25 Ways You Can Celebrate C.S. Lewis

It's the Literary Day of Days! That's what I call November 29, the day we celebrate the birthdays of Louisa May Alcott (1832), C.S. Lewis (1898), and Madeleine L'Engle (1918).

In keeping with a list of ways to celebrate Alcott, which I first posted four years ago, I thought I would have fun posting a similar list in honor of Lewis. With Alcott, all ideas were inspired by Little Women and Little Men. With Lewis, I decided to keep my inspiration to the Chronicles of Narnia, though I certainly could have widened the field through many of his other writings. Narnia felt like the best place to be today though.

So without further ado, here are 25 ways you can celebrate C.S. Lewis:

Explore an old house.

Quibble with your siblings (but make sure you make up).

Open a wardrobe door and peek inside. You never know…

Take a walk in the woods, preferably a snowy woods if you can find one. (Don a warm fur coat if you have one; let it remind you that you’re royalty.)

Lean up against a lamppost.

Carry someone’s packages.

Have a splendid tea. Or enjoy a fish and potatoes supper.

Learn how beavers build their dams.

Remember you’re a daughter of Eve or a son of Adam.

Stay on the lookout for Father Christmas.

Don’t forget to clean your sword.

Don’t be afraid to anoint someone with a bit of healing cordial.

Let your mind and heart linger on Aslan.

Let out a ROAR!

Romp with a cat.

Recall the beauties of a blossoming spring.

Hang out at a railway station. (Listen for the sound of a beautiful horn.)

Set up an archery contest with friends.

Enjoy time with a pet mouse. You might want to name him Reepicheep.

Imagine climbing inside a favorite painting.

Take a long boat trip.

Recite some of Aslan’s instructions from memory.

Gallop across a desert on a horse.

Plant an apple tree.

Climb a mountain – go further up and further in!

Thoughts to Ponder: Writers for Life

One of the habits I’ve cultivated over the years is collecting quotes. I used to jot them 

down in my journal, and while I still do that sometimes, these days I am more likely to past them (or type them, depending on where I find them) into a document on my computer. I add scripture verses, snippets of poetry, prayers, and inspiring quotes from all sorts of sources, and the ultimate collection can get pretty long (last year’s ran 13 pages). So each year I start a fresh document, labeled with the new year, and begin again.

I thought that from time to time, I’d post one of my daybook quotes here. I kicked off 2014 with these words I so resonated with from C.S. Lewis scholar Don W. King:

“Each of us should find a writer

we can read for the rest of our lives.”

sweetclipart.com

Lewis may be the writer that is truest of for me. But also L’Engle, Tolkien, Austen. Sayers is moving toward that list as well. And Eugene Peterson. I go through seasons where I read them more or less, but I go back to all of these particular writers a lot, never feeling like I’ve exhausted what they have to say. They are also writers I love to read about – biography, literary analysis, appreciation.

With Lewis, I always feel especially glad that I have so much more of his work to read…I don’t think I could ever exhaust it. Even if I eventually read it all, it always bears repeat readings. That’s also true of Tolkien.

I’ve probably come closest to reading everything of L’Engle’s. In my late teens and early-mid twenties, I went out of my way to collect as much of her work as I could, even the harder to find things (and for at least a handful of Christmases, my family did an amazing job of giving me hard-to-find L’Engle books). She was hugely formative in my developing spiritual life, and while there are a few books of hers that I feel I’ve somewhat outgrown (not, by the way, her children’s books) many of them I still revisit often, and a few of them have deep places of honor in my mind and heart.

I’ve purposely not ever read all of Austen’s letters, her juvenalia, or her incomplete novel, mostly because I don’t want to say I’ve read everything she’s written! I’ve read most if not all of Sayers’ novels, and also Mind of the Maker, but only some of her drama and essays, and not many of her letters. Peterson is so prolific that I don’t think I could possibly exhaust all of his work, but I like knowing so much of it is there, and that I can always drink deep when I turn to him.

One reason why Lewis has moved to the top of my list over the years, besides the obvious richness to be found in his work, is that he is the kind of writer one really can visit in different seasons and moods. Narnia was my foray into Lewis’ world, and I entered it around the age of ten. But I still revisit Narnia, and I still find more there to learn and ponder and enjoy and love thirty-five years after I first read the books. They are perhaps richer for my having visited them so often, and richer still because I’ve now read so many others books by (and about) Lewis, including books it took me a while to be ready for. Essentially, he is not a writer I ever outgrow – he’s always somewhere I feel I need and want to be, saying something I need and want to hear, challenging me, delighting me, at different seasons and times in my life.

Is there a writer, or writers, that you feel you could read for the rest of your life?

Moveable Feasts and Holy Flexibility

I think this may have been the longest unintended hiatus I've ever taken from this blog. It's not been for lack of anything to say -- in fact, I've had ideas for probably a dozen posts during the past few weeks. It's just been a very busy season. Illness and travel colored the first part, and a great deal of work has colored the second. Not to mention entry into the wonderful Advent season, always a blessed time!

I was delighted that we got to travel to see family in Virginia for Thanksgiving, another very blessed time. However, it meant that I was without internet access for a few days (not a bad thing in and of itself) including on November 29, what I like to call the Literary Day of Days. Every year I try to celebrate the mutual birthdays of Louisa May Alcott, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle, three amazing writers who have influenced my life in some very deep ways. I find it beautifully serendipitous that they share a birth date. Though I was sorry to not be able to publicly celebrate the trio this year, it felt comforting to know that other people were. There was a lot of celebration around Lewis this year in particular because it was the 50th anniversary of his death (his feast day just a few days before his birthday) and that too felt comforting.

