|
3be25ab
|
One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation. Many of us have had at least part of that horror thrust on us at one..
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
08ef0bf
|
Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
96f2fb4
|
Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.
|
|
stories
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
3aa6ebb
|
When we are writing or painting or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions and opened to a wider world, where colours are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
b935718
|
The well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only deny them their childhood, with its high creativity, but they would have them conform to the secular world, with its dirty devices. The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs but in truth.
|
|
myth
fantasy
truth
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
a797ec4
|
we would, all of us, be less than we are if it weren't for those we love and who've loved us who have died.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
ae08eac
|
To love anyone is to hope in him always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from the moment at which we identify [pigeonhole] him, and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able to become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
8ac66b7
|
The most memorable books from our childhoods are those that make us feel less alone,
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
724fc72
|
Max had a book with her and began leafing through it, looking for something. "There's a passage our conversation reminds me of ..." "What?" "In the Upanishads -- a series of Sanskrit works which are part of the Veda. Here it is Pol, listen: In this body, in this town of Spirit, there is a little house shaped like a lotus, and in that house there is a little space. There is as much in that little space within the heart as there is in the who..
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
de76b9e
|
More personally, my intellect is a stumbling block to much that makes life worth living: laughter, love; a wiling acceptance of being created. The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art.
|
|
love
rationalism
intellectualism
intellect
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
f8c802b
|
Stew.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
e274eef
|
work
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
5a6f993
|
On its surface this is a book about three children who fight an evil force threatening their planet. But it is really about a more primal battle all human beings face, to respect, defend, and love themselves. When Meg pulls the ultimate weapon from her emotional arsenal to fight, for her little brother and for good, it is a great moment, not just for her, but for every reader who has ever felt overlooked, confused, alone. It has been more t..
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
bfed89e
|
square
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
8178ea2
|
working
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
38f4184
|
she stopped herself from being hurt long, long ago by not letting herself love anybody or anything.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
9cdc94e
|
sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
7103658
|
But what is real? In the Bible we are constantly being given glimpses of a reality quite different from that taught in school, even in Sunday school. And these glimpses are not given to the qualified; there's the marvel. It may be that the qualified feel no need of them.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
24020ac
|
If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning; there is no need to fear. But if it is not true, if it is man imposing strictures on God (as did the men of the Christian establishment of Galileo's day), then I want to be open to God, not to what man says about God.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
adfc118
|
Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us or we light a candle to see by. We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up.... Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if w..
|
|
good
light
inspiration
darkness
raising-children
growing-up
evil
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
dcb01b8
|
It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical no..
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
f078711
|
your behaviour must be such that when you go to bed at night you will be happy with what you have done during the day
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
1fd1fb1
|
The greatest challenge a teacher has to accept is the courage to be; if we we make mistakes; we say too much where we should have said nothing; we do not speak where a word might have made all the difference. If we are, we will make terrible errors. But we still have to have the courage to struggle on, trusting in our own points of reference to show us the way.
|
|
existence
courage
challenges
speaking
teachers
mistakes
teaching
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
01acc59
|
But there's a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There's a kind of vanity in goodness.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
134074f
|
But I have to accept the fact that I am often unwise; that I am not always loving; that I make mistakes; that I am, in fact, human. And as Christians we are not meant to be less human than other people, but more human, just as Jesus of Nazareth was more human.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
d880a30
|
And When is not what matters. It's what happens in the When that matters.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
1b91c1e
|
And perhaps if we ever have real equality with all our glorious differences, the language itself will make the appropriate changes. For language, like a story or a painting, is alive. Ultimately it will be the artists who will change the language (as Chaucer did, as Dante did, as Joyce did), not the committees.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
ce352d1
|
One of the problems of being a storyteller is the cultivated ability to extrapolate; in every situation all the come to me.
|
|
writing
imagination
what-ifs
storytelling
writers
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
c70d185
|
Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of imagination. It binds us where we should be free.
|
|
imagination
l-engle
walking-on-water
ridicule
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
e340366
|
But we outgrow this spontaneity and forget the completeness of the circle of blessing. Once again we have come to think of happiness as material prosperity, as affluence. This is the consumer mentality, and is how Madison Avenue would have us think. When we have been turned into consumers we are lowered from being men and women, thinking human beings. Far too often we fall for the not-very-subtle temptation: the more we consume, the happier..
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
ad52295
|
Katherine Paterson
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
b1f02ea
|
A journal is not a diary, where you record the weather and the engagements of the day. A journal is a notebook in which one can, hopefully, be ontological.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
3789525
|
When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
83732a8
|
It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
9b1e871
|
Now we leave our tears for mirth. Now we sing, not death, but birth.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
312961c
|
You human beings tend to want good things to last forever. They don't. Not while we're in time.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
5fa3591
|
If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate. That's why we still need
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
a9b724d
|
unceremoniously
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
d35c0d9
|
piteous
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
0a8667f
|
I'm a very old woman, Simon, and in the nature of things I don't have a great deal longer to live. But I've already so far outlived normal life expectancy, and I'm so fascinated by the extraordinary behavior of the world around me and the ordered behavior of the heavens above, that I don't dwell overmuch on death. And I'm still part of a simpler world than yours, a world in which it was easier to believe in God.' 'Why was it easier?' 'Desp..
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
67270ce
|
I place all Heaven with its power And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness, All these I place By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness!
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
94723f5
|
Maybe our intimacies are more precious if we know they may be taken away.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
70a2640
|
aelpton ouden, panta d' elpizein khreon. Euripides. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
|
8ee33e6
|
Strength can always be used to destroy as well as create,
|
|
|
Madeleine L'Engle |