans
A small ship—a freighter—on a very large sea.
A cloudless blue sky, and the sun lighting an ocean which changed from blue to purple to steel grey as the wind rose and the waves lifted their crests.
We were caught in an unusual nautical event, a fair weather storm.
The crew strung ropes along all the walkways which did not already have rails. In the dining room the tablecloths were soaked with water to keep the dishes from sliding. People who travel on freighters are likely to be good sailors, so most of us made it in to dinner.
During the night we felt the wind continue to rise. We had to hold on to the sides of our bunks to keep from being thrown out, and sleep was out of the question. That morning it just happened that we had been given a sheet of paper explaining the Beaufort scale, which measures the severity of storms on a scale of one to twelve. Where on that scale were we? As the wind rose, and the waves, we felt more than mere curiosity about it.
Our ship, though heavily laden with cargo at both ends, was rather light in the middle where the cabins and the public rooms were situated. Neither my husband nor I spoke the thought aloud, but later we confessed we both had had visions of the ship breaking in two. It was not that we rolled or hawed. It felt as though the ship was crashing into stone as it hit one mountainous wave after another.
We had been at sea only about a week, rejoicing at first in balmy weather, where at home in Connecticut there was snow and ice. We were both beginning to relax after weeks of very heavy work schedules. And I had turned back to Genesis as well as John’s gospel for my Scripture reading, using the Gideon Bible in our cabin.
Something about the wildness of the weather started those great verses moving strongly through my mind. I was not really frightened by the storm, but I was, to put it mildly, ill at ease and uncomfortable, and so I rested on the great story of the Beginning.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
In the beginning was the Word, with God; and the Spirit was in the beginning. Always there are all three faces of our trinitarian God. Always. The past—before time and space. Always. Now—during quiet. During storm. And the word always also looks forward, beyond when time and space will end.
The same Word was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
One is very aware of time in the middle of a storm. I kept looking at our travel clock, faintly luminous at two o’clock in the morning. But outside, not a glimmer of light. Only the dark violence of wind and wave. How long would it go on? How long could it go on?
It is difficult for us who were born in time, into time, and whose mortality will die in time—to time, to understand that before that extraordinary beginning, that first act of creativity, that first epiphany, when God took nothing and made something, there was no time, no space. Everything began at the same moment. In the beginning.
And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And the evening and morning were the first day.
There’s something of the feeling of that first day on a ship, especially a small ship. Caught up as most of us are in the complexities of daily living, we forget that we are surrounded by the creative power of Love. Every once in a while we need to step aside from the troubles and pleasures of our lives, and take a fresh look, a time to feel, and listen to our Source. Ever since my husband has been on the TV series All My Children and gets a real vacation, we have done our stepping aside by boarding an ocean freighter. In mid-February, whenever possible, we embark on a small ship in a large sea. (Having been married for twenty-five years before we had spent more than two nights away from home together only heightens our delight in having a real holiday.)
The day before we sailed into that extraordinary fair-weather storm, as our freighter moved down the east coast of South America to what is called “the Bottom of the World,” our captain spoke to us. “As we get near the Strait of Magellan,” he said, “be sure to look at the horizon. You’ll never see it so clearly. There are no towns or cities to pollute the atmosphere.”
It was true. Down there, when we looked at the horizon we saw air, air as it was meant to be when it was made. We saw clearly the beautiful curve of the earth. And at night we saw the Southern Cross in an absolutely black sky. I was astounded and awed at its blackness. Pure. Clear. With the stars blazing from out of it. There was none of the pinkish tinge we are used to seeing around the horizon from the city lights; even if we are as much as a hundred miles from the city, those lights still stain the sky of the “civilized” world.
And so, even before we moved into the wildness of the unexpected storm, we had a feeling of Genesis. The day after the storm was over and the ropes were taken down and we were able to balance as we stood or walked without legs wide apart, my husband asked the captain where we had been on the Beaufort scale. He replied laconically, “Eleven.”
I stood at the rail and looked at the sea, which felt smooth again, though there were still whitecaps breaking the surface, and kept on with my thoughts. The first day. The beginning of time. Time, which, like matter, was created in that first great shouting of joy, of making nothing into something; time, a part of nature, which, like space, like all creation, will have an end. (All created things die. Before the seed can grow, it must be planted in the earth, and so die to itself before it can become a tree. Or a wave. Or a flying fish.)
But in the beginning, when all things were first shown forth, the light and the dark danced together; in the fullness of their time they comprehended each other; they knew each other, and it was good. It was very good.
God created. God made.
Night and day—that first flashing rhythm which marked the birth of time. Water and land. Galaxies and suns and planets and moons, all moving in the joyous dance of creation. Matter and time making music together.
God made. Fish and sea animals and birds. Land and land animals, every kind of living creature, ants and auks and aardvarks. Dromedaries and dragons and dinosaurs.
And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image.”
Our image, said the Trinitarian Creator, the Maker.
“Our” image, as it is translated in the King James Bible, is more in harmony with the original than some of the newer translations which say “my” image, completely missing the point.
If Christ suddenly appeared in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, as a surprising number of people seem to believe, how can there be unity in Trinity? Yes, for all three persons were there, always, inseparable, whole and holy.
So God said, “Let us make man in our image…male and female.”
Both male and female go to make the image of God, not a singleton, not an independent entity. Not one: How could one be our image? Our image, said God, not my image. Our image, male and female.
That it takes both
male and female to complete the image of God is not a new thought for me, but neither is it a static one. My own thinking about the balance of love and tension between male and female changes with each encounter. As a woman, I deny my own free will if I blame men for the patriarchal society into which I was born. Males cannot take over unless females permit it. And in permitting it, we erode male wholeness as well as our own. And our image is an image of wholeness—what we are meant to be.
In the beginning of the space/time continuum, night and day (female and male, according to Greek thinking) understood each other, as we need to understand each other now, if, in this time, we are not to destroy time, and ourselves along with it. I, as a woman, need to understand not only the men I encounter in my life, but the masculine in myself, just as men must seek to understand not only the women they meet, but the feminine in themselves. This is perhaps easier for women than for men, for through the centuries women have often had to be both mother and father, when their husbands were at sea, or at war, or, in my case, when my actor husband had to be on the road for months at a time with a play. Women have been allowed to affirm the nurturing and the intuitive in themselves, whereas more often than not men have been forced by society to limit themselves to the rational, fact-finding-and-proving part of their personalities. Women must be very gentle with men as they, as well as women, seek to regain the lost wholeness for which they were destined.
It takes two to make the image of God, not necessarily a male and a female, though this is the most obvious example. It takes all aspects of ourselves to be part of that image. And “our” image is an image of community, community which was in trinity in the beginning, and which will be after the eschaton, the end of time, when night and day and all of us will know each other again in the coming of the kingdom.
And It Was Good Page 1