The church, in its wisdom, sometimes moves holy feasts out of practical necessity. I love that -- it reminds me that it's not the date in and of itself that is sacred, but the person or event we celebrate, and that can happen at any time. We can learn a lot from holy flexibility, even with our more "secular" feasts (though the older I get, the less I feel that anything worth celebrating with joy and gratitude to God is secular). I remembered that this year when our typical Thanksgiving plans had to change to accommodate the needs of our aging parents. The sweet girl, who struggles so mightily with change, briefly had a hard time with the notion that things were going to be "different" this year, but in the end, it all worked beautifully. We practiced holy flexibility (you're picturing monks doing yoga now, right?) and I think we were blessed for, by, and through it.

Happy Birthday, Louisa, Jack and Madeleine!

As I post every year on November 29, today is what I call the "literary day of days." It's the birthday of Louisa May Alcott (1832), C.S. Lewis (1898), and Madeleine L'Engle (1918) three of the most important writers of my heart.

I love that these three -- so different, yet each so wonderful -- share a birthday. It feels like lovely serendipity!

Just in time for her birthday, an official FB page in Madeleine's honor has been launched. It's called Tesser Well and they've been posting some wonderful tidbits this week, including a review of Leonard Marcus' new biography of Madeleine (which I've not yet read, but have on hold) and an article about the dedication today of St. John the Divine's library (where Madeleine was cathedral librarian for years) as a literary landmark. The page is definitely worth checking out. They've created a beautiful photo collage of various editions of A Wrinkle in Time, including many translated into languages besides English.

C.S. Lewis is being honored in a few newspapers who can't seem to resist quoting the eminently quotable Jack. Huffington Post has nine quotes in his honor, but the Christian Science Monitor has gone them one better and posted ten.

The Monitor, bless them, did ten quotes from Louisa in honor of the day too.

Princess Academy (review from the archives)

The sweet girl and I finished Princess Academy this evening...her first time to hear the book, and my fourth or fifth time reading it. I found myself wanting to talk about it a bit, but then it dawned on me I did that already, quite some time ago! I went back to revisit the review and found myself nodding in agreement over it all, so here's an oldie from 2009 that I hope you'll enjoy, a reflection I wrote called "Quarry Speech and Kything." Happy Thanksgiving!

Fun note: the sweet girl has been very into Madeleine L'Engle lately, and our reading of this book overlapped our reading of A Wind in the Door. Not planned. Just lovely serendipity.

*******From 2009*******

In the past couple of years, Shannon Hale has become one of my favorite fantasy authors for young adults. I first really fell for her work a couple of years ago when I read Princess Academy. Recently I re-read it again twice: to myself, and out-loud to my husband (who really liked it, and who was pleasantly surprised by the un-Disney nature of the story, given its title!).

I liked it even better the second and third times around, partly because I was fully prepared to enter into the world of Mt. Eskel. Since I knew the characters and the contour of the plot already, I was able to pay more attention to Hale's world-building. I'm impressed by the details she provides about life for the villagers on Mt. Eskel and how that builds a credible, substantial world for the story.

Hale tells us about the strength of the mountain itself, the beauty of the mountain views, the smell of the goats they herd, the beautifully streaked linder stone, the wild miri flowers that grow in cracks of stone, the chips and shards of rock that cut into thinning boot soles, the essential poverty of the people who must work hard to cut enough stone to trade for goods each season. She helps us understand that, while they're illiterate, they have an amazing communal memory which is showcased in festival time through the creativity of their "story-shouts." She describes their folk dances, their physical strength, their skill in mining linder, their lack of political status as members of a non-provincial territory of the kingdom of Danland, the way they care for one another. She hints at the lacks some of them feel by not having time or space in their lives for gardens or art (and their yearning to see the far-off ocean). And of course, she describes the way they communicate with one another in the quarry, using a language without words, often communicated through the sounds and rhythms of the work, tools and stone.

A huge part of Miri's coming of age, and her growing understanding of herself as a true daughter of the mountain, is her newfound ability to sing the mountain's songs even when she is cut off from many of the places and people she once thought were needed to make such speech possible. Before she left for the academy, she had never used quarry speech because she'd never been allowed inside the quarry (her father has his reasons, but he doesn't explain them to her, hence her feeling of uselessness). Her sojourn at the princess academy, along with eleven other girls from their territory, is not precisely an exile, but it functions as one, or at least a time away in a very different place where new thoughts and ideas and dreams arise (which strikes me as a notion one might come across in a Shakespearean comedy). While Miri is there, out of necessity she learns the music of the quarry, and unexpectedly discovers that she can speak/sing it outside of the quarry itself, as long as she is physically touching any stone that can be traced to a vein of linder. That unseen network of linder veins becomes a beautiful, unconscious scaffolding as Miri learns the secret of the speech is built on shared memories/community.

I guess the first time I read the book, I was so involved in the excitement of a first read-through that parallels didn't come to me, but this time through I found myself reading the descriptions of quarry speech and thinking about kything.

Kything is the form of unspoken communication that Madeleine L'Engle developed in her fantasy novels for young adults many years ago, particularly in A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe learn to communicate with one another and with other people/creatures across vast distances and without words. The concept is developed throughout the books -- it's not actually named as kything until Wind, when Meg is tutored in the practice by Proginoskes, the singular cheribum who partners with her against the evil, unnaming Echthroi. What intrigues me is that, in that first instance where it's named, Progo works with Meg to help her remember a memory that she didn't realize she had stored in her brain. She heard a conversation (not realizing its full import) and thought she'd forgotten it, but Progo, in communicating/communing with her, is able to pull the memory forth so that she can see it and hear it clearly again. Meg becomes a particularly adept kyther, especially with Charles Wallace in A Swiftly Tilting Planet. While he's off riding a unicorn on the wind to save the planet from nuclear peril, she's in her attic bedroom, keeping her hand on a dog (whom we're led to believe just might be part guardian angel) since the act of touching the warm fur of the living creature seems to connect her more closely to her little brother's mind and heart. Shades of linder lines.

Meg also kythes deeply with Calvin, the young man who will grow up to be her husband. Their intimacy of communication is similar to what she shares with others, but also different, tinged with eros as well as philos, I guess you might say (and all of it bathed somehow in agape). The nuances are hard to describe, but definitely there, reminding me of Miri's ability to quarry-speak most clearly, especially when in peril, with the young man closest to her own heart, Peder. Although their feelings for one another have not been fully acknowledged or recognized even by themselves, the feelings are there (which Hale makes beautifully clear from their awkwardness around one another).

More than Meg and Calvin, however, Peder and Miri's ability to communicate reminded me forcefully of Vicky Austin and Adam Eddington in A Ring of Endless Light. If absolutely forced to choose a favorite L'Engle novel, I would probably choose Ring, which I read over and over again between the ages of 15-25. I don't know why it never dawned on me with any forcefulness (until now!) that the unspoken communication developed in Ring looks an awful lot like kything. Vicky experiences an ability to communicate without words (and to receive communications, often in the form of wordless images) first with dolphins (animals are always very important in Madeleine's work) and then with Adam, the young man who introduces her to the dolphins.

Maybe one reason I never made an explicit connection is because distinctions used to be often made between Madeleine's "chronos" books and her "kairos" books. In her so-called kairos books, characters were not bound by the normal nature of time, while characters in the chronos books never time-traveled. That's a useful enough distinction in some regards, but it's not so easy to break her books down into categories of "fantasy" and "realism" with the kairos books neatly falling into one and the chronos books into the other. Even in her more realistic books, where the characters don't fly with unicorns, there are mystical elements. Vicky, after all, flies with dolphins.

I've wandered far afield. My main observation is that Miri's unspoken message to Peder felt familiar, not in a derivative way, but in a lovely, shared tradition way. Peder's response in her time of peril mirrors Adam's. Vicky and Adam's wondering exchange (once the peril is past) is so sweet and simple: "I called you --" "And I came," he said. Words that could have been quarry-sung in another book, time and place.

3 Children and It

No, the title of my post is not a typo. I know the name of E. Nesbit's classic book is 5 Children and It. It's my favorite Nesbit, and one we read as a family about a year ago.

We've been revisiting Nesbit recently with a family read-aloud of The Treasure Seekers. We finished it last night. This was our introduction to the Bastables (I've been wanting to meet them for quite some time, especially since I realized they merit a brief mention from C.S. Lewis at the start of The Magician's Nephew) and we definitely enjoyed the introduction.

At the end of the book, there was a brief bit about the author, and I shared some of it with the sweet girl and her daddy -- how Edith Nesbit was born in 1858, how she wrote for a number of years before she discovered her great talent for writing for children (when she was about forty), the numbers of books she wrote after that, how it amused her when people assumed she was a man, etc. The synopsis mentioned 5 Children and It, which caused us to remember the story fondly.

Then the sweet girl said: "Ha! That's what Madeleine L'Engle could have called A Wrinkle in Time! 3 Children and IT!" and I just about died laughing.

Today's treat on the library hold shelf -- the new graphic novel version of Wrinkle. I was excited to pick it up, but S. has absconded with it already (she read the first chapter in the library). "When I'm done with it, I'll pass it on," she promised generously. She's been raiding my sock drawer recently for socks, so why am I surprised we're now vying for books on the hold shelf?

Life marches on!

She Loved It

We finished reading A Wrinkle in Time tonight. It was an emotional experience for me, sharing this book with my daughter, much more so than I even expected.

She loved the book (yay!) and I thought I would jot a few paraphrases of my favorite things she said about it today. I should mention that we'd been reading Wrinkle during the day (school break) and still doing our re-read of our beloved Narnia (up to Last Battle again, but just barely started it) in the evenings....

"Can we read the last chapter of Wrinkle tonight instead of Last Battle? I know everything is going to turn out all right, but I want to find out how!"

"They are going to get Charles Wallace, right? They're going to get home, right?"

"This is a very suspenseful place!"

"I love these characters!"

"It's funny, when you read the first chapters of this book, you think, oh this is a nice family story. And then you keep reading and find out their father is missing and say, oh this is a good mystery. And then they start to tesser to other planets and you say, oh this is an adventure book! And then they go to Camazotz and strange things start happening and you say, oh this is science fiction!"

"All those people whose brains are connected to IT would die if somebody killed IT. So maybe somebody should go to Camazotz and love every person there to get them away from IT." 
 
"Can we read it again, this time slowly? And then I'm going to want to read the next book on my own."

And the moments I definitely heard her chuckle during the final chapter: when Calvin kissed Meg, and when Charles Wallace said they'd landed in the broccoli in the twins' vegetable garden.

Wrinkle Read-Aloud

A momentous event at our house this week...we've begun reading A Wrinkle in Time during morning reading time.

It was such an important book to me when I was around eleven. Although I hadn't put a whole lot of thought into when to introduce it, I guess I always had "eleven" in the back of my mind as the magic number. I'm not sure I had thought of it as a read-aloud either, given the fact that when I first read it, I fell into it headfirst on my own steam. But then, nobody really read aloud to me when I was a child (at least not much, and not onto in later childhood).

If I had thought about it at all, I think I assumed I would likely give the sweet girl Meet the Austins sometime this year. She's been acquainted with the Austins her whole life because I have about a quarter of a century tradition of reading The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas every Advent, and she was born somewhere in the middle of that tradition and joined it early. She's always liked that story and so it seemed a natural extension to move her on to the rich, middle-grade goodness of Meet the Austins, a lovely book of Madeleine's that I don't think gets enough attention.

But then we were discussing possible reads for our homeschool group this fall (we try to do a monthly book, with families coming in ready to discuss it on a given Friday) and I found myself suggesting Wrinkle. It's kind of funny how it happened -- we'd asked the two older kids, the sweet girl and her good friend (whom I'll call science boy) what kinds of books they'd like to read this year. We're mostly pitching to the two of them in our group, since the rest are littles more or less along for the reading ride. Science boy immediately said "let's read something with spaceships...and aliens!" and not a heartbeat behind him, sweet girl said, "let's read something girlish!"

Now there aren't many books that fit both bills, but Wrinkle comes awfully close. Granted, the elegance of tessering does away with the clunky need for spaceships, but there are "aliens" -- beings who live on other planets and even visit our own. So...space travel, check. Aliens, check. Then there's the added bonus of a girl protagonist. And not just any girl protagonist, but the wonderfully gawky, braces-wearing, scraggly-haired, impatient, math genius Meg Murry -- and seriously, don't you just feel like hugging Madeleine right now, for gracing the world with Meg?

So I said "How about  A Wrinkle in Time?" and everybody said yes, and we picked October as our reading month for it.

I could have just handed the sweet girl the book...but she is just past ten, and does love being read to still. Plus we have a tradition of reading the homeschool books together. Plus -- true confession -- I just couldn't bear being left out of it. It had not occurred to me how momentous it would feel to read Wrinkle with my daughter. Nor had it dawned on me that apparently I've never read the book aloud. I have recommended it to countless people over the years -- I think I could seriously make a list of people I introduced to Madeleine L'Engle (I'm pretty sure reading the time trilogy was a prerequisite for anyone who dated me in college) but I don't think I've ever read it aloud.

Doing so has been a delight but also a bit bizarre. How does one pronounce Uriel -- with a short or long u? How do you reeeaaad ttthhee ssstammmering words of Mrs Which? For that matter, how do you read Mrs Who's Greek quotes when you don't know how to read Greek? What does Calvin sound like? How do you make Charles Wallace sound like a petulant, normal five year old somehow tinged with mysterious otherness? How do you change Mrs Whatsit's voice when she metamorphoses from one kind of being to another? (In the end, I decided not to.) And wow, the Black Thing -- it's pretty scary.

Those are some of the questions and thoughts that have been running through my mind as we've read the first few chapters together this week.

Oh...and in a marvelous bit of serendipity...the amazing "you could not possibly have scheduled this to happen if you'd tried a million times" kind...we are also re-reading Magician's Nephew as our bedtime read aloud. Today I got to read both Mrs Whatsit's flight with Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace on her back and Fledge's flight with Digory and Polly on his back. I am a very happy reading woman.

Dear Madeleine

I've been wanting to do more of my Wrinkle in Time re-read posts, but alas, life keeps getting in the way. But I thought I would go on and post this journal entry I wrote the other day, in the form of a letter to Madeleine L'Engle. I had a very rare quiet morning to read when my family was out of town, and I found myself drawn to the final chapters of Wrinkle. Then I just needed to thank Madeleine one more time for this lovely book that has meant so much to me through the years.

*******

Dear Madeleine,

I missed you today.

Despite your passing on to greater life almost five years ago, I often still have a sense of your presence. After all, your books have graced my life for decades. And they grace my shelves…two shelves, in fact, full of almost every book you ever wrote, all crowded together, sandwiched right in between Harper Lee and C.S. Lewis (who then crowds the next two shelves…I guess you can tell who the writers of my heart are).

But I both felt your presence more deeply than usual, and missed you more, while reading today. I’m having an extremely rare day alone, all to myself, and found myself picking up the 50^th anniversary copy of A Wrinkle in Time that my sister bought for my recent birthday. Its lovely red jacket, an homage to the original cover, feels smooth in my hands. It’s a hardback, and I’m not used to holding such weight when I read Wrinkle – since for years the only copy I’ve ever read was my read-to-literal-tatters paperback, the same paperback copy I first read at the age of eleven.

I don’t know if it was reading a brand new copy (one with lovely pictures of you in the back, along with that draft chapter that shows your edits that just delight me to see) or because I was all alone with more space and time than usual to intently focus, but I fell into Wrinkle in ways I hadn’t in years. Oh, I’ve read it numerous times in the thirty-three years (wow, is that really possible?) since I first discovered it. But you know, perhaps, how it feels to read a well-loved and much-read story. It’s like visiting with an old friend, knowing the stories she delights in repeating, being able to finish her sentences for her. That’s usually how I feel when I go back to Wrinkle, and it’s a lovely, comforting thing.

Today it felt almost new. I had been re-reading my way at a leisurely pace, and suddenly I was in the final few chapters and couldn’t put them down. Again, a odd quirk of my life (an out of town funeral that my husband and daughter are attending, while I stayed here with work deadlines) enabled me to read with more attention and time than I can usually give these days. I was not rushing to get breakfast on the table or needing to dive into errands or starting my daughter’s school day. I was able to just fall head first into the story and keep reading. I took the book back to bed, curled up with my soft comforter, and kept reading…much as I would have…could have…did…read when I was eleven. By the time I finished the story, and finish it I did, I was crying.

To read with that young-girl intensity, and yet to read with this middle-aged woman’s heart – well, it was a powerful combination. I remember you saying once that we are all the ages we have ever been, and that’s so profoundly true. So I read with little girl freshness and grown-up eyes together – a little bit like wearing Mrs. Who’s glasses, I suppose, and marveling as I see the atoms re-arrange.

I found myself resonating with parts of the story I never had so fully before. Mr. Murry’s character – you did so much with him in such a little amount of space and time – especially spoke to my heart. My own almost ten year old is several states away today, experiencing her first funeral, and all her struggles and seasons lately – with anxieties and insecurities, hopes and dreams, independence and dependence – seemed to play into every scene I read between Mr. Murry and Meg. I understood Meg’s anger at her father for not being perfect and not taking care of everything in one heroic sweep. I understood Mr. Murry’s frustrations and helplessness as he realized that, as much as he would like to, he couldn’t do everything, couldn’t be the strong, perfect parent she wanted him to be. I had always thought, when I was a child, than nothing was more powerful than that final scene when Meg loves Charles Wallace out of the clutches of IT – and yet where does Meg learn to love like that? I found myself in awe of her father’s love for her. I love how you showed him as limited and flawed and yet willing to have a child-like trust in a love and power greater than his own. I love how he was willing to put his daughter in greater hands than his and let his daughter do what needed to be done. The last part of the story – it’s not just about Meg growing up and choosing the hard but right way. It’s about a father (who himself needed rescuing by a trio of young people) learning to let go of control, learning to trust. I suspect that lesson was a hard-won lesson for Mr. Murry, trapped in his dark column, his cloven pine.

And oh, Calvin. How I loved those small moments of potentially blooming romance between Calvin and Meg when I was closer to their age, and I still do. But it’s not just about a boy and a girl meeting and finding one another attractive. It’s about two young people shaped by the same call and helping each other find courage to do what needs to be done. That kiss Calvin gives Meg? The one that brightens her eyes? It’s not a prince waking up a princess kiss, or a kiss of adolescent ardor. It’s a let me kiss you before you go into battle kiss, a kiss of encouragement and strength.

I don’t think I’d ever realized how beautifully steeped in Pauline theology those final chapters were either. Yes, I recognized all the scriptural quotes, but they are so carefully chosen, so integrated into the story you’re telling. I love the way that all those gospel steeped elements are spoken by various characters – not just the three Mrs. Ws (who clearly stand in as angelic messengers) but by Aunt Beast. The God who shapes us for his purposes, who makes all things work together for good, who makes the foolish things of the world shame the wise – is the God of the universe. And so it’s so utterly right that the translation of the song of the winged creatures on Uriel comes through as a Psalm of praise.

And the disembodied brain – not just an homage to Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, not just a “heart defeats brain” moment.  It’s disembodied. As in non-incarnate. And only incarnated love – love willing to do what needs to be done to rescue the one in thrall to the darkness – only incarnated love can triumph. Meg’s act here is a Christ-like act, from the moment she pushes through the cold and darkness to the moment she catches Charles up in a tear-soaked embrace.

Oh Madeleine, I missed you today. And yet I also found myself feeling as though you’d come to visit. I’m so glad you did.

Blessings.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 3, Mrs. Which)

Talk about an entrance! Mrs. Which doesn't arrive until the final page of the chapter that bears her name, but when she does, there can no longer be any doubt in the reader's mind that something unusual is going on. Even if you had been thinking these three ladies were just gentle eccentrics up until now, the fact that Mrs. Which has to materialize gives you a very big clue that we're dealing with non human beings. Not to mention that Madeleine slyly slips in a bit of information during Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who's bickering -- to the effect that Mrs. Who is a few "paltry" billion years older than the "young" Mrs. Whatsit.

I'm pretty sure that scene is where I learned the word paltry.

Most of the chapter, however, belongs to Meg and Calvin and the sweet beginning of their blooming friendship. It moves quickly in the direction of romance, but somehow that element manages to feel utterly innocent. There's a delightful old-fashioned quality in Calvin that nourishes that sense in all their interactions. You get the feeling that these are two very bright, very lonely teenagers who almost immediately feel like best friends and possible soul-mates.

The beginning friendship also provides L'Engle with a natural way to provide some very necessary exposition. We've known from the earlier chapters that Meg's scientist father is away from home for some mysterious reason, but now the whole story comes spilling out in response to Calvin's gentle questions. Her father has been doing "Top Secret" (love the caps!) work for the government and has somehow disappeared whilst on a dangerous mission. We no sooner learn that then Charles Wallace interrupts the conversation in great excitement to let the older kids know he thinks it's time to go. When Meg asks him where, he says he's not sure, but he thinks it's to find their father. A good place for a dramatic music cue!

A lot of moments in this chapter move me. Charles asking Calvin to read to him, and then choosing Genesis for his bedtime reading. Meg's mother helping Calvin to realize just how bright Meg is in math -- but then letting it slip that Meg still likes to play with her doll's house. (Mother! Meg shrieked in agony...a line that always makes me grin.) Calvin encouraging Meg to cry and then telling her she has "dream-boat eyes." When I was twelve, that always made me swoon.

More lines I love: when Meg is worrying about Charles Wallace saying she's not really "one thing or the other" (see, I'm not the only person that worries about that one) and Calvin, in a totally pragmatic and affectionate way says "Oh, for crying out loud...you're Meg, aren't you? Come on and let's go for a walk." Another lovely bit comes when Calvin shares about his own rather messed-up family and then says, quite simply, "You don't know how lucky you are to be loved." Loving and being loved, as it turns out, are the underlying themes of this whole story.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 2, Mrs. Who)

I love how Madeleine does so much with so little. The entire chapter is entitled "Mrs. Who" but we really only spend time with her for two or three pages near the end. But what delightful pages! And what a character!

I've always loved Mrs. Who. She's so memorable in so many ways. Her glasses, her quaint voice, her facility with languages, the way she speaks in epigrams and quotations. As a young reader, I was fascinated that she spoke in quotes, and felt a little bit in awe of all those different languages spilling over the pages. It took me a number of years, and a number of re-reads, before it dawned on me how brilliant that bit of characterization was. It showed both an encyclopedic range of knowledge/memory and a struggle to verbalize in the "local dialect." These three ladies are struggling to fit in/adapt to their new environment, a recurring theme for L'Engle (here and elsewhere). It mirrors the kids' struggle to do the same thing. That theme of "not fitting in" is one reason why I loved her work as a teenager.

And speaking of "not fitting in" we get more intimations of otherness when Charles lets Calvin know Mother's "not one of us" and Meg's "not really one thing or the other." Those lines still make my skin prickle, and even after multiple re-reads I'm not always sure precisely what Charles Wallace means. Just how different is he, and how does he know how different he is?

I also enjoy how Madeleine uses "stock props" and stands them on their heads. In the first chapter, it was that war horse opening line "It was a dark and stormy night." In this chapter, it's the haunted house...which isn't really scary at all because the three Mrs. Ws are just making it look haunted for their own amusement.

The moment that moves me most here is probably when we meet Calvin, that brilliant, awkward, courteous boy. He and Charles are enough "alike" in their differences to hit it off immediately, but he kindly tries to direct his conversation toward Meg as much as Charles, a tiny bit of characterization that made me love him almost immediately.

As for lines I love ~ "He wasn't my idea, Charlsie, but I think he's a good one." That's Mrs. Who speaking about Calvin. What a wonderful sense of call behind the line. This is just one way that L'Engle lets us know the children have been chosen for the adventure/rescue mission on which they're about to embark.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 1, Mrs. Whatsit)

I've been enjoying the ongoing celebration of the 50th anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time, so much so that the other day I picked up the book and began to read it again.

This would be my original copy, the one I first read when I was eleven. The binding broke years ago. It's in three pieces, but it's still my favorite copy to re-read!

Re-reading a favorite book is such a pleasure; I thought it would be fun to share that pleasure here. So for the next several weeks, I'll be blogging my reflections as I re-read the book, trying to capture just a handful of the things that make me love this story and enjoy it anew every time I return to it.

If you love Wrinkle too, I hope you'll enjoy the reflections and share some of your own. I'll be moving through chapter by chapter, using three "lenses" to help focus my reflections as I think through my response to the story both as a reader and a writer: Elements That Engage; Moments That Move Me; Lines I Love. Elements will focus especially on storycraft, plot and theme, moments on emotional resonances, and lines on language -- though of course those three strands will interweave. My goal is to post twice a week for six weeks.

Let's start at the very beginning. I hear it's a very good place to start!

Chapter 1: Mrs. Whatsit

Elements That Engage:
I love all the homey details of the Murrys' existence, especially when set against the wild storm raging outside, the mysterious absence of their father (which we quickly come to hear about), and the odd visitor who comes in the night to see them. Those homey details are everywhere in Meg's attic bedroom and especially the kitchen. The quilt, the hot chocolate steaming on the stove, Charles Wallace's footie pajamas, the geometric pattern on the curtains, the yellow chrysanthemums on the kitchen table, the sound of the furnace, late night snacks, cutting up pickles and tomatoes, the dog thumping his tail on the floor...even Meg's unruly adolescent hair.

Secondarily, I also find myself drawn to this opening presentation of Charles Wallace's character -- those little boy legs that dangle and don't yet reach the floor are in such juxtaposition with his quiet confidence that feels eerily grown-up. Remember, he's five, and yet he speaks calmly and clearly, he puts milk on the stove and knows how to make sandwiches by himself, he has that remarkable prescience and understanding of his mother and sister and even Mrs. W. It's Charles Wallace's presence that first marks this story as moving in a fantastical direction, pages before we see the crazy get-up of Mrs. W. or hear the word tesseract.

Moments That Move Me:
Mrs. Murry's tenderness with Meg as she talks with her about her trouble at school. And I laugh every time Mrs. Whatsit sprawls on the floor in her wet socks, tuna sandwich in hand, and sprains her dignity.

Lines I Love:
"Wild nights are my glory. I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course." (Mrs. Whatsit)

"50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs" Celebrating A Wrinkle in Time

50 years! Does it seem possible that Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time could really be 50 years old?

I was delighted when I heard about the 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs celebration in honor of Wrinkle's publication. I only wish I had heard about it sooner, because I would have loved to contribute to the blog tour. (Alas, you had to be asked by the publisher, Macmillan, who initiated the tour to celebrate their new anniversary edition of Wrinkle. Which is chock full of goodies and looks way cool, a phrase I don't often use.)

As it is, I'll enjoy taking the tour and reading what others have to say about a classic book I've loved since I first devoured it at the age of eleven.

You can go to this Facebook page for the full list of the blogs participating in the 50 day celebration tour. At first I thought it was set up as a separate page on FB, but it's actually a part of the the general Wrinkle in Time page. So you can "like" the Wrinkle page and get to it that way, or just bookmark it. The tour starts today: you can find the great kick-off post here, along with a photo of the way cool (yes, twice in one post!) commemorative edition.

"Temper My Intemperance" (Madeleine L'Engle)

The new year finds me reading old poetry, especially poetry that's been part of my heart for a long while. I recently picked up a library copy of The Ordering of Love, the 2005 collection of Madeleine L'Engle's poetry that included some of her best poems from volumes ranging from the 1960s through the 1980s, with new poems from both the 1960s and the 1990s. While I have some of the original L'Engle poetry books on my shelves, it's been lovely to read at this compact, beautiful volume, to discover the new poems, and to realize anew what a deep part of my life most of the old ones already are.

Today I needed this one, an old favorite from her book The Weather of the Heart, originally published in 1978:

Temper my intemperance, O Lord,
O hallowed, O adored,
My heart's creator, mighty, wild,
Temper Thy bewildered child.
Blaze my eye and blast my ear,
Let me never fear to fear
Nor forget what I have heard,
Even your voice, my Lord,
Even your Word.

*************

New Year Blessings!

For Louisa, Jack, and Madeleine... (Literary Day of Days)

It's my favorite literary day of the year: the anniversary of the birth of three of the deepest writers of my heart. Louisa May Alcott was born on this day in 1832, Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis in 1898, and Madeleine L'Engle in 1918. What an amazing gift it is to be able to celebrate all three of them on the same day!

I fell in love with all three of these writers when I was very young and my love for them has continued over the years, though it's taken different shape in different seasons. As I pondered today all the profound ways they have influenced me through the years -- far too many ways to count -- it occurred to me that even if each had only graced the world with a fraction of what they wrote, I still would feel grateful. Playing on that idea, I wrote this poem in tribute to them, and in tribute to three of their characters who have been my special friends.

For Louisa, Jack and Madeleine

It would have been enough to give us Jo –

Tree climber, boot stomper, apple muncher,
Snow thrower, writer of tales.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see the ink stain on her finger,
The scorch on her dress, the wild, rumpled hair.
We hear her tears in the garret,
Mingled with rain, and know
the soft, satin feel of the ribbon
tied round her stories.


It would have been enough to give us Lucy –

Door opener, truth teller, faun friend,
merry queen, lion-hearted girl.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see the flask of healing cordial,
The white-winged albatross, snowflakes
Glittering in the lamppost light.
We hear her muffled tears the night
The world seemed to end, and know
the soft, tangled tresses of the wild lion’s mane
wrapped round her fingers.


It would have been enough to give us Meg –

Problem solver, hand holder, cocoa maker,
namer, friend of cherubim.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see glasses slip in the moonlight,
Dragon scales in a dripping garden,
A bright quilt in a wind-rocked attic room.
We hear her tears of relief as she clutches
Her rescued brother, and know
the soft, small boy feel of his hair
pressed close to her cheek.

~EMP, 11-29-11

Poetry Friday: Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'd almost forgotten how much I love the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. But for the past week or so, my nine year old daughter has been memorizing "Afternoon on a Hill." Its gentle music still speaks to my heart, and I've loved discussing it with her. We've talked about the lovely alliteration of "I will look at cliffs and clouds/ with quiet eyes" (how I long for "quiet eyes"!) and we've also talked about how the speaker of the poem felt joy in the present moment as she declared "I will touch a hundred flowers/and not pick one." That's always been my favorite line ~ I love the way the narrator doesn't feel the need to possess what she's enjoying, but just lets the flowers stay free, growing right where they are.

Remembering this poem sent me looking for another old favorite by Millay. I was introduced to "Recuerdo" (the title means "Memory") through Madeleine L'Engle, who provided my introduction to so many wonderful poems through the years. I still love the whimsical, lilting quality of this poem:

"We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable --
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon."

I love the story sense in this poem. How easy it is to picture two people having such joy in each other's company that they spend the whole night just talking, riding back and forth (no destination intended) on the boat, lying on the hilltop, watching the moon give way to the sunrise. It strikes me that this poem also celebrates the practice of the present moment, the joy of living right where you are without worry about what's to come next. In the final stanza, they do start for home (as does the person on the hilltop in "Afternoon on a Hill") but they give away all their remaining fruit and all their money except what they need for subway fares. Just living simply and with gratitude in the moment, again without the urgent need to possess.

The whole poem can be found at Poetry Archive.

Today's poetry round-up can be found at Picture Book of the Day.

Excavating Treasures

My week has had a strange rhythm. Household tasks (cleaning, organizing), lesson planning and trying to figure out the shape of my fall, lots of Penderwicks on audio (the sweet girl has fallen head over heels for the entire series), with VBS happening in the evenings. No other week this summer will look or feel quite like this one.

The organizing in our laundry room ~ which doubles as a sort of attic space/catch-all ~ has been interesting. I found a stash of papers that I clearly pulled from boxes a long time ago, probably during some other organizing season in my life, with the intention of doing something with them. I still haven't done much with them, beyond sorting through to see what's mine, what's D's, what needs to be filed for practical purposes (if anything at this late date) and what can go straight to recycling. It's an odd bunch of papers, ranging from receipts and other bits and pieces of ephemera to articles printed from the internet, snippets of poems I worked on a few years back, and scribbled drawings by the sweet girl at different ages.

It feels a little bit like excavating your life to come across things like this. I had a similar feeling earlier this summer when I went through some boxes of things I'd stored in my sister's attic during college, twenty plus years ago. Only that was a even stranger feeling since the layers went so much deeper.

Except for a few pages that seemed to have tumbled out of a very old writing file and gotten lost, the farthest this pile stretched back was four years. I know it's four years, because I found this little poem I wrote when the sweet girl was in kindergarten and learning to write her letters:

Learning to Write an "S"

I'm sketching a snake
who likes to skate
across my slate.

I also found essays by Kathleen Norris, poems by Li Young Lee, obituaries of and tributes to Madeleine L'Engle, annotated pages on John Granger's thoughts on postmodernism, and recipes for winter squash.

Tired and ear-achey as I am (and that's part of this week's rhythm too) I had to smile over all these treasures.

Literary Day of Days: Celebrating Madeleine L'Engle

I went back into my archives to find where I first coined the phrase "literary day of days" to describe today, November 29. It was this post, back in 2006, the first year I kept this blog.

I really do love the fact that I get to celebrate a trio of such incredible authors of my heart in one day: Madeleine, Jack and Louisa. This year, I thought I'd sprinkle celebration snippets throughout the day.

First up: Madeleine. It would be her 92nd birthday today, and I can just imagine the sort of feasting her family and friends must be doing in her honor! I personally hope she has a front-row seat for some Bach today in heaven...

Glimpses of Grace, the book of Madeleine's thoughts and reflections edited by Carole Chase, has a beautiful quote today. In it, Madeleine talks about aging, all the ways in which our bodies begin to weary and break down, reminding us that "chronos is not merely illusion." As I reflect on recent days spent with our parents, growing older in ways that suddenly seem so swift, and on my own increasing awareness of physical limitations (even in smaller ways) these words resonate with me more than ever:

"There is nothing I can do to stop the passage of the kind of time in which we human beings are set. I can work with it rather than against it, but I cannot stop it. I do not like what it is doing to my body. If I live as long as many of my forbears, these outward diminishments will get worse, not better. But these are outward signs of chronology, and there is another Madeleine who is untouched by them, the part of me that lives forever in kairos and bears God's image."

Thank you, Madeleine.

For all of you embarking on the celebration of Advent, you might also be delighted to know there's a new edition of The Twenty-Four Days of Christmas out this year. It has new illustrations by Jill Weber. I still love my hardback copy illustrated by Joe DeVelasco, but I'd be interested to see this one -- and am thinking of getting it for the sweet girl, so she can have a copy of her very own. We read it together every year. (The link on the title is to a review I wrote of the book back in 2004, when she was just two and a half. Talk about the swiftness of chronology!)

Woo-Hoo for Wrinkle!

Yes! And number 2 in the Top 100 Children's Novels is indeed A Wrinkle in Time. Given my deep love for Madeleine L'Engle's work, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I decided to let out a big "Whoop!" right here.

In fact, let's give this one "O, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all whooping." I love that quote, from Shakespeare's As You Like It. And guess where I learned it?

Yep. Thank you, Madeleine.

November

On Sunday we celebrated Christ the King, which always falls on the final Sunday before Advent. When I turn to the readings in the Prayer Book these days, I am very near the back of the book as we've moved into the final "proper" before the readings beginning anew with Advent 1.

The older I get, the more I'm finding myself much more deeply attuned to the rhythms of the church year than to the actual calendar year. I'm realizing that it's this time of year when I'm getting truly excited about newness and fresh starts, much more than when we turn the calendar to January 1, although that's enjoyable too.

It's combination of things: the approach of Thanksgiving, a holiday near to my heart because it reminds me to be grateful and because it's the most time we get to spend with extended family each year, the approach of the prayerful, watchful season of Advent, which of course leads us to the dazzling light of Christmas. It's knowing that no matter how short and dark days seem right now, we're about to turn the corner and begin to bask in just a bit more light each day, a glorious reflection of the Light whose birth we're about to celebrate.

I love the month of October and have long called it my favorite. From a purely seasonal point of view, that's still true -- I love the bright blue days, the colored leaves, apples, pumpkin, corn, the still-longer amounts of daylight, the not-quite-so-cold as it's going to get. But from a heart perspective, I'm beginning to realize how much I love November. All Saints, Christ the King, Thanksgiving, the very tip of Advent.

And from a literary point of view (and those literary days are a deep part of my heart's journey) the November 22 Feast Day of C.S. "Jack" Lewis, and the commemoration of birthdays: Robert Louis Stevenson on November 13, Jack, Madeleine and Louisa (Lewis, L'Engle and Alcott) on November 29. And on the family calender, several extended family members' birthdays and also November 16, my late (paternal) grandparents' anniversary. 80 years since their wedding this year; I still keep a picture of their beautiful wedding day up on my bookshelf.

We're heading out for family visits soon, and I likely won't have much computer access for a few days. If you're reading this, know how many blessings I am wishing your way during this thanksgiving season, this beautiful November.